The path is easier if you can handle bumps

D ear graduates,

Congratulations. You’ve earned your degrees summa cum lending – a high level of financial sacrifice.

Now your choices are shaped by student loans, soft labor markets, high housing costs or anticipation of more debt as you re-enlist for further education. You want to know how to get the right job, get promoted, get ahead. You don’t want to hear any more commencement cliches. You want to find the best road to success.

Do I have a speech for you! Movie-maker Woody Allen once proposed an all-purpose graduation talk, with this lofty advice: More than ever in history, humanity faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other road leads to total oblivion. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose the right one.

Funny, but some days will feel like that – between Iraq and a hard place.

Any pessimist can put down the pep talks, because despair-mongers have some truth on their side. You’re entering a troubled world, with riots in Bolivia, murders in Mexico, genocide in Darfur, North Korean nukes, avian-flu outbreaks and continuing Middle East conflagrations. You’re reminded of dangers every time you go through airport security or read about job losses to China and India. But when has the world not faced troubles? Even in supposedly good times, troubles are always lurking. It’s just that in times defined as “good,” people feel better about their ability to handle the troubles.

In every endeavor – whether in business, politics, sports or the game of life – Kanter’s Law kicks in: Everything can look like a failure in the middle. Surprising events, unlucky breaks or unfortunate injuries can pop up anytime, coming between you and your goal. If you give up in the middle, by definition you’ve failed. Find the will to keep going, to make adjustments but stick with it and the likelihood of success grows. Winners of the game often come from behind.

What separates long-term winners from perpetual losers is the confidence to bounce back from troubles. Confidence stems from productive habits. Try these ways to weather the miserable middles.

“Take responsibility. Don’t waste time assigning fault or pointing fingers; anger and blame are unproductive emotions. Analyze problems and face your role in them head-on. My sports and business studies show that winners indeed work harder. They don’t whine or deny problems; they seek ways to improve.

“Rely on relationships. It’s easier to do together what seems impossible alone. Avoid the losers’ temptation to slink away and withdraw. Better yet, support someone else first. People who reach out to help others increase their own self-confidence.

“Get moving. Doing something, anything, is always better than doing nothing. Losers tend to feel helpless and passive. Winners favor action. They prefer looking ahead to looking back. When problems seem overwhelming, when circumstances seem uncontrollable, that’s when winners focus on whatever it is they can control.

“Celebrate small wins. Championships are won a game at a time, one play at a time. City Year, a national youth-service corps, begins every meeting with “ripples”: personal stories about recent accomplishments, however modest, that send out a “tiny ripple of hope” (in the late Robert Kennedy’s words). Small wins produce confidence to tackle bigger issues.

Today, dear graduates, you’re on top of the world. Tomorrow you could be down in the dumps. Yet you’ll never be utterly helpless. Even if you don’t control your circumstances, you can control your responses to those circumstances. When things don’t go your way, you can refuse to slip into losers’ negativity.

If you look positively at your strengths and truthfully at your deficiencies, you’re likely to grow stronger. If you view other people positively, they’re likely to come through for you. If you look for opportunities in any situation to take small steps now, you’re likely to achieve big things later. That’s not a guarantee, but it shifts the odds.

What will make you successful is not which road you choose. It’s how you decide to handle the bumps in it.