In this TED Talk, Regina Hartley, human resources expert, explains that many successful business people had experienced early hardships, anywhere from poverty, abandonment, death of a parent while young, to learning disabilities, alcoholism and violence.

While the conventional thinking has been that trauma leads to distress, during studies of dysfunction, data revealed an unexpected insight: that even the worst circumstances can result in growth and transformation. Such a remarkable and counterintuitive phenomenon was called Post Traumatic Growth.

What is remarkable, among those  who experience post traumatic growth, is that they embraced their trauma and hardships as key elements of who they have become, and know that without those experiences, they might not have developed the muscle and grit required to become successful.

At the and, experts suggest us to always choose the underestimated contender, whose secret weapons are passion and purpose.

Here is the complete TED Talk.

Image: Flickr –Paul Miller (CC BY 2.0)