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Why suffering is the key to resilience: A lesson from Nvidia’s CEO
In a recent interview, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a striking remark:
“People with high expectations have low resilience, and resilience matters in success… I don’t know how to teach it to you except for, ‘I hope suffering happens to you.’”
At first, it sounds almost cruel. Wishing suffering on someone? But if you sit with it, you’ll realize he’s speaking to a raw, uncomfortable truth: there’s no shortcut to resilience. You can’t buy it, read about it, or wish it into existence. You have to earn it the hard way — by going through the kind of pain that makes most people quit.
The fragility of comfort
We’re surrounded by stories of overnight success. Highlight reels flood our screens, making struggle look optional. But behind every remarkable achievement is often a level of suffering most people would never tolerate.
You see a billion-dollar company, but you don’t see the founder maxing out credit cards and facing rejection after rejection.
You admire the athlete’s gold medal but not the grueling years of 4 AM workouts and torn ligaments.
You praise the bestselling author but never consider the pile of rejection letters they collected before breaking through.
