Adam MarkelInternational Keynote Speaker On Resilience

3 Whistles Story | Creating Resilience

Name: 3 Whistles Story | Creating Resilience
Uploaded: 2020-08-07T22:19:57+00:00
Duration: 2 min 14 s
Channel: Adam Markel
Description: Adam Markel recounts a personal lifeguard search-and-rescue from when he was 19. Three whistles signaled a missing swimmer; Markel and a team searched…

7 Aug 2020 · 2 min

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2:14

Adam Markel recounts a personal lifeguard search-and-rescue from when he was 19. Three whistles signaled a missing swimmer; Markel and a team searched repeatedly in difficult conditions, failed to find the swimmer initially, and were then admonished by their captain with the line “You either make the save or you die trying.” From this experience he draws lessons about improving, watching each other’s backs, teamwork, and resilience; he introduces that he will share a "recipe for resilience."

Questions this video answers

19 years old.

That someone was missing (a search and rescue).

"You either make the save or you die trying."

Chapters

Three whistles rang out, and I knew what that meant. I was 19 years old, and three whistles on the beach meant someone was missing. I ran down to the main stand, and the captain of our field shouted the order. They lost someone@field3. It's a search and rescue. Go. 10 of us ran down the beach to join the search team. There was already a crowd formed, and people were pointing to where they last saw the missing swimmer. We dove into the ocean and we swam out past the breakers. We formed a straight line perpendicular to the shore and started our search pattern. We dove down about 10ft into the dark, cold Atlantic and swam into the current and came straight up for air. And when we did, when everyone's head popped up, we repeated that process again and again and again. We were exhausted, but we didn't come in. After more than an hour, I heard those whistles again. It was an awful feeling. We weren't done. We hadn't found him. We got out of the water and we ran back to our beach. And our captain led us in a moment of silence. And when we opened our eyes, he looked at each of us and said, nobody goes down on our water at this speech. Nobody goes down on our watch. And then he said something that I will never forget. You either make the save or you die trying. Just a little intense, huh? But we had to get back in the lifeguard stand that day, and our captain told us in order to do that, we needed to learn something from that experience. We had to be better. We had to make some small changes, and above all, we had to watch out for each other. We had to have each other's backs. In other words, we had to be resilient. Today I'm going to share that recipe for resilience with all of you.