Finding your 1860 moment: Lessons from Abraham Lincoln

Having recently watched “Lincoln,” as well as reading the historical work which guides and informs the screenplay (”Team of Rivals”), I was struck by his remarkedly non-linear ascent to the presidency.

As we know this was a man of humble origins (a “rail splitter” born in a log cabin), but what I did not appreciate was how many detours and losses (sometimes humiliating, and at all walks of political life) he endured before his ultimate election success.

More to the point, he used this time - decades in fact! - to steadily develop the skills, insights, and good will which would later help him prevail over far more established and conventionally acceptable candidates.

This is a man that read poetry, the Bible, and Shakespeare to learn the art and lyrics of storytelling. This is a man that traveled widely on the legal circuit, but embraced the common man everywhere. This is a man that spent two days according to Doris Kearns Goodwin trying to solve Euclidean math proofs!

But he persevered through all the setbacks, backstabbing, bad breaks, family tragedies etc etc because Lincoln possessed a unique sense of destiny that one day his life purpose would become clear, and that the platform for him to leverage his unique perspective and talents would be made clear.

Some heroes have stunning clarity and focus from the earliest age as to their life work, but as we head into a New Year I believe the rest of us can benefit from Lincoln’s example and recognize that even if later in life we still have doubts and misgivings as to who we are, and where we are going professionally, that the process of life-questing may be non-linear but can be valuable in ways we can not anticipate and may lead to some rather heroic outcomes.