The Ring in the Rubble rang true with a recent audience member. She approached me after my keynote speech flashing a well-adorned digit, to say how she had coincidentally made a new ring her symbol for change. The young woman had just started in her new job with the organization that had invited me to speak.

“When I quit my old job to take this new one, I rewarded myself with this ring!” I was told. She went on to say that the ring is a reminder of the risk in making a big change…something she wanted, but not a guarantee.

As an author on finding rings, I couldn’t agree more that she had a worthy symbol to signify a big decision. Rings traditionally mark special achievements from engagements to Super Bowls.

But I was most impressed that the woman from the audience was reveling in making her recent leap from a steady job to an unknown opportunity. She made a change with no guarantee of success. Such is the essence of finding the rings in our lives.

Symbols—whether jewelry or a ticket stub—serve as milestones and provide benchmarks to help us review our progress and landmarks to guide us whether things go as planned or not. They help recall how we felt at a crucial point in time. A photograph might remind you of commitments and principles when you get discouraged. A souvenir from a successful project might suggest a forgotten talent that could be useful in the present moment when you think you’ve run out of ideas.

Don’t forget to leave some markers along your path.

5th floor lecture hall at Baruch College. Taken on the day of an Economics Final Examination. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Some of us groan about our SAT experience or having to wash dishes for spending money in the cafeteria, but for others, the typical middle-class college tribulations were non-issues because just getting accepted and managing to stay enrolled were the real challenges.

Kathleen Megan, writing in the Hartford Courant, offers a compelling read covering four recent degree-earners who had to dig through serious rubble just to get to class on time.

“Getting into and graduating from college is never easy, but there are factors that make it even harder: Growing up in poverty. Suffering neglect and abuse as a child. Having a child at an early age. Suffering mental illness…”

They’re all inspiring stories of not accepting our own excuses and avoiding the victimhood often bestowed upon us by society. And there’s a lesson, too, in understanding the human spirit and its ability to get us through adversity. Or, in the examples of the four students, multiple adversities, one after another.

“When Khaliyl Lane was a little boy, he liked to ride his bike down the road to visit his good friend, Mike Allison. ‘I’d take a peek at what a real family is supposed to look like,’ Lane said. ‘I was always envious of the fact that they had so much love for one another.’

“Though he was only age 6 or 7, Lane knew his life wasn’t normal. His mother didn’t pay much attention to him or his younger brother. He didn’t know the word neglect, but he knew his mother acted differently from other mothers.”

There’s an almost magically redemptive effect in wiping our slates clear of bad experiences, mistakes and squandered opportunities. Morgan’s story tells us of sheer self-discipline from knowing “deep down” it’s the only way to stay on course and of teachers with lessons on maintaining perspective and creating your own reality.

“Born to a 17-year-old mother who dropped out of high school, (Denise) Poventud, a graduate of Weaver High School, was determined ‘not to be a product of my circumstances. … To stop the cycle.’

“Her mother, Mayda Rodriguez, had run away from home and spent time homeless, sleeping in hallways when Poventud was a newborn. Rodriguez shared her daughter’s ambition. ‘She was not going to go down my route,’ Rodriguez said. ‘She was going to do better.’

Please take a few minutes to read it all!

The take-away for me is that we should prepare ourselves for “surmounting” as a daily routine. Even on the “peaks”—as Dr. Spencer Johnson describes—of easier times we know they are inevitably followed by the experience of climbing out of valleys.

It’s always inspiring to see creative thinking at work. With no money for drums this school band director headed for the hardware store.