The real wisdom here lies in what Lombardi refuses to measure: he's not tracking your circumstances or your enemies' power, only your own response. Most of us spend exhausting energy resenting the knock-down itself—the unfair boss, the rejection letter, the diagnosis—when Lombardi points out that such events are simply conditions of being alive, not reflections of your worth. A person who falls repeatedly but rises each time accumulates something far more valuable than someone who never faces difficulty: they build an actual track record of resilience rather than an untested theory of it. When you're passed over for a promotion but spend the next month retraining yourself rather than updating your résumé in anger, that's the distinction he's making.