Do not judge me by my success. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again

This story is related to the energy, you would use to stand up again if you fall down. Its message is that if you have difficulties in your professional or personal life; if you fall down, you should never give up easily. We only lose when we give up. And, for this reason, you should act with all the energy that you have.

After 10 years developing my professional career in Paris at LVMH Group, in 2001, I was appointed Business Development Director in a Turkish company from KOÇ Group, the biggest group in Turkey. My job consisted in merger and acquisitions. I was loving and enjoying it very much. And, after having lived 20 years in France, I had the chance to discover again my home city, Istanbul, where I was born.

I will make a long story short, at the end of October 2004, I was informed by the doctors that I needed a heart transplantation. Today, maybe it is not that easy for you to understand what it means for a 44 years old, successful and happy person to discover that probably, he has a maximum of 6 more months to live. It was a shock. More for my wife than me. Probably because my self-defence didn’t allow me to understand the destructive reality.

At the beginning, I refused to undergo the surgery.

I was down. But I didn’t give up. And after, I decided to accept having the transplantation.

Unfortunately, willingness is not enough. An organ must be available, this organ should be compatible with the receiver, and receiver’s body must also be ready and capable to accept it.

Just few days after I started to plan my future life waiting for the heart transplantation, during a medical test, we learned that my lungs would not accept a new heart. The doctors would not carry out with the surgery that was my only chance to survive.

This sophisticated test was used in the hospital for years; but only since a short time with a new algorithm. And I was rejected by this new algorithm for a little divergency. But in this kind of operations, a negative test result even with a small divergency is enough to stop everything.

So, all my dreams were finished. I was down again.

This could be a reason for more than one, to accept that it could be the end of the journey.

But I didn’t have time to be pessimistic. So, I didn’t give up.

In fact, you have lost only when you give up.

I insisted many times and convinced the doctors to have a compatibility test again but with the former algorithm. I focused all my efforts to prepare my mind and my body like an athlete would prepare for a race. When the new results came out, I was right. The second test showed that my lungs would accept a new heart, with a condition that the transplantation must be in a short period of time.

Again, I want to make a long story short… the 31st of December I woke up, very tired, but with a new heart.

The story is long, but I remember each part of it with passion. Finally, 18 years after, in my second life, everything is completely normal. Today, I can easily say that I stood up, and if I had to go through something like this one more time, I am determined to have the same energy to push things in my favour.

The same idea was underlined quite well by Nelson Mandela, when he said: “Do not judge me by my success. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”