Would You Want a Disability?

Researchers have noticed a very surprising trend among CEOs and top corporate leaders today. A large number (almost a third) of successful entrepreneurs are diagnosed dyslexics. If you expand the search to look for those with any type of learning disability, you get almost half of the group. We are not talking about lightweights here either. Some examples include: Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Group), Charles Schwab (broker and CEO of Charles Schwab), Craig McCaw (cell phone pioneer), David Neelman (founder of Jet Blue), John Chambers (CEO of Cisco) and Paul Orfalea (founder of Kinko's).

How can this be? We see these students in our classes and in our hallways. We understand their struggle and we work tirelessly to get most of them to adjust and compete in the classroom at the average level of their peers. If that learning struggle continues, how on earth are these people so successful in today's world? The difference is not in what they learn, but in how they learn. Most people are successful in school or in sports because of Capitalization Learning. In essence, we find what we are good at, and we capitalize on it by practicing and getting even better. Many people with a disability that are also successful have perfected Compensation Learning. Compensation Learning requires the learner to accept that they are not good at something and then compensate by finding an alternate way to master the material or task. Many dyslexics encounter this for the first time by memorizing material instead of reading it.

Compensation Learning is grit in action. It is refusing to fail despite a limitation. In essence, determination overcame disability. The outcome is an unusually determined and educated person. When you understand their skills in that context, their success is a no-brainer. These people are powerful examples of how grit can achieve anything.


I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messanger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10