Resilience Isn’t Survival, It’s Reinvention
Imagine being told you only had a short time left to live. Most people would break. Many would retreat. A few might fight.
But what if instead of fading, you found a way to reinvent yourself?
That’s the story of Tom Lenoble, CEO of the Academy for Coaching Excellence and host of the Opening Pathways podcast. For 13 years, he’s lived with metastatic cancer after being told it was terminal. Alongside that fight, he’s built a career inspiring others to rise above impossible challenges.
Tom’s story is proof that resilience isn’t just about pushing through. It’s about transforming hardship into fuel. It’s about risk, reinvention, and service.
From Silicon Valley to Survival Mode
Before cancer entered the picture, Tom was already playing big.
He led customer service for MCI, the company that broke up the Bell monopoly.
He ran Walmart.com’s customer service.
He helped Palm Pilot go global.
And yes, he was there in the early days of Silicon Valley, even interviewing a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg when Facebook was still a scrappy dorm-room project.
In a sea of twenty-somethings deferring law school and MBAs to chase their dream job, Tom showed up “old enough to be their dad.” He built customer operations, witnessed Facebook’s explosive growth, and later helped shape companies that became the backbone of Geek Squad and other tech staples.
Then life blindsided him.
When the Clock Runs Out
“Six months to live.” He’s heard those words more than once.
Here’s the deal: most people freeze when they get news like that. They collapse under the weight of fear. Tom laughed. And yes, it made the doctors uncomfortable.
Why? Because he knew he had a choice.
He could let the diagnosis define him. Or he could turn it into fuel.
Tom leaned into resilience, refusing to let the storm drown him. “Every storm runs out of rain,” he says, quoting Maya Angelou. “The sun is still shining behind the cloud.”
That mindset, that refusal to let fear dictate his life, has carried him through more than a decade of fighting a disease meant to end him long ago.
Risk, Resilience, Reinvention
Tom frames it as a trilogy:
- Risk – Taking the leap, even when failure is likely.
- Resilience – Not just bouncing back, but learning from every setback.
- Reinvention – Turning lessons into new beginnings, new impact, new life.
Failure is not an endpoint. It’s a teacher. In fact, Tom argues that startups who fail often produce the most sought-after leaders because they’ve been tested, humbled, and sharpened.
But he adds a fourth element most people forget: service.
Philanthropy, he says, isn’t just about money or galas. It’s about giving your smile. Your time. Your encouragement. Your presence. That’s a currency everyone can spend.
The Terrible Gifts of Life
One of Tom’s most powerful insights is what he calls the terrible gifts of life.
The tragedies you’d never wish on your worst enemy—the attack, the illness, the heartbreak. They’re awful. They’re unfair. And yet, hidden inside them are gifts.
A deeper appreciation for mornings with your dog. A sharper sense of gratitude for waking up at all. A new way of seeing what truly matters.
They’re terrible gifts, but gifts nonetheless.
Living in the Present
So how do you keep moving when life feels unbearable?
Tom’s advice is deceptively simple: stop living with one foot in the past and one foot in the future. “If you stand like that, you’re not moving anywhere,” he says.
Resilience comes from choosing the present. Investing your attention in now.
He puts it bluntly:
- The past? No do-overs.
- The future? It’ll come.
- The present? That’s where the currency is.
And every morning, Tom proves it. He wakes up at 3:30 a.m. (and crashes by 8:30 p.m.), dives into Pilates, walks miles in nature, and grounds himself in gratitude. “You and I woke up this morning,” he says. “Some people didn’t.”
A Manual for Reinvention
Tom’s upcoming book, My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns, and High Heels, pulls these threads together. It’s not a polished hero’s tale. It’s a raw manual for anyone who’s had to stitch themselves back together with grit, humor, and faith.
Each chapter is designed not just to tell his story but to hand readers a mirror, to show them how their own scars, failures, and terrible gifts can become fuel for reinvention.
The Takeaway
If attention is the currency, stop spending it on what’s gone or what hasn’t yet arrived. Start investing it in the present—the only place resilience, risk, reinvention, and service can truly live.
Tom Lenoble’s story is a reminder that resilience isn’t survival. It’s reinvention. And reinvention is always available to us, no matter how dire the storm.
👉 To learn more about Tom, his podcast Opening Pathways, and his work with the Academy for Coaching Excellence, visit tomlenoble.com.