That was before the Survivor! TV shows. These programs aren’t about people like us. These survivors have to eat insects and worms, double-cross each other and let camera crews follow them as they compete for a big cash prize.

Real survivors are persons who have emerged alive from serious threats to their lives, often with a back pack full of souvenirs to remind them of the experience.

People who have recovered from serious cancers wear the name gratefully, even with pride.

It’s great to be alive, but the “survivors” I most admire are people who have built new lives based on possibilities. Whether they crawled, limped or rolled out of the wreckage of their former lives, they have latched on to the possible, and worked with what they had until they seemed to become new people.

How did they do it?

Perhaps they resisted the temptation to give up. If that was their achievement, we might call them “Resistors.”

Or perhaps they made it because they persisted. If that was their accomplishment, we might call them “Persisters.”

The late Art Berg resisted and persisted. He became a near-quadriplegic in an auto accident, but went on to regain partial control of his arms, to become a wheelchair marathoner and to gain fame as a motivational speaker and author.

“The problem isn’t what you can’t do,” Berg wrote, “it’s what you won’t do.”

When we ask ourselves, “What is it that we can do?” new possibilities surge forth.

Suddenly, we have options. We regain control of our lives. The experience transforms us.

Let’s call ourselves “transformers” instead of survivors! A transformer takes a high-voltage jolt of electricity and turns it into useful energy.

The transformers I’m talking about have visions of what might be. They have visions of possibilities that others can’t see.

We might not see the energy inside a transformer, but we know when someone has it, just as we can sense the hair-raising presence of static electricity.

Let’s go beyond survival.

Let’s build new lives based on possibilities that only those who have survived, resisted and persisted can glimpse.

Let’s think of ourselves as transformers!