LOCAL CASE/EXAMPLE
A local case of adaptability at work is that of Spanish Paralympic athlete Desirée Vila. She is now an athlete, among the best in the world in her category in the long jump, holds the Spanish records in this discipline and in the 100m, lives in the Blume Residence in Madrid, trains in a High-Performance Centre, is a university student and gives talks to managers. She went from wanting to die to drinking her life away.
This girl suffered an injury in 2015 while competing. This resulted in a fracture in her leg which, accompanied by serious medical negligence, caused her to lose her leg when her main goal was to become an elite athlete and to be able to join Spain’s high-performance sports centre.
After a great recovery, she returned to elite sport and showed a brutal capacity for adaptability. She had to learn to walk again, to train in a different way and above all, to have a new life together with her new disability.
After all this, this woman has managed to keep her goal and has managed, despite the consequences, to adapt to her new life, which is no small feat, and to achieve the goals she wanted. She is now one of the most influential sportswomen in Spain, has a community of followers behind her to whom she tells about her problem and helps other people with disabilities to adapt to their new life, including in the workplace.
Finally, the case of Desirée Vila is one of the greatest challenges of adaptability in the workplace, since we must consider that her profession is elite sport. Therefore, a case as extreme as this one makes us reflect on the capacity for adaptability of human beings.