Frank Lowy founder of the Westfield shopping centre chain is an interesting lesson in resilience survival and thriving.
He has just made public his personal story.
He says: The human being is very resourceful. When you fight for survival you don’t think much you just do. If you think too much you sink.
Behind his incredable success much of Lowy’s relentless drive to win seems rooted in his youthful passion just to survive another day. He pays obsessive attention to every detail always expecting danger alert to potential enemies.
He always has the feeling that he is starting at a disadvantage. He sees life as “Always a struggle always a struggle.” He appreciates how ludicrous this must sound. “I feel it is an uphill battle a struggle. I know people would think ‘Oh he’s this and he’s that’. But to me everything…is a struggle. I feel it.”
In business he has earned a reputation for being a harsh uncompromising opponent tough on tenants tougher on competition. “I can be hard when I believe that I should be. I mean you don’t want to be a pushover. You can’t get there by allowing people to push you over.”
After surviving the privations of the war he “was a free man free-thinking could do what I wanted go where I wanted. It was a very productive time personally. I was not a victim any more. And it was ambition for success not money. If you do your job well the money will follow.”
He insists he still lives for the future. “It (his past) is part of me. I visit it from time to time. I remember it. But I don’t live it. I live for tomorrow as I always did. I have so much I don’t want to spoil it by getting stuck in the past.”
He enjoys work. “I don’t know whether it is some gift or obsession or whatever. But the last thing I want to do is do nothing. What is it to enjoy life? Sit at the beach? No. What it is is that you have to do something you have to be productive make a contribution to the society to the family to yourself.”