I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music.

Constraints forced him to focus

Getting arrested at thirteen sounds like a disaster, but Armstrong saw it as a fork in the road—the moment he stopped drifting and actually committed to something. There's a pattern here that most of us recognize quietly: we don't change until we have to. Not because we're lazy, but because comfort and distraction are powerful. Armstrong had hit a wall, and instead of just resenting it, he leaned into what was available to him in that moment.

What's striking is how he frames this isn't as overcoming a tragedy, but as the thing that made him. He didn't spend time wishing he'd had a different childhood or more advantages. He grabbed the one door that opened. This matters because we often wait for the perfect circumstances to learn something, start something, or commit to something meaningful. We tell ourselves we'll begin when things settle down, when we have more time, when conditions are ideal. Armstrong's insight suggests the opposite: constraints and disruption might be exactly what we need to actually focus.

There's also something non-obvious here about gratitude. Not the greeting-card kind, but the deeper version—recognizing that some of our best turns came from moments we didn't choose and wouldn't have wanted at the time.