Focus on the Real Problem

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The first step in getting over your setback is to regain your focus. Get out of that setback mentality. Tune back into the Anything Is Possible Network and think about where you want to go and why you want to get there. Remember what you were aiming for and why. Look at what happened, accept it, and evaluate it. Don’t pass sentence on yoursel£ Pass sentence on what happened. Figure out what you could have done better or how you could have avoided the problem.

DinerMaybe you needed to learn something more about your goal or about the company or the people around you. Maybe you needed to talk to someone else, to find a mentor who can help you. Ask him or her if your problem has ever happened to anyone else, and if so, how that person fixed it. Maybe it was just bad luck or bad timing. If so, vow that you will keep trying until you have good luck or until you make your luck good. You’ll keep trying until the timing is good or until your timing is good.

Be honest with yourself, or ask others to be honest with you. Nobody gets it right the first time or even the second time. No, it’s not fair. But it’s life-learning.

The second arrow in your quiver is our old friend, imagination. Take some time to get your feet back under you and feel the excitement of your dream. One thing that failure does is to teach you new ways to use your imagination. When you were setting goals for yourself, preparing yourself for success, you took the time to envision what it would be like when you succeeded. You imagined what it would look like, what it would feel like, what it would taste like. Now you have to do the same thing with opposition. Facing opposition, expecting opposition, and dealing with opposition are key steps to achieving success. You have to replace your setback mentality with a step-back mentality.

When you’ve experienced a setback, you have been given a new ingredient for your success. Once you change what went wrong, once you adjust either your behavior or your attitude, then you’ve firmed up the ground you stand on.

When things were going right, you didn’t want to think about what it would feel like if they went left. You didn’t want to get back to that place where things weren’t going your way. But one of the things to learn on our path to success is never to avoid thinking about the hard times, about failure, about making mistakes, about being alone. Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers says, “The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.” An inevitable part. Readjust your vision of the fut~re to include failure. Just don’t let your subconscious hear that. Say to yourself, “Life will teach me lessons, sometimes in disguise. It’s up to me to discover their real shape.” It takes courage to face that fact, but once you do, you’ll be better off.

Next, take another helping of persistence. Did you imagine that everything would go your way the first time? Were you reading the Cliff’s Notes version of your life? Thomas Edison said that he tried more than a thousand different experiments before he made the lightbulb work. But he didn’t describe them as a thousand failures-he said simply, “I took a thousand steps.” If Edison had stopped after 999 experiments and just given up, he wouldn’t have changed the world.

You will make mistakes as you’re trying to accomplish your goal. You’ll slip a Twinkie into your diet or sneak a cigarette. You’ll make a proposal that is dismissed with a sneer. But as long as you learn from whatever happens, you’ve taken a step forward. You might have to learn 999 new things to reach your goal, the way Edison did, but each new idea, each new approach brought him one step closer to his goal. The important thing is not to stop. I couldn’t get into the Peace Corps, but I didn’t stop there. I investigated and navigated until I found the place I needed to be.

CHALLENGE: Make a plan to refocus today. Think about where you want to be. Write down these three words and put them somewhere you will see them all day…FOCUS, IMAGINE, PERSISTENCE.

 

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Escaping Jealousy

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There will always be an opposition to your mission, and sometimes that opposition will take the form of someone who seems to have been born to make your life impossible. It might be your boss, or it might be a coworker. It might· be someone you consider a friend. It might even be someone in your family.

David knew about that. You remember David, the one who killed Goliath. But even before that, David had found favor with the Lord, and when God asked him to slay the giant, well, that was the last straw for David’s brother Eliab. Eliab started a whispering campaign to discredit David, to make David’s motives seem suspect, and to break up the good thing David had going on with God.

It happens all the time. Just because you are starting to get right, because you are starting to achieve the goals you want, because you are standing taller, somebody will try to mow you down. Jealousy and envy are next-door neighbors and are always talking over the back fence. Jealous people are resentful of what you’ve accomplished, envious of your success. Frequently they are afraid that they will be the losers if you are a winner. They want to deprive you of what you’ve gained or take away the things you find gratifying and satisfying. They are resentful and malicious, suspicious and bitter.

Such people may start to whisper about you behind your back, causing others to doubt you. Like Eliab, they may spread rumors about your true motives and disrupt relationships that you have built up among friends and colleagues. Jealous people do not “get you.” They don’t understand that you have a plan and a purpose that are not related to them. They may be envious that you have a plan at all. But just as often, they don’t even know why they are out to get you. That doesn’t make them any less destructive to your mission.

Throughout history, jealousy and envy have started wars, broken families and relationships, and halted destinies. Of course the poster child for jealousy and envy in the Bible is Lucifer, and I’m sure you’ve sometimes felt as though you were fighting the devil when someone like that starts to work against you.

The great danger is that your opposition begins to make you doubt yourself That is when your God idea comes to your aid. If you know your purpose and know that it is for the benefit of everyone, then you will not be shaken in your faith. David knew that his intentions were pure, so he ignored his brother. He realized that his brother was speaking from his own problems, not David’s. So David walked away from his brother and went to fight Goliath. He did not leave- his priority pathway, and he accomplished his destiny. Remember, your purpose is the big idea; it is the reason for everything you do. You may have passions for one thing or another, and you may have plans to accomplish one thing or another, but your purpose is the reason that you are here on earth. As long as that is for good, and as long as your passions and plans are in harmony with that purpose, then you know that you cannot be doing wrong.

 

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10 Steps

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Dr. Edward Hallowell, an expert on anxiety and stress, has compiled a list of the twelve dimensions that make our lives full, rich, healthy, and long in a book entitled Connect: 12 Vital Ties That Open Your Heart, Lengthen Your Life, and Deepen Your Soul. While no one can tackle all of its points at once, it provides a fantastic checklist that you will want to look over from time to time to make sure that you are not neglecting a crucial aspect of your life. I have summarized the list and condensed it to ten points, but I am grateful to Dr. Hallowell for providing the blueprint.

1. Family. Talk to your parents, siblings, and relatives on a regular basis. Treat your immediate family with love and respect. Are you emotionally close?

2. Friends and community. Find time to enjoy with your friends and share your life with them. Find ways to support the community you live in.

3. Work. Do you feel a sense of worth from your work? Are you appreciated there? Do you feel a connection with your co-workers and company?

4. Beauty. Do you make room for beauty in your life? Take time to enjoy a favorite art form.

5. History. Try to see your part of the history of humankind, because we all have a part. Learn about the history of your country, town, and culture.

6. Nature. Spend time outdoors or indoors caring for plants or appreciating nature. Find a special place in nature that is healing to you.

7. Ideas and information. Try to learn new, things often and be interested in new ideas and perspectives. Make the most out of your brainpower.

8. Organizations and institutions. Being a member of an organization or group provides a special kind of connection to the life around you.

9. A higher truth. Make time for spirituality in your life, either by reading or listening to CDs or broadcasts. Seek meaning and truth in your life in whatever way resonates with you.

10. Yourself. Meditate, have quiet time alone to think about what matters most to you. Are you comfortable with who you are?

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Labels

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It’s a part of life. We seek to label others, whether for organizational purposes or purely out of jealousy. That person is young, old, black, white, rich, poor, divorced, single, ugly, pretty, a good mom, a scary person, a loser, a world shaker. It is part of our human nature to see someone for the first time and attempt to define them.

This is useful at times, but can become devastatingly destructive as well. I shared a story at The Study last Tuesday about a kid I knew in grade school who wet his pants…once. When he got to middle school the stigma stuck and so on through high school. At our 20 year reunion, he had become a doctor and in most of the world’s eyes, very successful, but when he entered the party, some alumni in the corner whispered “hey look who it is, the kid who wets his pants.”

Rahab was labeled a prostitute because, well, she was one. She was’nt labeled a mom concerned for her family or courageous women who helped the Hebrew spies. Even much later in Hebrew 11, she is listed as a person of great faith, but still referred to as Rahab the prostitute.

We all have been labeled by others. Sometimes we even label ourselves. Just because you had a baby at 16 doesn’t mean you can’t live a great life as a mother. Just because you ended up in a divorce doesn’t mean you’re destined to live a lonely destitute life. Just because you are a felon, doesn’t mean you have to stay in that mindset forever.

David failed. He lusted after Bathsheba, slept with her, had her husband killed to cover her pregnancy up. But he also, after being confronted, acknowledged his path and returned to a life of following God. Later, the writer of Acts recalls what God said about David, “a man whose heart beats to my heart.”

I’ve shared over the years, the story of Diane. She had extreme learning difficulties and would walk by my house most days at around the same time. We eventually became friends and she would share about her work putting spoons, forks and knives into  a small plastic bag. I worked with her and always encouraged her about how great she was doing, even telling her that if she saved up her money, she could eventually have enough to go to Disneyland. Her family quickly noticed her change in demeanor. She was no longer being labeled “handicapped” or insignificant, she was being labeled a hard worker and a dear friend.

We have the power to shift someone’s life…both positively and negatively. We have to power to build up or destroy. How are we talking to our kids? How do we talk to our spouse? How do we talk about ourselves?

I CHALLENGE YOU

Remove all the negative and limiting labels that have been placed on you and rise up to be the person you were created to be. Watch what words we put on others. Begin to speak life to others and speak life to ourselves.

 

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