Jack
Canfield is editor of Chicken Soup for the
Soul: 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle
the Spirit. Although just published in 1993,
it has already inspired numerous spin-off books,
with total sales of 32 million copies, making it
one of the top-selling series of the twentieth
century.
Yet Canfield was turned down by
133 publishers before finding one willing to take
a chance with his idea.
Jack Canfield is one of those
astounding souls who persevered with a dream well
beyond the point when most of us would have given
up. His example challenges us to look at our own
attitude toward setbacks, and whether we let them
deter us too easily from reaching our goals.
During our lifetime, as we pursue
various dreams and goals, we each suffer numerous
setbacks, ranging from minor disappointments to
major defeats and losses. Whether we realize it
or not, we each have a predisposition to
interpret setbacks in a particular way--a bias
toward what they mean for us. For most people,
the default interpretation is pessimistic. They
may regard a small number of setbacks as an
ominous sign that God disapproves of their dream.
Even a single defeat may discourage them from
trying again.
Others, like Canfield, are slow
to regard any disappointment as a signal that
their dream is unworthy. A publisher's
rejection--the end of the journey for many
aspiring writers--for Canfield was merely a speed
bump in the road of life.
If we are to realize the
potential God has given us, and discover his best
for us in any area, it is critical that we
develop an optimistic bias toward setbacks. I'm
not suggesting we should become bullheaded and
never assume that God is using a setback to
express his disapproval of our plans. Every
defeat we experience is unique, and each deserves
some scrutiny for its possible significance. On
occasion God will use a setback to show that a
dream isn't right for us, or that we should
change our approach to it in some way.
Yet often we simply have no way
of immediately knowing what the significance of a
setback is, if there is any. If we have had good
reason to believe that a dream is valid in the
first place, then we ought to regard such a
setback as a temporary deterrent rather than
ultimate defeat--and even assume it may have
hidden benefit in helping us reach our goal. This
optimistic bias is vital for several reasons:
For
one thing, we are loss-averse as human creatures.
We detest losing. Countless studies have shown
that we attach greater value to losses than we do
to successes of equal measure. The pain we suffer
in losing $1,000 is greater than the joy we
experience in gaining $1,000, for instance.
Consider the anguish of the
shepherd in Jesus' parable over losing just one
sheep from his fold, even though 99 still
remained (Lk 15:4-7). Or the distress of the
woman who lost one gold coin, even though she
still had nine (Lk 15:7-10).
One result of loss aversion is
that setbacks can discourage us so profoundly
that we lose the heart to try again, even when
our prospects for success continue to be good.
Severe losses can shell-shock us. Psychologist
Martin Seligman describes the problem as
"learned helplessness." Several
failures may numb us into thinking that we simply
can't succeed at a certain endeavor, and we feel
powerless to break the inertia of defeat.
While some disappointment in the
face of defeat is normal, an optimistic outlook
protects us from caving into excessive
discouragement which immobilizes us.
On the positive side, an optimistic perspective
toward setbacks energizes us, fuels our
creativity and helps us recognize new
alternatives for reaching our dream.
An optimistic outlook is also honoring to God.
Scripture stresses that God, far from being
capricious, loves us infinitely and desires the
very best for us. He is endlessly creative in
providing for us. He often takes what to us
appears to be a circuitous route in moving us to
a new horizon.
Prevailing pessimism about
setbacks in our life always means we're assuming
God has less than our best interests in mind in
what we've experiencing. Optimism helps us to
think more clearly about God's broader
intentions, and to recognize creative
alternatives he may be presenting to us. It
enables us to reverence him and love him, and
opens us more fully to his guidance.
Optimism, in short, helps us to
love God in the far-reaching manner Jesus spoke
of when he said, "Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your strength and with all your
mind" (Lk 10:27).
Learning Optimism
How, then, do we gain such an
outlook? It helps us to begin by gaining a clear
understanding of the different ways we can
perceive personal defeat and loss. There are
actually nine possibilities. Recognizing them,
and understanding their dynamics, helps us to
pinpoint what our own reaction to setbacks
typically is. It also broadens our awareness of
optimistic options, giving us greater potential
for viewing a difficult situation positively.
Ranging from most pessimistic to
most optimistic, we might perceive a setback as--
1. God's punishment for our sin
2. An indication from God that he
disapproves of our succeeding
3. The result of our own failure,
destroying our chance of ever succeeding in this
area
4. The result of our own failure,
but providing a beneficial lesson that will help
us succeed in the future
5. A random occurrence
6. God's "closing a door to
open a window"
7. A "teaser" from
life, when in fact we are on the brink of
succeeding
8. A gateway to success (if we
respond to this defeat properly, it will help us
reach our goal)
9. A success which merely appears
to be a setback
The most encouraging part about
making this list is to note how many positive
options there are for interpreting setbacks. Six
of the possibilities are optimistic--ranging from
moderately to outlandishly so. In spite of this,
many people regard most defeats they experience
as one of the first three purely pessimistic
options. Not a few interpret all setbacks as
options 1 or 2: God is either punishing them or
showing his disapproval of their effort to
succeed--or both.
Yet Scripture could not be
clearer that God is vastly more creative and
loving than this in directing our lives. We find
so many examples of options 4-9 as we observe his
role in people's lives in the Bible, that these
should slant our assumptions optimistically about
setbacks we personally experience.
Worst-Case Scenarios (Options
1 and 2)
This isn't to say we should close
our eyes to the possibility that God might be
chastening us through a setback. Yet if this is
the case, then we may assume he will make the
point unmistakably clear. At the very least, the
connection between the sin I've committed and the
event indicating God's judgment will be obvious.
The man put in prison for forgery may rightly
assume that God has punished him through his
imprisonment.
Yet I am stretching things to
think that my computer crashing today is God's
punishment for lustful thoughts I fantasized
yesterday. So often the cause-effect associations
we make in assuming God's judgment are every bit
as hazy as this. When the connection is this
vague, we may rest assured that God is not
chastening us through the unwelcome event, and
open ourselves to more optimistic possibilities.
We should feel even greater
freedom to dismiss any thought that God is
showing us through a setback that he doesn't want
us to succeed. While it's possible he's
indicating that a specific goal isn't right for
us (more on that in a moment), he is,
emphatically, not demonstrating that he's against
our succeeding in general.
Many Christians assume that God
doesn't want them to enjoy significant success.
To succeed in reaching some cherished goal would
make them more like God, more competitive with
God, too subject to pride.
Yet Scripture teaches that God
has made us in his image. It first
presents this astonishing insight in Genesis
1:26-27, immediately following its detailed
description of God's creating the universe, the
inhabited world and humankind. In the same breath
it tells us that God commanded people to take
control of the created world, to "sudue the
earth," to bring order to life in beneficial
ways (Gen 1:26-30, 2:19-20). To be in God's
image, then--and to live reverently in light of
that image--is to be creative and productive. We
glorify God by setting ambitious goals and doing
constructive things with our lives! Where we err
is in not seeking his guidance about the goals we
set, and in not praising him for what we are able
to accomplish. But we are co-operating with God,
not fighting him, by making a reasonable effort
to succeed.
Whatever else we conclude about a
setback, we may take heart that it's not showing
God is against our being successful.
Worst-Case Scenarios (Option
3)
Even if we conclude that God
isn't expressing his judgment against us through
a setback, we may still be too hard on ourselves
about what happened. Indeed, the unwelcome
outcome may be our fault entirely. Yet we need to
be patient and forgiving, not only with others,
but with ourselves. We will make many mistakes as
we pursue any goal, and God graciously gives us
many second chances.
The most tragic assumption we can
make is that some mistake we've made is the ultimate
failure, a foul-up that will forever condemn us
to a less meaningful life than we would have
otherwise enjoyed. "I'm washed up," we
may be tempted to say.
The most effective antidote
against losing heart over our own failure is to
develop an earnest desire to learn and grow
through our life experiences. Our mistakes
provide the best possible means for learning
first-hand how not to do something, and thus how
to be more successful in the future.
I learned this lesson in eighth
grade--of course, the hard way. A band I had
formed, "The Galaxies," was scheduled
to perform for an in-school talent assembly. We
fully expected to give a top performance and to
be counted as class heroes for the rest of the
year.
We walked on stage to tremendous
applause, our heads swelling with pride. But
shortly after we began our first number, sound
stopped coming out of my guitar amplifier. The
wires connecting the guitar cord to the amp jack
had pulled loose. An electric guitar without
amplification is about as useful as a TV set not
turned on, and since I was the only melody
instrument in the group, we had no choice but to
stop the song. I bent down and for several
anxious minutes struggled to reattach the wires,
but in my franticness only succeeded in snapping
them off the cord. As I fumbled with the cord,
the students became noisy and unruly. Finally the
principal stepped up to the microphone. He
proceeded to chastise the students for their
rowdiness and ordered them back to class.
Far from being heroes, our
classmates looked on us as stooges who kept them
from having a good time. The shame and
humiliation we felt was immense.
In time, however, I came to count
this experience as one of the most beneficial of
my life. Through it I discovered in an
unforgettable way the need for preparation. When
a cord would break again in a future performance,
there was an extra one handy to replace it. The
experience touched my life in many other ways and
gave me the incentive to go the extra mile in
getting ready for what I do. No text book could
have taught me the lesson as well.
Regardless of our age or position
in life, every mistake we make has the potential
to teach us critical lessons. To think that any
has no redemptive benefits is wrong. We should
strike option 3 from our list of possibilities,
and consider every personal failure as option 4.
Even the most devastating sort of
personal failure--one which curtails our health,
for instance--still gives us a basis for teaching
others about how to avoid the same pitfall. Most
of our mistakes, of course, are not nearly this
catastrophic. Being eager to learn from them, and
to help others through our life-lessons, will
protect us from caving into regret over our
failures. It will help us find the heart to leave
the past behind us and move on.
Best-Case Scenarios
In so many cases, we simply
cannot relate a setback in any obvious way to
God's judgment or to some mistake we've made. In
most of these situations we have no immediate way
of knowing why God allowed the setback to occur,
and may never know. What is thrilling about these
occasions is that we're left with complete
freedom of conscience to entertain the most
optimistic possibilities about the unwelcome
event. Often, too, we have considerable freedom
to affect its consequences--even to change a
defeat into a success.
Even if the setback has clearly
resulted from our own failure or the judgment of
God, it is still possible that God, who is
endlessly creative in dealing with us, will use
it in one of the positive ways we're considering.
We should develop the habit with
every significant setback we experience of
considering all the possible explanations,
beginning with the most optimistic. Here we need
to let our mind function like a computer
chip--scanning all the possibilities, with a bias
that one of the most optimistic options explains
it. If we are not able to quickly determine that
it fits one of them, we should cherish hope that
it will prove to do so in time.
We ought to strive as well to
understand these different options as thoroughly
as possible. Such awareness helps us to be open
to them, to recognize them when they occur, and
to respond to them in the most beneficial ways.
Let's look briefly at some
dynamics of options 4-9. We will start at the top
and work down, since this is how our mind should
work in scanning the possibilities.
A success that we've misperceived as a
setback. We should always begin by
considering carefully whether the event we're
assuming is a setback really is so. In a
discouraged frame of mind we can easily miss
certain details which would give us a different
interpretation.
In The Optimism Factor I
describe an occasion when I misread a health
insurance invoice, thinking it was a bill for
$1,500. In fact, I missed the letters
"CR" following the dollar amount. The
misperception was significant, for I had
petitioned the company to reduce our ministry's
quarterly payment and to reimburse us for past
overpayments. I thought the invoice indicated I
had failed in my effort, when it fact it showed I
had succeeded.
With every apparent setback we
ought first to take a deep breath, then look
closer at the details. Am I really perceiving
this situation correctly? Sometimes we're
pleasantly surprised with what a closer look
reveals.
A gateway to success. In a similar
way, many situations that we initially perceive
as defeats actually offer us special
opportunities to do something beneficial to move
toward our goal. If we're alert to this
possibility, we can turn such setbacks into
successes.
I learned this lesson some years
ago when Evie and I placed our former home on
sale. Our agent advised us that prospective
buyers who visited our home and merely commented
how nice everything looked, would probably not
end up making us an offer. The one who would buy
it at first would seem dissatisfied with it and
ask some hard questions.
His prediction proved prophetic.
Four or five friendly people visited, making
pleasant comments about the house but not phoning
back with an offer. Then a stern-faced man walked
through it, criticizing small imperfections and
asking questions the others hadn't raised. The
next day he tendered an offer, which was exactly
the price we were willing to accept.
His behavior demonstrates a
principle that every good salesperson understands
well. A customer's initial negative reaction
doesn't necessarily mean she is against making
the purchase. It may indicate she is warming to
the possibility, but working through the issues
and emotions involved (Prov 20:14). By patiently
addressing her concerns, she may be won over.
The more general lesson for each
of us is that someone else's negative response to
us on any matter isn't necessarily their final
word. It may actually indicate they are open to
further input from us. "Through patience a
ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can
break a bone" (Prov 25:15).
Situations that we perceive as
setbacks may offer us opportunities to move
toward our goals in other ways. Here we should
keep in mind a fascinating principle of
physics--that it is possible to sail against the
wind. The same wind that pushes a boat backward
can draw it forward, if the sail is fashioned and
tilted correctly. In the same way, a circumstance
that has the potential to push us away from a
goal may also provide an opportunity to move
toward it, if we respond to it properly. We
should always be alert for opportunities life
offers us to sail against the wind.
A teaser
from life, when in fact we are on the brink of
succeeding. The notion that setbacks are
often a prelude to success is a favorite theme of
writers on positive-thinking, who may overdo the
point. Yet consider this observation of
human-potential researcher Napoleon Hill, in one
of this century's most popular success books:
"More than five hundred of the most
successful men this country has ever known told
the author their greatest success came just one
step beyond the point at which defeat had
overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a
keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great
delight in tripping one when success is almost
within reach."*
Hill's claim is intriguing to
consider, for most of us, I suspect, at least
occasionally have had experiences which parallel
it. We've earnestly pursued a goal, only to
suffer a crippling setback that we feared spelled
the end of our dream. Yet a short time later, we
enjoyed an unexpected breakthrough, which allowed
us to accomplish our goal. Hill's reflection
brings to mind that Satan is alive and well, and
will do anything possible to divert us from ends
God wants us to achieve. It is well within his
nature to bring defeat across our path just as we
are on the verge of victory.
The other side of this dynamic is
that God uses certain unwelcome events to test us
and prepare us to handle success. One reason he
works in this way is to build into us healthy
humility. He does so also to help us grow in
faith and in our ability to stay hopeful in the
face of discouragement.
If we don't have clear reason to
think a setback signals that God wants us to
abandon a dream, then the possibility remains
that it's a teaser--a diversion from Satan, or a
testing experience from God. It's healthy for us
to maintain some hope that this will prove to be
true. It will keep us alert to opportunities God
may provide us to regain our footing.
God's closing a door to open a window.
With hindsight we often realize that God did us a
considerable favor by terminating certain
situations that we now recognize were not good
for us. In other cases we realize that he brought
something good to a close in order to bring
something better into our life. Most people I
know who are happily married will admit they are
now grateful to God that certain past
relationships didn't work out. As painful as the
breakups were, they cleared the way for God to
bring someone more suitable across their path.
In still other cases, we may
wince at thinking it was God who brought about a
difficult loss. Still, we now see that he has
worked in stunning ways to fill the void it left.
A friend of mine who a year ago endured an
excruciating marriage breakup recently told me he
is now filled with eager anticipation to see how
God will provide for him.
My friend's attitude is what ours
ideally should be once we've spent some time
grieving a major loss. We should eagerly expect
that he will "open a window" to
compensate for the door that has been shut.
This isn't to underestimate the
challenge sometimes involved in determining if a
door is truly closed. How can we recognize when a
defeat is final, and when it's right to continue
trying again?
Here the critical question is how
broad vs. specific a goal is. We should be slow
ever to think God has permanently closed the door
on long-term dreams that are based on a good
understanding of how he has gifted and motivated
us. But specific goals we set within these
dreams are a different matter. If we've made a
reasonable effort to reach them without success,
we should conclude that the door is shut and try
a different alternative.
If the evidence suggests that God
has built me to be married, for instance, I
should hold fast to the dream of finding someone
suitable for as long as it takes. But I shouldn't
hold on indefinitely to the hope of marrying a
specific person who fails to show interest. After
making a reasonable effort to win his or her
affection, I need to accept that this specific
door is shut, and open myself to new
opportunities.
The Book of Ruth is one of
Scripture's most inspiring descriptions of God's
providing for people who have experienced
devastating losses. Ruth and Naomi, both bereft
of their husbands, find new outlets for their
affection--Ruth in a new marriage, and Naomi in a
grandchild born to Ruth. The Book of Ruth shows
that it's God's nature to bring fresh provision
into our lives when we've suffered defeat. Like
my friend who experienced the broken marriage, we
have every reason to expect special provision
from God at such a time.
A
random occurrence. In his Learned
Optimism Martin Seligman stresses that one of
the most important steps we can take toward
thinking optimistically is to recognize when
personal setbacks are merely random events.* We may panic at an
unwelcome occurrence, for we assume it means the
bottom is falling out at every other point in our
life. In reality, the fact that a stock I own
drops drastically in value this morning doesn't
mean my boss is going to fire me this afternoon,
or that my girlfriend is going to break up with
me this evening. The areas in our lives where we
fear calamity so often are largely unrelated.
While it may be argued that no
event is truly random in God's sight, it's right
to regard many as such from our human standpoint.
When we assume connections between areas of our
life that are not naturally there, we make
ourselves vulnerable to catastrophizing when we
experience defeat in even just one area.
Invariably, when we begin thinking in such a
gloomy, global way about our life, we're
imagining God as our enemy, not our friend. We're
assuming he's showing us through one setback that
he's going to work against in other ways also.
Yet defeat in one area may just
as well indicate that we're in store for a
victory in another as anything. Regarding
setbacks as random events allows us to turn the
tables on catastrophizing, and to imagine instead
that success may be around the corner.
When this perspective is added to
the others we're considering, we have a
profoundly optimistic basis for expecting the
best from God when life deals us a curve ball.
This positive outlook doesn't come naturally for
most of us. It's an art to be learned. We may
have to work hard at it. But the effort is always
worth it, for such optimism is essential to
faith, and to an attitude which honors God.
The most encouraging part is that
such thinking benefits us in remarkable ways. Let
us determine to expect the best of ourselves as
we strive to expect the best of God. May our
faith reach new heights as we make this effort.
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