|
LIFE
IS FAR FROM AN EXACT SCIENCE. Each of us, as we navigate much
unmapped terrain en route to realizing our potential, make
some good choices and some bad ones. And we make some that are
right for us at one time but not another.
We invariably come to
points where we realize that a situation or a goal we’ve
chosen to pursue just isn’t working for us. Sometimes we
discover that a dream we’ve devoted ourselves to earnestly
doesn’t fit us nearly as well as we had hoped. Yet a big
part of us resists letting go of it, because we’ve staked
our identity in it so strongly.
Jason is a gifted high
school history teacher, loved by students for his ability to
make an often dry subject interesting. Yet for years he’d
pursued a legal career. Although Jason was a talented
attorney, he wasn’t out of law school long before he
realized that his passion for law was far less than that of
his associates.
By his early 30s, he’d
determined his strongest gifts and interests lay in teaching,
not in fighting legal battles. The fact that he’d long been
fascinated with studying history led him to conclude he should
teach it. And working with his church’s youth ministry
convinced him he would enjoy teaching high school students.
Deciding that he ought to
become a teacher was one thing. Mustering the courage to leave
the legal profession was quite another, and it took him three
years to do it. Changing careers not only meant disappointing
his parents—who had urged him to become an attorney and paid
for all his higher education—but admitting to others and
himself that he had spent years chasing a dream that wasn’t
right for him. It also meant financial sacrifice—trading a
lavish salary for a modest one, and finding a way to fund
further education. Jason worried, too, if he had the potential
to be a good teacher, and whether he could find a position
with a high school.
Today, his only regret is
that he took so long to make this change. It has opened up a
much more fulfilling career for him, and one that has proven
to match his potential remarkably well.
Why Change Is Difficult
Like Jason, most of us take
a circuitous route in finding our career niche; few of us get
it right the first time. The changes in direction we make
personally may be less dramatic than his—like switching
college majors, or taking a new job within the same
profession. Yet many of us make one or more major career
changes during our lifetime. Our self-understanding is always
developing. Add to this the extreme latitude of choice we face
in
America
today, and we can easily be into our 30s, 40s or beyond,
before we find the career that fits us best. Jason’s
experience is not at all unusual.
Change is the stuff of our
lives in many other areas besides career and education. Few of
us live out our life in the same town where we grew up, let
alone the same home. Most of us make at least several
moves—some of us more than we can count—to new homes or
regions. We may change our church affiliation from time to
time, and our membership in other organizations and clubs. We
rethink our commitments in endless other areas—to leisure
activities, to leadership roles, to people, to goals for
personal growth, to our style of living.
Our most difficult turning
points often involve relationships. Not many of us make the
journey to marriage without going through at least several
dating relationships, and a variety of hoped-for ones, where
our expectations rise and fall. Most of us endure some painful
experiences in romance, and have to make a number of new
beginnings.
What every major life
change we make has in common is that it always requires us to
give up something in order to gain something. No matter how
strongly we desire to make a certain change, we have to
sacrifice certain benefits we’ve come to depend on and enjoy
to do it, and often a dream we’ve cherished as well. Letting
go of the past is usually the most difficult part of changing
directions. Like Jason, we can get stuck there, and wait far
longer than we should to move ahead.
There are several reasons
we may fail to let go of situations or goals that aren’t
right for us, even when we have convincing evidence that we
should. Being aware of these tendencies that can hold us back
can help us to avoid them, and to act more decisively when
it’s time to turn the page.
Loss
aversion. Some people
are highly unsettled by any experience of personal loss or
failure. They abhor loss so greatly that they prefer to live
in denial about unhealthy situations in their life, and will
remain in them way beyond a reasonable point. To break away,
they fear, would be admitting too blatantly to others and
themselves that they’ve failed. This same mentality makes
them subject to wishful thinking that these situations will
improve.
This
outlook is termed “loss aversion” in the financial world.
Investment psychologist Dian Vujovich explains: “To
understand loss aversion, consider this scenario: A friend
owns shares of a stock or a fund that has fallen precipitously
over a period of time. Rather than reevaluating whether the
investment is still a smart one, your friend decides to buy
more shares. As the price continues to slide, your friend
decides to hold on to the shares even though all the signs say
to sell. You ask yourself, Why won’t he just get rid of that
loser?"*
Part of what fuels loss
aversion, Vujovich notes, is that we tend to value our losses
in life more greatly than our gains. The grief we experience
over a personal loss is typically greater than our joy over a
success of equal measure. The result is that an investor with
loss aversion tends not only to hold on to losing shares too
long, but to sell winning shares too quickly.
We can be subject to loss
aversion in any area of life. We may find it easier to stick
with the unhealthy relationship than to break it off, less
threatening to stay in the profession that doesn’t match our
potential than to start over in a new career. We dislike
giving the impression that we’ve failed to anyone, including
ourselves.
To
move ourselves beyond loss aversion, it helps to understand
that a number of losses are usually necessary to merit a
success in any pursuit. Successful investors understand this
principle well. Some investment strategies follow the
principle that far more securities in a portfolio will post
losses than gains; one may still come out ahead by keeping
these losses as small as possible and the gains as substantial
as possible.*
In the same way, our aim in
life shouldn’t be to insulate ourselves against all
possibility of failure, but to keep the losses we do
experience as small as possible. The real loss is when we hold
on to a bad situation too long. “Cutting your losses” is a
helpful concept in business, for it implies you’re taking a
positive step by putting a stop to an unprofitable venture.
This is a good way to regard dropping any losing situation in
our life. Thinking in terms of cutting our losses reminds us
that we’re gaining, not losing, by letting go of it.
In the same way, Jesus
taught his disciples an extremely redemptive concept when he
urged them to depart from towns where they weren’t warmly
received, shaking the dust off their feet as they left (Mt
10:14; Mk 6:11; Lk 9:5, 10:10-11; see Acts 13:51). He not only
indicated it was normal and acceptable for them to experience
some failures, even when they were following fully in his
will, but he gave them a positive, assertive step to break the
emotional inertia of losing situations.
Most important, he implied
they would enjoy some rewarding successes if they pressed on (Lk
10:2-9). The key was to keep their losses as minimal as
possible and their gains as significant as possible.
Jesus’ teaching on
shaking off the dust is good to keep in mind whenever we need
to gain the courage to cut our losses in any area. Reflecting
on it can help us find the heart to let go.
Being
true to ourselves. In
some cases we’ve identified so strongly with a certain dream
for so long that it has become part of the fabric of our
personality. Even if we find that a new direction suits us
better, the thought of letting go of our old dream feels like
an act of treason against ourselves.
When a friend of mine was
in his young 20s, his parents told him they would one day move
from their plush suburban home, and allow him to purchase it
for a minimal price. For many years Rob looked forward to the
time when he could move his family there. It would mean a
major increase in living space for them and a much quieter
neighborhood.
Eventually, his priorities
changed. He and his wife decided they preferred to move to a
more modest home in the country, near recreational activities
they enjoyed.
Not long after they made
this decision, his parents announced they were ready for him
to buy their home. “The hardest part,” Rob confessed to
me, “was admitting to myself that I no longer wanted
to do this particular thing.”
Rob fortunately had the
maturity to abandon his dream of purchasing his folks’ home,
in spite of his mixed emotions. Some people in a similar
situation, though, would feel compelled to stick with their
original intention, out of concern with being true to
themselves.
No matter how attracted we
may be to a new dream, we may still feel like we’re
forsaking an old friend by relinquishing our original one. We
should recognize that it’s normal and human to feel this
way. We’re actually going through a grieving process in this
case. It may help us to take some time to mourn what we’re
leaving behind, and allow ourselves to face these feelings
fully. There’s no shame in doing so; it’s part of the
adjustment process often involved even in welcome change.
We may also need to
redefine what it means to be true to ourselves. We should
regard it as staying faithful to an evolving
understanding God’s will and our own potential, rather than
a static one. As we make the changes this growing
understanding requires, we’ll probably feel less than
authentic at times with new roles and identities we
assume—simply because we aren’t used to them yet. This
doesn’t mean we’re selling ourselves short by moving
forward. Change of any sort can feel unnatural at first. The
key is to allow ourselves reasonable time to adjust, and in
time we’ll likely grow comfortable with our new situations.
God guides us not by
revealing elaborate blueprints of his future intentions for
our life, but by inching us forward step by step. We cannot be
more true to ourselves than by committing ourselves fully to
this process, and to all of the emotional adjustments
involved.
The
fear of hurting others.
Another concern we may have is that others will be hurt if we
take a new step with our life. This fear can have some basis.
Friends and family members who’ve grown accustomed to how we
are now may feel threatened by our changing. If they’ve
supported us and rooted for us as we’ve pursued our current
dream, their pride may be hurt if we abandon it for a new one.
A more serious problem is that they may lose important
benefits they derive from their present relationship with us.
We can never know for
certain, however, how someone will respond to a step we want
to take until we carry it out. Nor can we foresee fully how it
will affect them. Sometimes we’re surprised.
During college, I dated a
nursing student for a year and a half. We enjoyed a strong
supportive relationship, and talked seriously about getting
married. Gradually, though, I began to realize that we
weren’t a good match for marriage, since our vocational
goals didn’t mesh well. My interest in continuing the
relationship began to wane.
Yet for over a month I
hesitated to tell her, fearing the news would be crushing to
her. Finally, I brought myself to do it, nearly certain she
would break down in tears.
She did break down. Not in
tears but in laughter. She went on to tell me that her
feelings about the relationship had been changing in exactly
the same way, yet she’d been afraid of hurting me by
admitting it. We parted amiably, and today both of us, happily
married to others, remain good friends.
My experience brings out
one of the most important principles of faith we can keep in
mind in weighing a major change: If God is influencing us
to take a new direction with our life, he is influencing
others about it as well. He is changing others’
thinking—preparing the way for us to move forward, and to
benefit, not devastate, those in our path. While we have no
guarantee that others will applaud what we’re doing, we’re
likely to enjoy some encouraging surprises. And if God is
leading us to make the change we’re considering, we may
trust that what is best for us will be best for others as
well.
This isn’t to minimize
the pain often involved in ending a relationship. My
experience in college was unusual, unquestionably; breaking
off a relationship can be the most difficult step we ever have
to take. Yet we can’t second-guess how someone will respond
when we share our feelings honestly with them. Nor can we
predict how God will strengthen us to handle the challenge of
communicating on this delicate level.
Beyond terminating a
relationship, others have the potential to be hurt by any
major change we make. The desire not to purposely hurt others,
of course, is commendable, and a vital part of caring for them
with the love of Christ. Yet we can become too concerned about
unintentional hurt someone may experience when we follow
through with what God wants us to do.
We should remind ourselves
that God will be changing people’s hearts as we move
forward. Some whom we fear disappointing may respond quite
differently than we imagine. Chances are good that, in the
long run, they’ll be grateful we’ve followed our star. In
any case, we’re not responsible for their feelings. We may
trust that by faithfully carrying out what God wants us to do,
we’ll best enhance his providing for the needs of
others—including those we’re concerned about hurting.
The
fear of failure.
While there are many fears that can discourage us from a new
venture, the fear of failure is often our greatest deterrent.
Some fear of failing is healthy, for it prods us to plan
carefully. Yet an inordinate fear of failure will prevent us
from pursuing dreams that are appropriate for us, including
many that God will enable us to achieve.
As in dealing with loss
aversion, part of the solution to overcoming an excessive fear
of failure is to revise our thinking about failure itself.
It’s not the ultimate disaster to fail. With hindsight, we
so often realize that certain setbacks helped pave the road to
a cherished success. The important thing is to be willing to
cut our losses if we do fail, and to be ready to do so. Simply
knowing that we can cut our losses if we need to, helps
to blunt our fear of failure and to give us the courage to
risk.
It’s just as important to
remind ourselves that we may not fail. If Christ is leading me
to take a certain step, I may trust that he’ll work in
countless ways to bring about his best. Whatever the outcome,
I’ll be better off going ahead. And I have strong reason to
stay optimistic that I’ll reach the goal I’ve set out to
accomplish.
Scripture encourages us
also to expect considerable comfort from God in the face of
fear. It reminds us often that, as we seek his help, he calms
our fears and inspires us with courage. “Do not be anxious
about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and
petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And
the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil
4:6-7).
Yet it also warns us not to
let fear rule our lives or keep us from realizing our
potential for Christ. The tragic mistake of the servant in
Jesus’ parable who hid his talent, was that he gave in too
greatly to the fear of calamity. “I was afraid,” he
confessed to his master (Mt 25:25).
Especially interesting is
how often Scripture exhorts us simply not to be afraid. “Do
not be anxious about anything.” The implication is that as
we take decisive action to move ahead in spite of fear,
we’ll not only experience God’s blessings in many
remarkable ways, but relief from our anxieties as well. We
overcome fear most substantially not by reflecting but by acting.
If God is leading you to
take a new direction with your life, ask him to give you
courage to embrace life and move forward. Don’t ignore your
fears—in fact, face them carefully. But determine not to let
them control you. Resolve to step out in faith and to operate
in the realm of faith. By doing so, you’ll find the strength
to leave the past behind, and to open yourself fully to
God’s best for your future.
|
