When is Talent Alone Enough?

Talent is often overrated and frequently misunderstood. French it and dramatist Edouard Pailleron pointed out, “Have success and of looking at success there will always be fools to say that you have talent.” When people achieve great things, others often explain their accomplishments by simply attributing everything to talent. But that is a false and misleading way of leaking at success. If talent alone is enough, then why do you and I know highly talented people who are not highly successful?

Many American business leaders are obsessed with talent. Some think talent is the answer to every problem. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping point and Blink, notes that many companies and consultants put finding people with talent ahead of everything else. He says, “This 'talent mind-set' is the new orthodoxy of American management.” Certain companies hire dozens of MBAs from top universities, promote them quickly, reward them lavishly, and never accurately assess their performance. The prime example he gives is Enron. Its talent focus is legendary. For example, Lynda Clemmons, who started Enron's weather derivatives business, went from trader to associate to manager to director to head of her own business unit in only seven years! Gladwell asks, “How do you evaluate someone's performance in a system where no one is in a job long enough to allow such evaluation?”

Talent is never enough. Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, said, “There seems to be little correlation between a man's effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination, or his knowledge…Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be contained.” If talent were enough, then the most effective and influential people would always be the most talented is often not the case. Consider this:

More than 50 percent of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C- averages in college.
Sixty-five percent of all U.S. senators came from the bottom half of their school classes.
Seventy-five percent of U.S. presidents were in the Lower-Half Club in school.
More than 50 percent of millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college!
Clearly talent isn't everything.

THE HIGH-JUMP PRINCIPLE

This is not an anti-talent book. I believe in the importance of talent. How could I not? All successful leaders understand its importance. Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz once told me, “John, I've coached teams with good players and I've coached teams with bad players. I'm a better coach when I have good players!” The more talent that a sports, business, or service team possesses, the greater potential it has--and the better its leader can be.

Most leaders understand the dynamics of ownership, shared responsibility, division of labor, committee governance, and delegation. Often leaders accomplish great tasks job into its parts and coordinating the whole effort. Remarkable feats, such as the building of the pyramids or the Great Wall of China, were accomplished in that fashion. However, there are some tasks that are not improved by adding more people. Brooks's Law states, “Adding people to a late software project makes it later.” More isn't always better, and some things are best done by an individual.

A wonderful, simple illustration of the importance of talent can be seen in a sports event like the high jump. Winning the high jump requires one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot. Such an example may seem obvious, yet don't we often believe that we can accomplish more by throwing more people at a task? That isn't always the right solution. In fact, there are many tasks that call for talent more than numbers. Like high jumping, they require the extraordinary talent of one person, not the mediocre talent of many.

PUTTING TALENT INTO PERSPECTIVE

As I said, I don't mean to minimize the importance of talent. Talent is God-given gift that should be celebrated. When we observe talented people . . .

1. We Should Marvel at Their Giftedness

Reading leadership books by Jack Welch, I am amazed by his deep wisdom mixed with common sense. It is no surprise that he was able to turn around GE and lift it to a dominant position in corporate America. He is a born leader.

Every time I have the opportunity, I go to Sarah Brightman's concerts. I find that her voice sets her apart from other vocal artists. I often close my eyes and just listen to her sing, marveling at the giftedness of this diva. Sarah. Brightman is a born vocalist.

Professional football in Atlanta rose to a new level when Michael Vick came to town. His ability to run a football is guaranteed to thrill crowd every game. He has lifted his team and the Falcons' fans with its extraordinary gifts. Michael Vick is a born athlete.

Talent can enable people to do extraordinary things, and we should acknowledge people's talent and marvel at their accomplishments.

2. We Should Recognize Their Contribution to Society

When we observe talented people, we should note their impact. Where would America be today if it had not been formed by talented leaders? I have been reading Booknotes Life Stories: Notable Biographers on the People Who Shaped America by Brian Lamb, the founding CEO of C-SPAN and host of C-SPAN's Booknotes program. The book has reminded me of the talent of America's Founding Fathers:

THOMAS JEFFERSON, the nation's third president and primary writer of the Declaration of Independence, was a Renaissance man: He invented the first modern plow, was the president of he American Philosophical Society, sent Lewis and dark on the country's first scientific expedition, redesigned Washington, D.C., so that the president in the White House would have to look up to see Congress on Capitol Hill, and offered his 6,500 volume personal library so that it could become the foundation of the U.S. Library of Congress.

THOMAS PAINE produced the nation's first bestseller when he penned Common Sense. It sold half a million copies in a country of three million people.

JAMES MADISON, the country's fourth president, was the primary thinker behind the U.S. Constitution. He was the MVP of he fifty-five men who created that world-changing document. He was a better thinker than Jefferson.

HENRY CLAY, orator, statesman, and lawyer, was a mentor to Abraham Lincoln and prevented a move by the southern states to secede in 1850. Many historians believe that the decade-long delay gave the Union enough time to build its industrial base, thus leading to the preservation of the United States.

The course of history the world over has been changed by talented men and women who have maximized their skills.

3. We Should Separate What They Can Do from Who They Are

Fred Smith, author and former president of Fred Smith Associates, shared a bit of wisdom with me many years ago. He said, “The giftedness usually greater than the person.” By that he meant that the talent of some people is greater than other important personal attributes, such as character and commitment. As a result, they often fail to rise to the level of their talent. Talented people are always tempted to coast on their abilities. Or they want others to recognize their skills but overlook their deficiencies.

Haven't you known people who should have risen to the top but didn't? They had all the talent they should ever need, but they still didn't succeed. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson must have known people like that, too, because he said, “Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts possessor to a new power as a benefactor.”

So is talent ever enough? Yes, but only in the very beginning. Novelist Charles Wilson says, “No matter the size of the bottle, the ream always rises to the top.” Talent stands out. It gets you noticed. In the beginning, talent separates you from the rest of the pack. It gives you a head start on others. For that reason, natural talent is one of life's greatest gifts. But the advantage it gives lasts only a short time. Songwriter Irving Berlin understood this truth when he said, “The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in business. You've got to keep working that talent.”

Too many talented people who start with an advantage over others lose that advantage because they rest on their talent instead of raising it. They assume that talent alone will keep them out front. They don't it. They assume that talent alone will keep them out front. They don't realize the truth: if they merely wing it, others will soon fly past them. Talent is more common than they think. Mega-best-selling author Stephen King asserts that “talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” Clearly, more than just talent is needed for anyone who wants to achieve success.

DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

What does it take to succeed? Where does that leave you and me? Can anyone be successful? And where does talent fit in? Here's what I believe:

1. Everyone Has Talent

People have equal value, but not equal giftedness. Some people seem to be blessed with a multitude of talents. Most of us have fewer abilities. But know this: all of us have something that we can do well.

In their book Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton state that every person is capable of doing something better than the next ten thousand people. And they support that assertion with solid research. They call this area the strength zone, and they encourage everyone to find it and make the most of it. It doesn't how aware you are of your abilities, how you feel about yourself, or whether you previously have achieved success. You have talent, and you can develop that talent.

2. Develop the Talent You Have, Not the One You Want

If I asked you who would be more successful, the person who relies on his talent alone or the person who realizes his talent and develops it, the answer would be obvious. Then I'll ask you this question: Why do most people spend the majority of their time focused on strengthening their weaknesses?

One thing I teach people at my conferences is to stop working on their weaknesses and start working on their strengths. (By this I mean abilities, not attitude or character issues, which must be addressed.) It has been my observation that people can increase their ability in an area by only 2 points on a scale of 1 to 10. For example, if your natural talent in an area is a 4, with hard work you may rise to a 6. In other words, you can go from a little below average to a little above average. But let's say you find a place where you are a 7; you have the potential to become 9, maybe even a 10, if it's your greatest area of strength and you work exceptionally hard! That helps you advance from 1 in 10,000 talent to 1 in 100,000 talent--but only if you do the other things needed to maximize your talent.

3. Anyone Can Make Choices That Will Add Value to Talent

The question remains: What creates the effectiveness that Peter Drucker says is necessary for converting talent into results? It comes from the choices you make. The key choices you make--apart from the natural talent you already have--will set you apart from others who have talent alone. Orator, attorney, and political leader William Jennings Bryan said, “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

I've discovered thirteen key choices that can be made to maximize any person's talent:

Belief lifts your talent.
Passion energizes your talent.
Initiative activates your talent.
Focus directs your talent.
Preparation positions your talent.
Practice sharpens your talent.
Perseverance sustains your talent.
Courage tests your talent.
Teach ability expands your talent.
Character protects your talent.
Relationships influence your talent.
Responsibility strengthens your talent.
Teamwork multiplies your talent.
Make these choices, and you can become a talent-plus person. If you have talent, you stand alone. If you have talent plus, you stand out.

YOU CAN DO IT!

I believe the ideas in this book can help you. Talent Is Never Enough was inspired by something that happened to me in 2004. Coach Jim Tressel asked me to speak to the Ohio State football team on the weekend that they played Michigan. It was more than just a speaking engagement for me--it was a dream come true! I grew up in Ohio, and I have been a lifelong Buckeye fan.

Coach Tressel had read my book Today Matters. Because his players were very young and he wanted to teach them to keep their focus on the 2004 football season, the team studied the book throughout the year. Coach Tressel wanted me to speak to the team on the last and most important game of their regular season schedule. It was an unforgettable experience. I spoke to the Buckeyes on Friday night, walked with them to the stadium on Saturday, and went into their locker room where I saw a countdown clock for the Michigan game that also said, “Today Matters.”

Could it get any better? Yes! Coach Tressel turned to me while we were still in the locker room and said, “John, you and I will lead the team out on the football field.”

In front of one-hundred thousand screaming fans, we ran onto the field. I'll never forget that moment. Could it get any better? Yes! I was on the sidelines with the team for the entire game. And it got even better than that! Ohio State won!

How does this relate to Talent Is Never Enough? Prior to my visit, Coach Tressel had sent me some information on Ohio State football to help me prepare. One item was “The Winner's Manuel,” which contained an article titled “Things That Do Not Require Talent.” It emphasized that characteristics such as punctuality, effort, patience, and unselfishness were important to the OSU football program. Not one of those things required any talent. Coach Tressel told me that he and his staff were trying to help their talented players realize that their talent alone was not enough.

I loved the article and thought that if I wrote a book on the subject, it could help a lot of people. You see, people who neglect to make the right choices to release and maximize their talent continually under-perform. Their talent allows them to stand out, but their wrong choices make them sit down. Their friends, families, coaches, and bosses see their giftedness, but they wonder why they so often come up short of expectations. Their talent gives them opportunity, but their wrong choices shut the door. Talent is a given, but you must earn success.

In contrast, talent-plus people come as close as humanly possible to achieving their potential. They frequently over-perform. People see their giftedness and are amazed at how they continually rise above expectations. Their talent gives them opportunity, and their right choices open the door for even greater success.

Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you. What will you do for your career? Who will you marry? Where will you live? How much education will you get? What will you do with today? But one of the most important choices you will make is who will you become! Life is not merely a matter of holding and playing a good hand as you would hope to do in a card game. What you start with isn't up to you. Talent is God-given. Life is playing the hand you have been dealt well. That is determined by your choices.

TALENT + RIGHT CHOICES = A TALENT-PLUS PERSON

Talent-plus people are the ones who maximize their talent, reach their potential, and fulfill their destiny.

I was reading a book by Dr. Seuss to my grandchildren called Oh, The Places You'll Go! In it, I found a wonderful truth. It said,

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

Any direction you choose.

I believe that with all my heart. My prayer is that Talent Is Never Enough will help you to steer yourself in the right direction and make right choices that will empower you to become a talent-plus person, build upon the foundation of your abilities, and live your life to its fullest potential.

You Can Persist and Persevere

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.

--Winston Churchill

If you are like millions of people around the world, at some point in your life you have driven or ridden in a Honda car or motorcycle. Ever wonder how those vehicles came into being? Did a guy named Honda sit down one day, design an automobile, run out and sell it to your local dealer, who in turn sold it to you? It was not quite like that.

In the late 1930s, Soichiro Honda built a little workshop while still in school. He was developing the concept of the piston ring and wanted to sell the idea to Toyota. He worked on his design so long he often slept in the workshop. Married now, he would not give up on his idea, even though he had to pawn his wife's jewelry for working capital.

But when he finally presented a working sample to Toyota, the engineers laughed at his design. Nevertheless, Honda did not give up. Rather than focus on his failure, he returned to school and kept redesigning. Two years later he won a contract with Toyota.

Now he needed a factory. Unfortunately, the government was preparing for war and Honda couldn't find building supplies. Instead of quitting, he invented a new concrete-making process that enabled him to build the factory.

Then the factory was bombed twice.

Did that stop Honda? No. He collected what he called “gifts from President Truman”--surplus gasoline cans discarded by American fighters--which became his new raw materials for his rebuilt manufacturing process.

Then an earthquake destroyed the factory.

Was Honda finally defeated? Postwar Japan was experiencing an extreme gasoline shortage that forced the Japanese people to walk or ride bicycles. The persistent inventor applied his creativity to his own situation and built a tiny engine for his bicycle. His neighbors saw it and wanted one too, but he had no materials with which to build copies.

However, having survived rejection, ridicule, shortages, war, and natural disasters, Soichiro Honda was not ready to give up. He sent an inspiring letter to 18,000 bicycle shop owners, requesting donations toward a new idea that might help him revitalize Japan. Money came in from five thousand people and Honda set forth to build tiny bicycle engines. After trial and error he produced the small engine Super Cub, which was a huge success in Japan. Honda's company took off and he began to expand to European and American markets.

Honda didn't stop responding to the realities of the market. Noting a severe gas shortage in the United States in the 1970s and a growing interest in small cars, Honda's company began developing vehicles smaller than anyone had seen before and changed the automotive industry forever. Today Honda company, with more than 100,000 people in Japan and in the U.S., is one of the largest automobile companies in the world. All because one determined inventor committed himself to an idea, acted on it, adjusted when he needed to, and never gave up. Failure was simply not considered a possibility.

An amazing story, isn't it? Few people who get into their Hondas have any idea what it took to put that car in their driveway. But the truth is that most things of great value in life are achieved in exactly the same way; especially the things that not everyone accomplishes. Those things that most everyone does don't take a lot of perseverance, and therefore, most everyone does them. The more value something has, the more perseverance it takes to get it.

For example, most people can find lunch. Especially in America. Even if the one restaurant is closed, it's no big deal to find another one down the street. Normal day-to-day things like that seldom take a lot of persistence. Even people with little drive or with dissatisfied lives accomplish them. But persistence is almost always a big component to accomplishing the things of real value. I'm referring to things such as:

* Reaching a business or financial goal

* Reaching a personal goal like losing a significant amount of weight

* Mastering a skill

* Having a good marriage

* Raising well--adjusted kids

* Building a successful career

* Starting a business

* Overcoming depression

* Building a community of friends

* Developing an employee or team of people

* Getting in shape

* Overcoming an illness or living with one

* Working out a difficult marriage

* Making dating work successfully

* Overcoming an addiction

* Overcoming an emotional problem or habit pattern

Think about the people you know who have accomplished any of the above. In the vast majority of those cases, you will see one thing to be true: they accomplished their goal through persistence. No one who accomplishes the hard things does it quickly or easily. It comes about through continued effort. As Mr. Honda said, “To me success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection, in fact, my success represents the one percent of the work that resulted from the ninety-nine percent that was called failure.”

In the chapter on failure we saw the importance of looking at failure in just that way. But that is only the first step. In this chapter, we will see what is required as the next step: continuing on through persistence and perseverance.

Nothing Happens Overnight or Without a Fight

My three-year-old daughter often wants things, as we all do. But I notice something in her that concerns me for her future. She wants hers now. And she wants them without having to do anything for them. Not only does she not want to wait for dessert, she does not want to have to eat her green beans to get the cookie. Imagine that. She is not bad; she's just three. She is what we refer to as “childish.” That means lacking the maturity necessary to realize that you can't have everything when you want it, nor can you have it without giving something first. What's worse, she has no interest in developing those abilities. Therefore, they have to be built in from the outside by a process called discipline.

As her father, that process is what I must focus on--giving her the gifts of persistence and perseverance, if I can give her those two things, she will end up with the cookies of life, the rewards that will be what the Bible calls “sweet to her soul,” as she “accomplishes the desires of her heart” in the future. To get what she wants in life, my daughter must first possess these two important qualities. So I have to persist and persevere in the process of instilling them into her.

When we see this kind of immaturity in a small child, we think nothing of it because we expect it. We laugh at the sweetness of the immaturity that wants the cookies of life now and without effort. Little children think, “the world should exist to make me happy.” And when it doesn't make them happy they cry “foul,” as if something is wrong. In limited doses and at very young ages, this is cute to watch. But too much of any good thing can make you sick, and that is why every parent eventually reaches the boiling point when faced with the demand for instant gratification and the protest when it is not forthcoming. We understand the desire in the children, but as they grow we expect them to develop a more mature attitude toward their desires and realize that the world does not owe them instant gratification. Things worth having require effort, persistence, and perseverance.

All too often though, even adults hang on to the childish desire for instant gratification. It is seldom as obvious in adults as it is in children, especially when it operates within ourselves. You think you're not guilty? Well, maybe not, but before you make that claim, consider whether you've been affected by any of these examples of “I want it now, and I want it without difficulty.”

* Quick weight-loss plans and diets that promise easy reduction of pounds with little effort

* Quick money-making plans, infomercials, or strategies that always emphasize how “fast” and “easy” it will be to have your mansion or your yacht

* Buying lottery tickets in hopes of winning it all

* Following hasty romantic passion and thinking it will result in a meaningful, lasting relationship

* Thinking that a career rise or job promotion should just come to you because you “deserve it” or have talent

* The desire for a quick or short-term therapy to resolve deep-seated emotional and relational issues

* Thinking that a little “quality time” with a child will be all the parenting needed for his or her development

* A mountaintop experience equaling spiritual maturity and intimacy with God

Can't most of us admit that at one time or another we have gotten hooked into one of these strategies? It is human nature to want the easy route, or the quick fix, or to get to the top without paying our dues, and almost everyone succumbs to this temptation at some point. But as reality imposes itself on us, we learn that to think that way is only a childish fantasy, a wish, and it will not yield any real rewards in the real world. Bummer.

But hang on. That feeling of being bummed out when the something--for--nothing attempt does not work is important, as my three-year-old is discovering. She still wants the cookie, and she is bummed because she doesn't have it. She has a father who is standing in the way of her getting it without doing the hard thing first.

When we put those two elements together--the desire for the cookie and the impossibility of getting it without doing the hard work first--we have the beginnings of the formula for getting what she wants. Her desire, added to the discomfort of being bummed out, alongside the requirement to finish her vegetables, causes her to do the thing required to get the prize: persevere through the requirement to the goal. As Proverbs says, “The laborer's appetite works for him: his hunger drives him on” (16:26 NIV). And when she gets that cookie, it is a joy to see her happy excitement.

People reap the rewards promised in the examples we just listed by the same process. Not through the “instant and easy” methods promised, but with the only formula that works: “later and effort.” The words later and effort correspond to the two words that are the subject of this chapter: persistence and perseverance. These two words are quite similar to one another, but one of them adds a slightly different twist to the basic idea.

Persistence means that it will take steadfast effort in the face of difficulty to get there. Perseverance adds the element of delayed gratification. Persistence tells us it is hard work to begin with, and then perseverance tells us it gets even harder because we encounter difficulties that put the gratification even further out, and therefore we have to be steadfast in pushing through to the end. In other words, to achieve your goal you must persist: get at it and keep at it. And then you must preserve, keep at it even when the going gets tough.

“Oh, puleeeze!” we cry. “There has got to be a better way! Surely there is a shortcut.” Well, yes, there usually is. There are quick paths to seeming rewards in most areas of life. But those rewards are only “seeming.” as the results do not last.

* Weight-loss research shows that those who lost it quickly do not keep it off and even gain back more than they lost. Further, the later gain is tougher to lose than the first.

* The majority of lottery winners are bankrupt within a short time. The majority lose the millions that they won.

* Quick “falling in love and coupling based only on romantic feelings without relationship skills to back them up ends in dissatisfaction and often a push to find another relationship on the rebound.

* Career advancement that comes from nepotism or favoritism or inheritance that is without merit blows up or fails in the end.

* Quick “feel good” therapies that do not involve character changes result in relapse.

* Intermittent “quality” parenting does not provide the ongoing molding of character that children require.

* Subjective mountaintop spiritual experiences fade and do not yield the kind of faith and maturity that ongoing spiritual disciplines bring about.

But even these failed attempts can bring about something good, just like it does with a three-year-old. If they cause you to realize the reality that “quick and easy” will not get you there, and you still have that strong, unrealized longing, then you have the two elements needed for success: motivation and a path.

You want it, and now you know how to get it: do the work, one step at a time, and realize that the reward will come at the end of the work. Applied to the list above, this means:

* Every day, people do lose weight and keep it off. Lots of it, as the research proves. The way they do it is with a little effort, time, and patience. They lose it slowly, not quickly, through structured, sustainable methods. They do not starve themselves or work out around the clock. They get into a healthy lifestyle and stay there on an ongoing basis. Therefore, they not only lose the weight, they keep it off. Why? Because they are now doing what every person does who stays in shape: eat healthy and exercise, There are no skinny people eating and living like the ones who are overweight, just as there are no rich people spending more than they have and running up debt on credit cards.

* Every day, people do achieve financial independence. But they do not it quickly without effort. The effort is not back breaking, but it requires what we are talking about here. A little work and some delay or gratification. They let time do its compounding work. At the business level, they do it the same ways slowly, diligently, and with sustainable methods. Get any good financial planning book and you can see the formula for yourself

* Every day, people do have good, lasting relationships. But they have them as a result of working on their communication, forgiveness, acceptance, character, intimacy, vulnerability, sacrifice for each other and the relationship, and delay of gratification when things get hard.

* Every day, people do hard work, increase their education and training, practice diligence, do jobs they do not like and are not their ultimate goal, take risks and stretch themselves, recover after failure, and so on, to build satisfying careers. They earn where they end up by doing the hard work no get there, as opposed to expecting it no he handed to them because they are “special.”

* Every day, people do recover from emotional and relational problems, addictions, and other struggles. But they do it by consistently working on their patterns, delaying the instant relief that their addictions and defenses would afford them, and doing the hard work of learning to relate and handle things differently.

* Every day, people raise healthy kids who function well and are able to adapt no life. But they do it with consistent self-sacrifice that gives them the time and energy to pour massive amounts of love, structure, discipline, and coaching into their children on an ongoing basis.

* Every day, people do develop the kind of faith that is fulfilling, meaningful, exciting, and sustaining in the worst crises of life. But they do it through the practice of the time-tested, age-old spiritual disciplines and consistency.

Here is the big idea: you can get the results that you are looking for in various areas of life if you do it the way that the people who get the results do it. They do it through persistent effort and perseverance. That is the only way.

Getting It and Keeping It Requires Muscle

At a recent gathering I overheard a group of people talking about hurrying out no buy lottery tickets. The lottery that week had climbed to an astronomical figure, which had this little group beside themselves with excitement. I poked my head into the circle and asked, “So, why do you want to go bankrupt?”

They looked at me as if I were from another planet, and then one of them said, “We aren't talking about going bankrupt. We are talking about winning millions!”

“Yeah, I know.” I said. “But the majority of the people who win go bankrupt. So it looks to me like that is what you are signing up for.”

They looked at me a little strangely, as if I were dousing their dream with a bucket of cold water. I don't think they believed me. Even if they did, no doubt they were convinced that they would be among the few who actually held on to their winnings. We did not have time to get into the reason that most lottery winners become losers, but if we had, I would have told them that there is a good reason.

It is the same reason that people who lose weight quickly or fall in love impulsively soon end up back where they started. It happens because they did not build the result, and therefore they do not have the skills to maintain the result. The same skills that create a result are needed to hold on to it and make it work.

Maintaining a good weight requires self--control and a healthy lifestyle. If a person doesn't have those two things, weight gain is a sure thing, period. On the other hand, if they develop those two required elements, and through Persistence lose rise weight, they will have the skills needed to keep it off. But if they don't, they won't.

If a person builds financial independence through delay of gratification, impulse control, and good self-management, then when he gets in, he will be able to keep it. But give an impulsive person a lot of sudden money and, as the old saying goes, “a fool and his money are soon divided.” Following one path causes you to lose in two ways, while following the other causes you to win to two ways. In the quick and easy way you lose first because that way doesn't work, and then you lose again because you do not become the kind of person who can ever sustain the process and make it work. In the reality way, the way of diligence and persistence that God designed, you win because you are doing things in the way that actually brings results, and then you win again because you are becoming the kind of person who can keep your success after you achieve it.

As we have seen, delay of gratification is a big part of this path. Research has shown, for example, that delay of gratification is a better predictor of children's future success than IQ or SAT scores. When it comes to achievement, brains and talent or good--luck windfalls do not seem to be nearly as important as good character. There is just something about having to do things in the “old-fashioned” way that always brings people out on top. Do the work first; play later

In the process of persistence, character is built. Muscle is developed. Maturity is gained. As James tells us, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (1:2-4 NIV).

The same principle says you have to allow a little birdie to break out of its own shell instead of breaking the shell for it and bringing it out before its time. Part of it is the timing involved in maturity, but another part is the actual persistent process of the bird's having to peck the shell and work its way out. That process builds strength and muscles that it will need to survive in the outside world. Break the bird out yourself and it will die because it is not ready no handle life. It did not get there the “old-fashioned” way of delaying gratification and earning its reward of freedom .So it dies, too weak to make it its the real world.

But this slower, surer process is so against our nature. We want it now, and so we focus on getting the goal but not gaining the skills. The other night I was working with my other daughter, who is six, on her reading. She has figured out that recognizing words is the quick and easy ways, and than phonics takes a bit of work. She loses it when she sees words she already knows and can just skip along the page and read them. It is exciting for her to go through a whole sentence without hitting a speed bump. She loves the prize, being able to read.

She was reading a book to me and was breezing along when she hit a pretty big word that she was not familiar with. She stumbled a little bit and then tried to skip ahead, regaining that feeling of momentum. But I had to rain on her parade, “Wait. Go back Speedy. What is that word?” I asked.

“I don't know, It too hard,” she said.

That doesn't matter if you sound it out,” I said. “If you sound out the letters, you can read any word you ever find. So come on. What are the sounds?

I could see her having to go deep into the well and summon up the perseverance to get through four formidable syllables and some testy sounds. She had no clue what the word was or where these sounds were going to take her. I had to nudge her through each syllable, each consonant, each vowel.

As she painstakingly pushed through each sound, she could hear each of the previous ones still reverberating until finally she got to the end. She had said the word piece by piece without recognizing it, and risen when she put it all together and said in at once, the light came on. She happily said it again and beamed with excitement. She was justifiably proud because she had done something that she didn't think she could do.

But what was important to me was not that she got the word. That was the fruit, rise prize. I was delighted because she was learning the skill that would enable her no get any word. If she learned how to sound out the syllables, she would be able to read words that she did not know and had never seen before. Because she persisted in going through the work of it, she developed the muscle that James is talking about. In the area of reading, she was becoming “complete, lacking in nothing.” The big value of persistence and Perseverance is in who we become as we persist and persevere. We become the kind of people that we need to be if we are to make it.

Sometimes Obstacles are Really Open Doors

The old saying, God never closes a door without opening another one, is one of the best reasons we have for perseverance. Life is a journey, and it usually involves going down a few dead ends before get to where we are headed. We have seen that there is value in these unintended trips as we build our character and abilities along the way. But what we don't often realize is that the dead end, or the obstacle itself, might be a huge blessing in disguise. If we persist and persevere, we will find that one closed door turns us toward at opportunity, often a better one.

I once asked an audience how their lives would have been if they had gotten everything they thought they wanted. Groans and laughs erupted as they realized that they were much better off at having lost a certain relationship or opportunity than if it had worked out. What they thought they wanted was not what they needed. God knew better.

And I (Henry) saw this truth brought to life in our own work about ten years ago. In the previous ten years, we had built a psychiatric hospital treatment company, and we loved the work we were doing. Every day was a joy and a new challenge. We were leading that company, doing the clinical work, developing treatment programs, writing the group materials for the hospitals to use, developing material on personal growth, and teaching in seminars throughout the western United States. In addition we did a syndicated radio show in the West and wrote books on our materials. It was all an outreach of the company, and it was the structure of the company that made it work and provided the needed resources. We found all of is extremely fulfilling.

Then, almost overnight, managed care and HMOs swallowed up the medical industry. Before this change, insurers had allowed patients to remain in a treatment center long enough to really work on their issues and bring about significant improvement. But with the new managed care models, they would no longer allow patients to stay in the hospital long enough to get real help. Patients could be in hospitals only long enough to get stabilized in acute or emergency situations. We were no longer able to do what we loved the most, to communicate and process the spiritual and psychological issues involved in a person's problem.

Suddenly the clinic turned into more of a business than a passion to help the hurting. Although the centers were still financially viable, we knew that it was no longer our calling. In additions, a merger had taken place that affected our company, and the new structure only increased the problem and moved us further away from our calling. We could not work with that, so we knew it was time to get out.

I recall those days, and they were dark, at least in the beginning. We had spent the better part of ten years and a lot of sacrifice and hard work building a company, and we were finally at the point where it was mature and doing well. We were enjoying the fruits of' our dream. Then, wham! The gut punch. The door slammed in our face. All that we had poured into our dream went down the drain. “God, how could you let this happen?”

What we didn't know, or at least had forgotten and were too blind to see, was “where God closes one door, he opens another.” in the getting-out phase, we sat down with the company we sold to and talked to see if there was some way we could work together. We had little hope of anything developing. All that we had built seemed to be going away, but we decided to persist and persevere in the process, if there was even a slim chance that we could find some way to use all that we had built, we wanted to find it. Then from the long meetings and back and forth communications, an idea emerged.

The new company had just acquired a broadcast than reached into two hundred markets around the country. Those clinical services that they were continuing needed an outreach, so they asked us to be the doctor experts on that call-in broadcast. The idea sounded interesting, but what would our “real job” be if we were no longer in the hospital treatment business?

Then it hit us. If we were talking daily to millions of people all across the country, we could start a company that took the things we were passionate about into communities. We had previously done this as a sideline in connection with our treatment centers; now we could do that in a more focused and larger way. So we started down a new path. We produced seminars for our listening audience and began helping churches and organizations use the materials that we developed to address life issues through small groups and other strategies. In addition to those primary broadcasts, we now have weekly satellite broadcasts in over three thousand churches, where audiences gather to hear our Solutions television broadcast and then go into small groups to work on their issues.

Now, years later, we have the privilege of working with thousands of churches and organizations through our materials and our speaking, partnering with them to do the amazing work of restoring lives, relationships, and dreams of people in their communities. Every day we receive letters and calls or talk to people in our travels who tell us of the life change they experienced through one of our groups, books, videos, or workbooks. This excites us, because people whom we've never met have been touched through the work of other people using our materials. The fruitfulness of our work has been multiplied, not by us, but by others.

We were bummed when our plan slammed in our face ten years ago. But God is bigger than our plans, and he always has a better one than any we could conceive ourselves.

As we went through this difficult time, I remember leaning on the verse that says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV). I did not understand why he had let us spend all that time and effort building something that would so soon cease to exist. It seemed like such a waste. I could not see it the time that it was not a waste at all. God was going to use all the material and models that we developed in a context much larger than our original plan--a context that would enable us to do much more good. Now, with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I confess that I can see what he was doing. I wish I had been more certain at the time that he knew what he was up to. I questioned him a lot, and I felt let down. But now know what I should have known then: trust him. He is always up to something--something good.

If you have a relationship with God, this is true for you as well. Whenever you encounter a closed door, God knows what he is doing. Trust him: he is for you. He has a plan. But his plan will never come to fruition if you do not Persist and persevere. That is your part, and making it all come together is his. If you stop when you encounter an obstacle or a closed door, you can't blame your failure on the obstacle or the door. If you stop trying at that point, then your ultimate failure is your own responsibility. Keep going until you find the right thing, The obstacle is there not to stop you, but to turn you toward a better way----God's way for your life. That's why persistence and perseverance are so vitally important. We have to press on, even when we hit obstacles and roadblocks. They might be the strengthening of the shell that we, like the birdie, have to break through in order to grow strong enough to succeed. Or they light be the closed doors that God uses to redirect our lives to his perfect plan. Really, now, in spite of the heartbreak and the agony of rejection, aren't you glad that the relationship you had in high school did not work out?

One Step Leads to Another

The other big thing about persistence and perseverance is than the roadblocks themselves are often the steps that lead to the opens door. One roadblock leads to another which leads to another which heads to success. If we quit at the first one, we don't find the lead that comes from the next one.

Think of it in terms of a salesman making calls. He knocks on one door and the purchasing agent does not want his product, but she remembers the name of a company that might. He calls on the buyer in that company and finds than he has no need for the product either, but he just heard someone at lunch talking about needing a product similar to what the salesman is selling. He gets the name and makes the call, and the voice on the line says. “I can't believe you are calling me. Your product is exactly what I have been looking for. When can you come by?”

You never know what might come from the next person you talk to or the next door you knock on. Remember, “for everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will he opened” (Matthew 7:8 NIV). But if quit asking, seeking, or knocking (read persisting and persevering, nothing can happen to fulfill than promise of an opened door.

Another way of looking at it is that each step always holds the step after it. The point of climbing a ladder or a flight of stairs is to get to the top. You don't make any given step your primary goal; you just see it as one more you must take to get to the top. But what if you focused on each step as if it had to be the top, getting angry or discouraged after your first step because you didn't immediately find yourself at the top? If that were your strategy, you would never get there. You take each step to get to the next one.

Virtually everything works that way. We meet people who introduce us to other people who become the people we were looking for to begin with. We go to a doctor who figures out that we need another doctor and refers us to the right one. That is the way most of life works. People who stop and do not persist and persevere after the first steps don't work out are defying the way the system works, and they are sure to lose out on reaching their dream.

Here is another important thing to remember. Our explanations may make it seem that the persistence process leads you in a straight line, where one step always leads to the next one on a single linear path. That is not the way it works. Think of it not as a linear path, but as an innovative path. One step leads to an obstacle or a door that puts you on an entirely different paths. It is not more of the same. But without the persistence of going through that step, we would not find the path that we eventually travel. Remember Mr. Honda and his piston rings? He ended up building the Accord and many other things bigger than just a ring on a piston in an automobile engine. But his persisting and persevering through the steps led to the innovation that led to the greater path.

What are you working on now that you need to follow through on to see where it heads? If you have met a dead end, it may mean that you need to take one more step--or two or three--before you find the path that leads to the reward you seek. The only thing that makes sense is to keep taking those steps. The open door is waiting for you on some path you are yet meant to find. If you don't find it because you fail to persist and persevere, it will be no one's fault but your own. God is for you. He wants you to win. And when you don't, he has something else for you that is part of his plan. So keep asking, seeking. and knocking, and you will find the door he has opened for you.

From Fruit Focus to Gardening Focus

Part of what we are talking about here is a change of focus. It is natural for us to look at the goal or the potential fruit of our hard work, and desire it. In fact, success research shows that to write down your goals, to have a vision for them, to keep them in mind, is very important to getting what you want in life. To be “goal oriented” is a wonderful thing. God has given us a linear mind that looks ahead to a desired result and then works out a path to achieve it. That is good.

But the ones who actually get there not only have a “goal orientation,” they also have a “process focus.” In other words, to get to the goal they desire, they focus on the things that have to happen for it to come about. That is the hard work of persistence and perseverance.

A wonderful analogy for this is the gardener, the farmer, or the vineyard keeper. Certainly these workers of the land want the eventual harvest, but just sitting around wanting is not what they do most of the year. What they do is work the fields. They sow the necessary seed, they water the plants, they dig around the root systems and purge them of things that choke them. They fertilize the plants to give them the ingredients that they can't produce for themselves. They prune them of the extraneous shoots and branches that distract their growth. They kill off diseases that may be infecting the plants, and they fight off insects and predators that come to steal what they are trying to produce, in other words, they can't be sitting around all year wishing or demanding that fruit come. Instead, they go to work each day and do very, very mundane things that seemingly have little to do with a rose, an ear of corn, or a fine bottle of Chardonnay. But they focus on those hundreds of details, little by little, over the full span of the growing season.

Then, one day it is harvest time. And they rejoice in what their persistence and perseverance have brought about. As Proverbs says of this kind of diligence: “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth' (10:4 NIV). And, “the sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied” (13:4 NIV).

None of this is rocket science; it is the created order. It is how everything of value comes about, from Honda motorcars to losing a hundred pounds. All goals are achieved through the diligent practice of the day-to-day, mundane tasks.

So, today as you think of your goal, think also of the process required to get you there. If your goal is to lose weight, think of this principle so it will motivate you to go do that forty-five-minute workout. If your goal is a good relationship, think of the value of the process as you make that little sacrifice one more time to work things out. If your goal is a better business, think of this principle as you work out one more problem or make one more cold call. If your goal is to find a relationship, keep it in mind as you go on one more blind date or join one more dating service.

You get the idea. But remember, achieving your goal is a matter of where you put your focus. Keep your eye on the goal, of course. But, also keep your hands on the plow, each and every day, and focus today on what you have to do to get there. Do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. As the successful members of AA who overcome their addictions say at the end of the meeting:

“Keep coming back. It works.” That admonition holds true about most things of value.

The Whole Picture

One thing to remember about the principle of perseverance is that it does not operate in a vacuum. Persistence must be applied alongside all the other principles we have presented in this book. Blind persistence can be just “doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.” it could be diligence in simply hanging your head against the wall, and that will produce nothing for you but a headache.

So as you persist, examine your thinking. Get connected to the support you need to make it through the process. Work through the failures and learn from them. Take ownership of the results and see them as your problem. Say no to the things that are in the way. Take new steps and risks. All of these steps work together, and as they do, something else happens:

You find that the result is not the only prize! The real prize is the growth that you have realized on your journey. It is the person you have become, and the people you have touched along the way. It is the maturity you have achieved and the lessons you have learned. As James 1:4 says, “Perseverance must finish its work so that you maybe mature and complete, not lacking anything.” That is the cool thing about “keeping on.” You become a better person.

I have come to believe that God can get most of what he needs to get done on the earth without any particular individual. But he gives us the chance to be involved in whatever task he puts in our hands, not only to get it done, but also to grow us up. We are his “workmanship.” he says. We are his children, and he uses whatever work we do or whatever situations we find ourselves in to make us better people .More able to love him and more able to love others More able to bring about lasting fruit as a result of our character growth. Many times we are where we are, doing the job we are doing or the tasks we are involved in because he is growing some aspect of who we are. And even when had things happen that are not part of his plan, he promises to be with us as we persevere, to help us grow and heal from whatever this fallen world throws at us. As they say, whatever doesn't kill us only makes us stronger.

So learn something that real winners find to be true: the journey is more valuable than the prize. It is the trip getting there that we call “life.” And in life, we are meant to grow and become who we are supposed to be. Persist, persevere, and grow. Not only will you get the prize, but you will also learn to enjoy the growth process itself and see it as a wonderful journey--an unexpected prize in its own right as you become a better person. Enjoy the trip!

Conclusion

You have read the eight principles of the No-Excuse Plan. What now?

If the material in this book has made sense to you, then you probably are ready to get out of the “blame game,” conquer your fears, and set out to achieve your dreams. In telling you that you can do this, we are not simply giving you a motivational pep talk or encouraging wishful thinking. We see it being done every day by people who take ownership over their lives.

You are probably aware that you will need to do some work, such as getting out of your comfort zone or taking ownership of your problems and difficulties or renouncing a victim mentality that has had you stuck. This sort of work is worth all the effort you give it, and it can bear great fruit for your life.

At the same time, it's reasonable for you to ask, “Is there a guarantee that my efforts will pay off?” I am being asked to do some things that are new and different for me. What can I expect in return?'

Your chances of having the better life you want are exponentially greater as you use the principles in this book. They really do work. They are proven principles that have changed the lives of many people over many years. But there can be no 100 percent guarantee. There is always risk involved. We hope, however, that you are now less averse to risk than you might have been before reading this book.

At the same time, there is a negative guarantee that applies to all of its. It is sobering, it is certain, and we can depend on it. The negative guarantee is this: If we continue to blame others for our present situation, and if we continue to be afraid to take ownership of our lives, we will also continue to experience the same failures and frustrations that we have always experienced. To the extent that you avoid responsibility for yourself, you will also find your life goats eluding you.

Blame, and the It's-not-my fault mentality, can be somewhat comforting. They work like an anesthetic, temporarily numbing us to the burden of ownership of our lives. But all anesthetics wear off in time, and the comfort of blame always dissipates in the light of what we truly desire. It's much better to embrace the pain of ownership and reap a great life than to be diverted by blame's tempting message.

The Spiritual Design

The idea of a better life isn't something people just conjure up in their heads. Conceiving of a better life is inherent in our design and makeup. God designed you for meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. He put inside you the potential to enter life and, with his guidance, to make something of it. There is a plan for you. When this plan is lodged deep within you, it also originated outside of you in the very mind of God: “'For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.'” Our welfare, a positive future, a reason for hope, and freedom from calamity are all part of the better life God wants for us, and he has structured things so that you can enter this life. He plays his part in orchestrating events, supporting, and guiding you. You are to play yours in choosing and following the right way, the way of ownership and responsibility for your choices and path.

Dream On

So how do you begin? Always start with your dreams and desires. That is where you have the most leverage and payoff. What do you dream about? What do you hope for? What do you want to happen?

For most of us, the answers to these questions come in two parts: We want to receive the good, and we want to remove the bad. We have positive desires and goals for life accomplishments and relationship success. At the same time, we want to avoid, resolve, and end those negative things that bind us, keep us unhappy, and consume valuable time and energy. As in sports, we have to play offense--achieving the dreams and desires, but we also need a defense--overcoming the obstacles and removing the bad stuff that hampers us.

You may have stopped dreaming, setting goals, and planning a long time ago. You may have become discouraged. Or you may have become resigned to thinking that things will never change. No one came blame you for becoming discouraged; that happens to all of us. But discouragement is simply a sign that the path you have taken isn't working for you. There is very likely another path that will work better. Allow yourself to dream and hope again, this time with openness to the knowledge that good things can happen.

Asking and Answering Yourself

When we begin to dream, hope, and set goals, certain specifics of our lives that we care about start coming to mind. You will often find several areas of your life in which blame, passivity, and fear have taken hold. It can be helpful to look at each of these areas and ask yourself How I contributing to my unhappiness here? It's one of the most empowering questions you can ever ask.

We have chosen five critical areas of life in which blame or it's not my fault thinking can be particularly destructive. In each of these areas, we provide examples of the blame-game thinking that may underlie the problem. After the example, we show a way to approach the problem from an ownership standpoint. We hope these examples will spur your thinking and lead you to take positive action in these areas.

Critical Area No. 1: Love

Love is one of the greatest and most important experiences that anyone can have. It is a gift, and it can fill up our lives. We all possess a deep desire to have someone connected to our hearts in a safe and growing relationship.

You may be single and looking for the right person, or you may be married and wanting your connection to be happier, deeper, and more intimate. In either situation, a healthy, safe, exciting, and positive love relationship is an important part of life. Or at a more serious level, things may not be going well in your love life. Your dating life may be in trouble, or it may be nonexistent. Your marriage may be empty or struggling with a great deal of pain and conflict.

Avoid the blame game and ask, What part have I played in this situation? Here are some common answers to this question and some solutions based on the eight principles we've presented in this book:

* I have blamed my unhappiness on my spouses (or, boyfriend or girlfriends) lack of change. I can become happy even if he (or she,) never chances.

* I have given up too soon. I can stick to a good plan even if the going gets rough.

* I have not been clear about what I want and need. 1 can let her (or him) know, kindly but directly, what 1 want and need

* I have been afraid to confront. I can learn how to confront in Love and truth.

* I have avoided looking at my own lack of love or my control issues in the relationship. I can take responsibility for not being loving or for being controlling, and I can change those things

* I have put up with things I should never have tolerated. I can say no to bad treatment and take steps to set limits on how I am treated

* I have allowed myself to be alone in this problem. 1 can reach out and connect with people who will be my support system.

In your own life you may find attitudes and answers other than the ones we've listed here. The point is, when you are the one talking action and changing, you have movement toward your goal--a thing that can't happen when you are stuck in blame. Remember, no one else but you can do this for yourself.

Critical Area No. 2: Work

We all want to have a meaningful and fulfilling work life. We want a vocation that both challenges us and fits our area of competence. But problems often arise. Perhaps you find yourself on the wrong career path. Or maybe you're on the right path, but you're not as far along on it as you want to be at this point in life. Maybe you are in the right industry or company, but you haven't advanced as you intended. Or perhaps you see yourself in a different industry. Or you may be questioning everything about your work, wondering where in the world you do fit in.

It's-not-my-fault thinking can keep people paralyzed in their work for decades. The boss, the supervisor, the economy all get blamed, but the one really suffering is you. No one would deny that bosses and economic ups and downs are very important factors, but there are always things you can change in your own life. Let's look again at several blame-game answers that don't work and show the “take control” alternative that can make a difference:

* I have waited for the boss to recognize my merits. I can set up a meeting with him to make sure he knows what I am doing.

* I have not taken ownership of any attitudes I have brought to the workplace that have made me difficult to work with. 1 can ask for feedback and change what I need to change.

* I have not sought out more training and experience to develop my marketability. I can find time and ways to do that and still work for a living.

* I have not approached my supervisor and tried to work out misunderstandings. I can take the initiative and let her know that I want to be a team player and help her achieve her goals.

* I have blamed my company instead of looking at what I can do to help it grow and prosper. 1 can choose to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

* I have been afraid to be creative. 1 can brainstorm and stop playing it safe.

* I have started new ideas and not followed up on them. I can stick to it even if the initial response isn't very positive.

* I have been afraid to try out new jobs and opportunities. I can look around and see what else is out in the workplace that might fit my abilities and dreams.

The job market responds not only to talent, but also to ownership and initiative. I have seen many people who weren't the most innately gifted achieve higher success than their more talented colleagues, because they looked at themselves and made the right changes.

Critical Area No. 3: Parenting

If you have children, you know how much you want to see them succeed, make and keep good friends, and become responsible people. To see a child launch into adulthood and do well is the greatest hope of every parent. At the same time, all sorts of obstacles stand in the way of good Parenting. A preschooler becomes aggressive with his sibling. A schoolgirl doesn't make the grades she is capable of. A teen struggles with drugs or alcohol.

The problem is often compounded by the reality that the person with the problem isn't ready concerned about it. You care more about the issue than your kid does. You're alone in this. Your child isn't coming to you and saying, “Help me.” This can lead to a sense of helplessness and discouragement.

Remember that even if your child doesn't know it, he needs you, and he needs you to help him with this problem. Be a parent who takes initiative, and explore these areas in which you may have failed… and consider the ownership alternative:

* I have blamed my child and avoided seeing my part in creating the problem he's facing. I can change the way I parent him so that he has a better chance to succeed.

* I have been afraid of her anger or of hurting her feelings, I can learn not to take her negative reactions personally

* I have given up too easily when he has resisted me. I can persist in my rules and discipline, knowing that success will take time.

* I have not wanted to look at the failures, because they might indicate I'm not a good parent. I can deal with my failure without guilt or shame- they provide a way for me to learn how to improve.

* I have not reached out to others for help. I can be humble and ask people for support and advice.

* I have given in to the mentality that that's just the way she is. I can give her the gift of knowing she can be a better person, just like I can.

The best parents aren't those who have all the answers. They are those who take ownership of the problem and go find the answers. When you own your part in the problem, you are then able to help your child own his part as well. He also learns the value of responsibility and ownership.

Critical Area No. 4: Relationships

The person with great relationships is the wealthiest person in the world. Friendships and family connections are a central part of a truly meaningful and purposeful life; their value can't be overestimated. You are highly blessed when you have safe, solid folks who are there for you.

Most people have struggles, minor or major, in their personal relationships. You and a friend have a disagreement that escalates. A relationship ends. You discover that you're picking the wrong people for your friends. Or you find control dynamics in your family that leave you feeling powerless and unhappy.

Look at a few of the typical causes of relationship problems below and consider the suggestions for taking ownership:

* I have silently blamed people without speaking up. I can tell them what is wrong so they have a chance to hear me and change.

* I have assumed that people will never change, so I have given up I can give them the same grace I'd like them to give me.

* I need their approval so badly that I could not imagine saying anything that might drive them away. I can get my approval needs met from other people so that 1 can be stronger and less emotionally dependent.

* I have judged them. I can give up judgment to God and ask for mercy for them and for myself.

* I have held them to a standard that is not reasonable. I can be realistic with my expectations of them.

* I have avoided looking at how I affect them. I can ask them how I affect them and change what needs to be changed.

You will find freedom in these explorations. Taking ownership of the relational problem may go a long way toward healing your difficult connection with a friend or family member.

Critical Area No. 5: Bad Habits and Personal Issues

Your dream may be to become a free person--to be free of a habit, addiction, or life pattern that drains you and keeps you in prison. There are many of these potential prisons, ranging from the merely troubling to the life-threatening. Depression, eating problems, anger issues, anxiety, drugs and alcohol struggles, and sexual dependencies are but a few examples. These can discourage and paralyze a persons potential to have the better life he or she was designed to experience.

If you find yourself dealing with these or similar issues, look at the following ways in which you may have passed the blame, and consider what you might do to take control:

* I have waited for others to see how they have caused this problem in me. I can choose to heal whether or not they ever recognize their negative effect on me.

* I have blamed God for not protecting me. I can let go of blame, knowing he has suffered with me and identifies with my pain.

* I have used the habit or issue as a way to medicate pain, so I have resisted giving it up. I can face the hurt and pain underneath so that I can be free.

* When others have tried to connect with me, I have dismissed their efforts. I can take the risk to let good people inside to love and support me.

* I have seen myself as different so that no one can truly understand my situation. 1 can realize that there are people who “get it” about me, and they can help.

* Rather than seeing myself as one who has been victimized in my past. I have taken on a victim identity and remained passive. I can renounce the victim identity and take on my own identity as a person who has both baggage and blessings.

No one who understands these struggles would ever blame the person caught in their grip for having personal difficulties. Anger and anxiety issues, eating problems, and addictions almost always involve some combination of being hurt and avoiding the pain necessary to heal. You need others to show compassion for your hurt, to love you, and to encourage you to take ownership of the healing. This is the path of growth that results in deep and permanent change and transformation.

Don't Go It Alone

A word of encouragement: if you want to see better and more significant changes in taking ownership, you must get connected. Find a few people, or even one, to read this book with, or even just to discuss the ideas in it. Relationship is a powerful change agent. It multiplies the effects of any thought or effort you put into these principles. The support, safety, feedback, and help you get from the right people will make a great deal of difference.

And finally, remember that God is for you in making these changes. He is on your side, and he is walking with you, guiding you, and taking you down the path that he designed for you: “The LORD says, 'I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you'.” Ask him for his help and put your trust in his ways.

God bless you!

Wanted to share this touching story with special friends

The man slowly looked up. This was a woman clearly accustomed to the finer things of life. Her coat was new. She looked like that she had never missed a meal in her life. His first thought was that she wanted to make fun of him, like so many others had done before.

"Leave me alone," he growled.

To his amazement, the woman continued standing. She was smiling -- her even white teeth displayed in dazzling rows. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

"No," he answered sarcastically. "I've just come from dining with the president. Now go away." The woman's smile became even broader. Suddenly the man felt a gentle hand under his arm.

"What are you doing, lady?" the man asked angrily. "I said to leave me alone." Just then a policeman came up. "Is there any problem, ma'am?" he asked.

"No problem here, officer," the woman answered. "I'm just trying to get this man to his feet. Will you help me?"

The officer scratched his head. "That's old Jack. He's been a fixture around here for a couple of years. What do you want with him?"

"See that cafeteria over there?" she asked. "I'm going to get him something to eat and get him out of the cold for awhile."

"Are you crazy, lady?" the homeless man resisted. "I don't want to go in there!" Then he felt strong hands grab his other arm and lift him up.

"Let me go, officer. I didn't do anything."

"This is a good deal for you, Jack," the officeranswered. "Don't blow it."

Finally, and with some difficulty, the woman and the police officer got Jack into the cafeteria and sat him at a table in a remote corner. It was the middle of the morning, so most of the breakfast crowd had already left and the lunch bunch had not yet arrived. The manager strode across the cafeteria and stood by the table.

"What's going on here, officer?" he asked. "What is all this. Is this man in trouble?"

"This lady brought this man in here to be fed," the policeman answered.

"Not in here!" the manager replied angrily. "Having a person like that here is bad for business."

Old Jack smiled a toothless grin. "See, lady. I told you so. Now if you'll let me go. I didn't want to come here in the firstplace."

The woman turned to the cafeteria manager and smiled."Sir, are you familiar with Eddy and Associates, the banking firm down the street?"

"Of course I am," the manager answered impatiently."They hold their weekly meetings in one of my banquet rooms."

"And do you make a goodly amount of money providing foodat these weekly meetings?"

"What business is that of yours?"

"I, sir, am Penelope Eddy, president and CEO of the company."

"Oh."

The woman smiled again. "I thought that might make a difference." She glanced at the cop who was busy stifling a giggle.Would you like to join us in a cup of coffee and a meal, officer?"

"No thanks, ma'am," the officer replied. "I'm on duty."

"Then, perhaps, a cup of coffee to go?"

"Yes, ma'am. That would be very nice."

The cafeteria manager turned on his heel. "I'll get your coffee for you right away, officer."

The officer watched him walk away. "You certainly put him in his place," he said.

"That was not my intent. Believe it or not, I have a reason for all this."

She sat down at the table across from her amazed dinner guest. She stared at him intently. "Jack, do you remember me?"

Old Jack searched her face with his old, rheumy eyes "I think so -- I mean you do look familiar."

"I'm a little older perhaps," she said. "Maybe I've even filled out more than in my younger days when you worked here, and I came through that very door, cold and hungry."

"Ma'am?" the officer said questioningly. He couldn't believe that such a magnificently turned out woman could ever have been hungry.

"I was just out of college," the woman began. "I had come to the city looking for a job, but I couldn't find anything. Finally I was down to my last few cents and had been kicked out of my apartment. I walked the streets for days. It was February and I was cold and nearly starving. I saw this place and walked in on the off chance that I could get something to eat."

Jack lit up with a smile. "Now I remember," he said. "I was behind the serving counter. You came up and asked me if you could work for something to eat. I said that it was against company policy."

"I know," the woman continued. "Then you made me the biggest roast beef sandwich that I had ever seen, gave me a cup of coffee, and told me to go over to a corner table and enjoy it. I wasafraid that you would get into trouble. Then, when I looked over, I saw you put the price of my food in the cash register I knew then that everything would be all right."

"So you started your own business?" Old Jack said.

"I got a job that very afternoon. I worked my way up. Eventually I started my own business, that, with the help of God, prospered." She opened her purse and pulled out a business card. "When you are finished here, I want you to pay a visit to a Mr. Lyons. He's the personnel director of my company. I'll go talk to him now and I'm certain he'll find something for you to do around the office." She smiled. "I think he might even find the funds to give you a little advance so that you can buy some clothes and get a place to live until you get on your feet. If you ever need anything, my door is always opened to you."

There were tears in the old man's eyes. "How can I ever thank you? " he said.

"Don't thank me," the woman answered. "To God goes the glory. Thank Jesus. He led me to you."

Outside the cafeteria, the officer and the woman paused at the entrance before going their separate ways. "Thank you for all your help, officer," she said.

"On the contrary, Ms. Eddy," he answered. "Thank you. I saw a miracle today, something that I will never forget. And...And thank you for the coffee ."

If you have missed knowing me, you have missed nothing. If you have missed some of my emails, you might have missed a laugh. But, if you have missed knowing my LORD and SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST, you have missed everything in the world.

You Can Deal with Failure

Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.

--John Hersey

Let me ask you to take a moment and do some honest reflection. Find a quiet space where you can think without distraction and answer these questions:

When you have failed, what did you do as a result?

Did you feel bad about yourself?

Did you withdraw from the pursuit of whatever it was that you failed at?

Are you now doing the thing you failed at then?

Are you doing it successfully?

Is there anything you would like to do now that you are not doing because you might fail?

How you answer those questions, or more accurately, how you have lived out the answers to those questions, has the power to determine where you end up in life. Your answers will determine your success in the areas that you care about most. In this chapter we will explore the positive ways you can deal with inevitable failures on your path to your goals.

Same Story, Different Endings

One day at a seminar, I talked with a woman who was despairing over her dating life. She had withdrawn from the dating scene after a few rejections, and she now had virtually no hope of ever finding a relationship.

At the start of the year she had been determined to improve her somewhat nonexistent dating life. She had set some great goals to get things moving. She even surrounded herself with a support group and joined a dating service to meet new people. She got a couple of “matches” and went out with the guys. She had a decent time and was looking forward to a second date with both of them. But the calls never came. The men did not want to go out on second dates with her. Both of them had “moved on.”

The woman was devastated. She withdrew from her supportive friends and stopped checking her e-mail for activity on the dating site. She turned into something of an MIA in the dating world. But worse than that, she felt awful.

When I asked her what was going on inside, she said things like, “I am such a loser. No one will ever want me. I don't know why I even tried. This is never going to work, I will always be alone.”

I did not have much time to talk with her, but none of my encouragement or suggestions seemed to help. Her mind was made up. From her point of view it was hopeless and would never be any different.

Fast forward to a week later. I was talking to another woman who also committed herself to reviving a stagnant dating life. She, too, had set some goals and joined a dating service.

At first nothing happened. She got no responses. But instead of seeing herself as a loser, she asked herself “I wonder what is wrong with the way I am doing this?” She called a friend who had been successful with online dating and got her to help rewrite her profile.

Soon the matches began to happen. She liked two of the men she dated and wrote back to them saying she had had a great time and would love to see them again. But nothing happened. Apparently neither of the men desired to see her again.

“Bummer,” she said. But she continued her pursuit of dating.

Then another guy appeared on the scene, and they went out one evening. She liked him, and he called again. And again and again and again. She was having a good time and beginning to like this man quite a lot. So far, so good. Until . . . she got an e-mail saying, in effect, “It has been great hanging out with you, but I don't see a future for us. Hope this finds you well, and good luck.”

Here she thought things were going well and instead she was faced with the classic let's-be-friends situation. Stunned and bewildered, the poor woman went into a little mini-shock. She was quite sad for a while and cried a bit with her friends. But then she regrouped and came to me for help.

She explained her feelings. “Well, that experience was tough. I really liked that guy. I thought things were really beginning to click with us, and I still don't know what went wrong.” As she and I unpacked it together, we uncovered one of the problems. Her desperateness had caused her to become something of a people pleaser with him. In trying so hard to get him to like her, she had become less herself and, as a result, less interesting. Predictably, he lost interest and moved on.

However, she learned from that insight, and the next time she did it differently. She relaxed and became more herself As a result, she found greater freedom in her dating. She was no longer bound by her concern about whether the man was interested, but instead allowed herself to be authentically who she was in the dating process. That was a big growth step for her.

Then it happened. She called me one day and said, “I think I have found him.” And you know what? She was right. They married a year later.

Coincidentally, that same week I ran into the first woman again. “How is your dating life going? I asked, thinking that by now she might have turned it around.

I could tell instantly that this was not the case. Her eyes began to water, and her chin began to quiver. “Not too good,” she said. “Not too good.”

I empathized with her and asked if she wanted to talk about it. She did, and I heard a very sad story. She had not been on any dates since that rejection of more than a year ago. She still felt that she was a loser, and no one would ever want her.

I reflected back to the last time we had talked and what had occurred. Then it hit me. She and the second woman had the exact same story--up to a point. Both had experienced a season of nothing good happening. Both had committed to changing that. Both had gotten active and stepped out into the game. Both had received some initial responses, and both went on a couple of dates. But that is where the similarities ended. From there one went into despair and took a thousand steps backward, and the other

moved on toward reaching her goal. Same story, very different outcomes. What was the difference?

Was one woman more interesting? More attractive? More appealing in some way? Is that why one reached her goal while the other one didn't? Not at all. The outcomes were determined by the way these women answered the questions we listed at the beginning of this chapter. Look at how the two answered these questions and you will see that they responded to failure in very different ways.

Q: When you failed, what did you do as a result?

A: One withdrew and quit, and the other learned from her failure and kept going.

Q: Did you feel bad about yourself?

A: One saw herself as a loser, and the other didn't.

Q: Did you withdraw from the pursuit of whatever it was that you failed at?

A: One did, and the other didn't.

Q: Are you now doing the thing you failed at then?

A: One isn't, and the other is happy in a relationship.

Q: Are you doing it successfully?

A: One isn't, and the other is.

Q: Is there anything you would like to do now that you are not doing because you might fail?

A: One would like to be dating or in a relationship. The other doesn't have to worry about that anymore and has moved on to other goals.

These two women did the exact same things, up to a point: the point of failure. And from there, one went on to success and the other didn't. How to respond to failure is one of the most important lessons you can learn in life. And that is the lesson of this chapter.

Some Things in Life Are Certain, Or the Nature of Everything

We have all heard it said that two things in life are certain: death and taxes. While that is true, there is also another certainty: failure. It is absolutely a given. It is the nature of everything. In fact, without
failure we never succeed.

Think of the things that you do well. You probably walk okay, for example. And when you eat, you probably get most of your food in mouth. But that was not always so, was it? If we had the video of your life, we would see you as a toddler going through walking and eating processes that look very little like your current level of performance. A lot of your steps would have ended with you on your face. A lot of your pasta would also have ended up on your cheeks and chin. If today you still walk and eat like you did then, second dates are likely to be rarities for you. But walking and eating do not present problems in your dating life today. The reason? You have gotten failure in those areas out of your system. You have done something called “learning.”

The process went like this: you tried, and you didn't get it right. You walked three or four steps, then sat down hard on your padded area. You had a bad outcome. Your parents told you, “No problem. Try again. You tried again and got a little closer to the goal before you hit the carpet. Your parents helped you up and you walked ten feet this time--all the way to the couch. Your parents cheered. You made similar progress on the eating front. After many noodles filling to the table, the floor, and down your shirt, you finally got most of the pasta inside your mouth and managed to keep it there. Your parents clapped and said, “Way to go!” Before long those awkward tasks became second nature. You walked and ate without conscious effort and no one made a big deal of it. In fact, you got to the point where you were performing those tasks so well that your parents were even trying to curb them: “Don't eat that candy before dinner, and don't leave the yard.” Success brings its own set of problems.

The point is that whatever is now second nature to you was at one time a very, very, daunting task, and you failed the first times that you tried it.

Failing at those tasks did not mean anything to you other than “try again”. Failure brought no personal Interpretation as to your lovability or capability or feelings about yourself or the world at large. Failure meant simply that the task was yet to be learned. Everything you now do as second nature has gone through that process. You did not do it well the first time, and yet you did it again and again until you figured it out. That is the nature of life. We try, we don't get it right, and we try again until we do. Then when the task is learned, we forget about the process of it and just do it, enjoying the result of the ability we have finally mastered.

There are people who date for fun, for example. They don't think once about rejection or the date not working out well. They just do it and enjoy it. The reason is that they have learned how, and now it is second nature. The jitters of adolescence, the shyness, and the misgivings are all in the past. They have become seasoned veterans.

In fact, the second woman, the one who learned to date well and ended up married, told me, “The change came when I began to be unaffected by rejection. I had always let rejection do me in. But the more I got with the program, the less it bothered me because I knew I was on a path, and one rejection was merely a step to the next step. Rejection actually became kind of funny sometimes.

The same thing goes for people who are successful at public speaking, making sales calls, playing championship golf matches, starting new businesses, interviewing for a new job, or whatever. They have gone through the failing part and now know how to do their job. But they did not skip the failure part. Their stumbles and falls are certainly on the video. But more often than not, the ones who are not doing well are stuck because they have not moved successfully through the failure cycle. They got hung up there.

The different between the winners and those who are not winning is not that the winners do not fail.

They both fail, but the winners see it as normal, move through it well, and get past it. The others get stuck, not because they are incapable doing whatever it is they are attempting, but because they are incapable of handling failure.

Lesson number one about failure is this: whatever you wish to do, you will fail at it in the beginning Accept that reality. That is the nature of the world. Everything works that way. Of course you can always point to exceptions, like the person who hits a home run his first time at bat, or some other lottery winner. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule. Ninety-nine out of a hundred winners will tell you that failure was the way to success.

Let's look at nine steps you can take toward full ownership of your life, beginning with failure.

Step One: Normalize and Deal with Failure

To take ownership of your life and get to where you want to be, you must take ownership of your failure. To own it means to put your arms around it, take it home and claim it as yours, nurse it, feed it, and take care of it. It's like buying a car or a house. You are no longer leasing; it is all yours, and no one else is responsible for it. The good part of that is this: since you now own your life, you can add value to it, make improvements, control it, and ultimately reap the benefits of it. If you are not an owner, all you can do is complain to the landlord, which, as we have seen, is what a lot of people do with their lives. They act as if someone else owns their life and they are renters. So when things don't go right, they just complain. The problem is that they have to live in their life, so it makes good sense to own failure so they can fix it up.

The first step, then, is to normalize failure. Accept the reality that it is a normal part of life. Do that and you won't get knocked off your horse when something doesn't work out. It won't surprise you. You will accept it, take God's hand, and go solve that problem. If you have trouble getting in touch with the reality of inevitable trouble, remember the words of Jesus: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33 NIV). Expect trouble and failure, but also expect that taking courage and joining him to work it out will get you over the hump and to your goal.

Why doesn't everyone who encounters failure pick himself up and try again? Why does one woman get rejected on a couple of dates then go on to find the love of her life, while another who gets rejected, quits? Why does one person make a sales call, get rejected, and later that month land the big account, while another gives up? The answer: one has normalized failure and learned how to deal with it, while the other has not. Let's look at why and how.

Step Two: Find Out What Failing Means to You

Now that you have accepted the fact that failure is normal in the process of becoming successful, you are ready for the next step. But before you take that step, let's prepare the way by exploring a few questions to check your present thinking on what happens when you fail.

What do you feel when you fail? (In other words, when you are rejected for a date or do not close the deal or your venture goes belly up.)

Do you feel bad and get deflated? (Not mere disappointment, but a judgment about yourself that plunges you into immobilizing emotional states.)

Does all hope go out of you? (A feeling that things will never be any different.)

Do you tell yourself that you are a loser? (Internal dialogue leads you to pin a global, critical label on yourself.)

Do you think that success is for others and not you? (You feel you are missing something that others have.)

Do you think that there is just no answer for your dilemma? (It's beyond anything you can learn or grow into, no matter how hard you try.)

Do you feel guilty? (A gnawing feeling that you should have been able to do this.)

Do you feel like it is all your fault? (An accusing, shaming, condemning feeling.)

Do you go into the “all bad” position? (Losing sight of your abilities, strengths, talents, aptitudes.)

Do you begin to hate God and think that he is not for you? (The feeling that God has let you down, or even has it in for you.)

Many people respond to failure in these ways because they interpret the failure to have a specific, harmful meaning. But as we have shown above, this is the wrong way to look at failure. The accurate meaning of failure is that it is a learning experience--a time to learn about ourselves, to learn the skills needed to master an endeavor we want to accomplish, or to learn more about the nature of the endeavor itself. But instead of seeing it as time to learn, many interpret failure in other ways that set them up to stop trying, as the list above shows. Usually, those negative interpretations come from our previous experiences. Failure has taken on bad meanings acquired from painful experiences in our families growing up or in other significant relationships.

The meanings that failure has for us come from our past experiences and relationships. They affect us in several significant categories: our view of others, our view of the world and how it works, and our view of God. When we go into new situations, we experience them through those grids, belief systems, emotional reactions and patterns of behavior that we have built through past experiences of failure or difficulty.

For example, if my experiences have made me feel like a loser, then I take that belief into new situations. If I fail in a new endeavor, I experience that new failure as confirmation of my negative belief about myself. “See, I knew it. I am a loser. I will never be able to make anything work. I'm just not capable.” Or, we might have a bad experience with a person, and it means to us that “people will always hurt me or let me down.” Or, “God is against me,” or “The world itself is just too hard to figure out. There is no real way to make things turn out well.”

These meanings become part of our makeup, and they live in our hearts, minds, and souls. They operate immediately and subconsciously, without our awareness that we are even following them. They cause us to live out patterns of behavior and choices that correspond to those particular meanings. We react defensively, protectively, aggressively, or withdraw from the game and quit trying. This happens because our life experiences have infused these meanings for failure into our character, and when we fail, they automatically kick in and take over. We lose our ability to choose and respond.

Look at your history of trying things in the areas where you feel stuck. Look at the areas that most depress you and in which you have stopped trying. Those are the places where it is most likely that you are operating by old messages and experiences. Figure out what those are. Listen to your thoughts and the voices in your head. Observe your feelings about those areas. You will learn the reason why you have given up or feel so negative about trying again. When you recognize where these old messages come from, you can reject them and break free of them. You can get support and validation from people on your team and rework the way you think and feel. But if you treat these old false messages as reality, then they will become reality. “I can't ever win” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

Step Three: Go Ahead and Say It: “I Failed”

The first step to moving past failure is to call it what it is. But all too often those negative meanings we apply to failure shame us so much that we become afraid even to look at failure as reality. We become afraid even to say it:

“I failed.”

“It didn't work.”

“I blew it.”

“Oh my gosh…did I ever not know what I was doing!”

“I screwed it up.

“I didn't have a clue to what I was doing. Have I ever got a lot to learn!”

What is so hard about that? It is actually empowering and freeing not to have to hide from failure, but to embrace it and admit it. Watch the people who do. Check out the winners who laugh about their failures. They are relaxed and comfortable because they have gotten out of the image protection business. And, they are so endearing. The people who own and talk about their mistakes as their mistakes are much more connectable and easy to identify with. They are not hung up in the useless business of trying to impress themselves or others. Instead, they are into results. People like this are so refreshing, and the good news is that you can be one of them.

Get around people who are honest about their shortcomings. They are infectious. You will like them, and they will help you become more comfortable about facing yours. Enter the land of freedom…where you can admit imperfection. It is a wonderful place to be, and others will respect and like you for being there.

Recently, our Web hosting company had a hardware meltdown. It was awful. For a good while we had no Web service or e-mail. When it first happened, we were bummed but not dismayed, because we got the word that we would only be down for a day. But the next day the news was worse. Their servers and backup servers had all crashed, and now the word came that repair was going to take longer. Since we work with publishers and organizations all over the country, to not have e-mail essentially means that we are shut down and cannot function. At that point things went from bad to really bad, as groups and media outlets were trying to get responses from US about scheduled speaking engagements and other time sensitive issues. But there was not much we could do.

I called the head of the IT company that had set us up with this hosting company and asked, “Why are we with a company that could allow this to happen? Can't we find someone else?” He assured me that for the services we needed, this host company was the best in the business and that they had his total trust. He described the events causing the crash as the “perfect storm” and said that there was nothing reasonable that they could have done to prevent it. His message was to hang in there. I trusted him, but I was more than a little bugged with the hosting company.

Then it got worse. The hosting company had been telling us that all the data would be recovered when they were up and running. But the unthinkable happened: they called me and said that they had recovered everyone's data…except mine. Mine was gone. Lost forever. My schedule, my e-mail, my archived mail from every organization I work with, and on and on. Everything that lived on the server had vanished never to be seen again. I could not believe my ears.

Fortunately, I discovered that the full computer backup I make myself do weekly had kept it all. I ended up losing only a day and a half of mail between my last backup and the failure. We got up and running again, apologized to everyone who had been waiting on us, and continued on. But at that moment I had less than zero confidence in our hosting company. They had not only gone down, they had gone down for a week! And then on top of that, they had erased my life. I still wanted my IT company to find a new host company.

But then everything changed.

I got an e-mail from the president of the host company, a message he sent to all of their accounts. I won't take up space printing the letter, but here are the essential elements of it:

* We really blew it. We were not prepared for what happened. It was our mistake.

* We are deeply sorry for the disruption that it caused you.

* Thank you to all who called and expressed your frustration to us, telling us of the things we could have done better to serve you.

* We took copious notes throughout the entire process in order to learn from what happened.

* Here is what we learned that we should have done differently.

* Here is what we have done to fix the vulnerability and correct those mistakes.

* Here are the things that we learned that we did right.

* Here are the changes that we are making.

* Here are some suggestions for you to protect yourself as well.

* We understand if you want to switch companies, and if you do, we will be glad to help you and make the transition as painless as possible.

Immediately my whole attitude changed. I was dealing with a winner here, not a loser. I felt that as long as this guy was leading the company, I was in good hands. Why, because he never failed? No, it was because when he failed, he owned it, admitted it, and put his arms around it to learn from it. He used his failure as a step toward becoming a great company. That is what gave me confidence, not the fact that he had not made mistakes. Give me a person who makes a mistake and knows what to do with it anytime over someone who does not own his failures.

Can't you see another company excusing, blaming, and not owning its failure in a crisis like this? “It's not our fault! It's the power surges, the crummy hardware providers, the complicated nature of Windows. Call your manufacturer or your software provider, this is not our problem. Excuses like these are the first line of defense on most technical help lines, “Someone else is responsible, not us. It's not our fault.”

But here was a winner. I immediately wrote the president of that company a letter and thanked him for his ownership and leadership. I told him that was why our company would be sticking with him.

I urge you to join the winners who own their failures and learn from them. All the energy you consumed protecting yourself from failure or defending yourself when you filed or beating yourself up because you failed will be channeled into solving problems and learning from them.

Step Four: Learn from It

In the story of the Web hosting company, we can see what I like to call the “autopsy” of a failure experience. When something does not go right, don't beat yourself up or get on your case about it. Use t to your advantage! You spent a lot of good energy and probably money; time, resources, relationship equity; and other assets on this lesson. So wring everything out of it that you can. Figure out such things as:

* What you did wrong

* What you did right

* What you missed along the way

* What choices you made that you don't want to make again

* Why you made them and what weaknesses contributed to those mistakes

* What support would have helped you

* What new skills you need to develop to make it different the next time

* What teachers or mentors or counselors or consultants you might want with you

* What about this situation reveals a pattern that you have seen before

* What blind spots you have about yourself or others that led to this

In my speaking and counseling on marriage, dating, and relationships, I see one theme over and over Some people who experience a failed relationship repeat the same failure with every new relationship they find. They do not learn. They just keep on going without addressing the things that contributed to the last failure. Others, however, figure out their contribution to the problem, learn from it through divorce recovery or counseling, do the necessary work, and then move on to make better choices. They learn from each mistake so they do not have to make that one again.

We have seen that mistakes are normal. They are the progression of learning. Think back to the second grade and the mistakes you made as you learned to read or write or do math. What if you had just ignored those mistakes? What if your teacher had let you continue on down the path without correcting them? You would have made the same mistakes again, and you would have repeated that grade over and over. Then in real life you would face all sorts of problems, ranging from an inability to get a job to an inability to make your finances work. In other words, until we learn to get it right, we will repeat the mistake. If you learn from your mistake, however, you can correct it and move on to the next grade, the next level of relationship, or the next level of work.

Step Five: Get Forgiveness

There is an immutable law in the universe that comes right out of the Bible: whatever is under judgment does not improve. It gets worse. In other words, as long as you feel guilty and condemned for your failure, it will not get better. It will stay the same, at best, or it will get worse. It is under the law of condemnation. You will not get better by feeling guilty, mad at yourself ashamed, afraid, or any of those negative emotions. You will get better only by finding grace, or “unmerited favor” from God and other people. As you are accepted “in your failure,” the sting and the power of condemnation will go away, and you will be free to look at the problem instead of your guilt and fear.

To illustrate, let's say a child makes a mistake on her math homework. When her dad sees the mistake, he begins to berate her, put her down, and make her feel guilty. What do you think she is focused on at that moment? Learning math? I don't think so. Her entire being is focused on how bad she is, what a loser she is, how afraid of her father she is, or how mad at him she is, what a jerk he is, how she hates school, how she wants to run away, and on and on. Whatever is going through her head, it is not about getting better at school. The wrath and condemnation have done one thing only: they have diverted the focus away from the real issue, which is the girl's math performance.

To improve in areas of failure, you must receive forgiveness and grace. You have to get with people and with God and understand the most liberating message of the entire world: if you want forgiveness. God gives it. He forgives you for anything you do. And good people will do the same. But to realize that forgiveness, you have to talk to these people. You have to open up to them, confess to them, and allow them to know you and love you in your failure.

Put down the fig leaf; take off the mask. Open up to some safe people about your failure, and show them the reality of who you are. When they accept you, you will learn to accept yourself as well. Then the sting of failure will go away and the freedom to get better will kick in. You will look like Tiger Woods on the practice tee, hitting a shot and watching it to see how it went. You won't find him standing there beating himself up and feeling guilty about a slice that sailed into the rough. He just corrects his swing to make the next shot better.

IF you do not find forgiveness from outside of yourself then you will not have it on the inside. It takes forgiveness from others to affirm our perception of our own value when we fail. Ask God, and he will grant it. But also show your failures to others who accept you and you will internalize their love.

If you have failed others, go to them and own your mistake and seek their forgiveness. If there is something more to be done, make amends. Make it right. In doing that, you will help those you have failed in the same way you failed them. You will also be restored to them, overcome your own guilt, and become an altogether different person than the one who failed them. In seeking forgiveness and making amends, you become a healing agent to the one you hurt, and that is a huge improvement, not only for you, but also for the relationship and for the person you failed. God sees forgiveness and making amends as so important that he tells us to get right with others before we try to approach him: “First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:24 NIV).

Step Six: Look at Your Responses

We have seen how important it is to look at the meaning that you attribute to failure, because negative feelings and conclusions can cause you to remain stuck. The next step is to figure out what you do at that point, in order to do that, you must evaluate those feelings and conclusions. How did they affect your responses to failure, and what can you do differently?

When you fail, do you:

* Withdraw?

* Get angry at yourself?

* Get angry at someone else?

* Give up?

* Not try again?

* Change courses impulsively?

* Eat, drink, or medicate yourself in some unhealthy way?

* Look for meaningless distractions that get you no closer to what you want?

* Make excuses?

* Blame?

* Avoid looking at it and remain in denial?

* Run to some area of strength to make yourself feel better instead of looking at your weakness?

The negative meanings you place on failure and your emotional reactions to it always generate accompanying behavioral patterns. You must uncover your own negative patterns and take steps to change them. In do that, you will probably need some support from outside yourself--a group, an accountability partner, a counselor, or some outside structure. Old patterns usually do not change as a result of willpower or just by making different commitments. Such changes require outside support.

An addict's life changes when he realizes that his pattern of response to failure is to return to the drug. To change this failure pattern he must attend a meeting to find the support he needs to resist returning to the drug. He has to interrupt his predictable pattern of response to failure. Going to the meeting instead of using the drug changes the pattern. To change your own patterns, you must have that same kind of structure waiting in the wings of your life---a structure you can turn to for support when you fail to overcome those patterns in the aforementioned list.

The most important tip we can give you in pursuing any goal may be to ask these questions: What will I do when the failure pattern hits me the next time? Who will I call, or where will I go? What will I do differently?

When you find the answers to these questions, your chances of success will shoot way up.

Step Seven: Go for It Again

In one of my relationship seminars, a young man told me that the fear of rejection kept him from asking women out. “I can't handle rejection,” he said. “How can I avoid it?”

My answer surprised him. I told him that he needed to get his rejection numbers up, not down. “I want you getting rejected a million times, I said. “Because you are getting rejected that many times, it means that you are out there pursuing. And with that many attempts, some good things are sure to happen as well.

Remember, if failure is part of the process, then the more we fail, the more we are engaged in the process, and the more success we will find.

Persistence after failure is a huge key to success. The chapter coming up is on perseverance and persistence, so I won't address that subject in detail here. But we must include persistence in our thinking about failure because failure is exactly when persistence is needed. We don't need it when we succeed; we need it on the path to success when we have not yet gotten there. In looking at failure, we always need to remember that to reach the goal will require many, many efforts.

Step Eight: Have the Funeral

In spite of the positive aspects of failure, we must be realistic and face the fact that in some cases failure is nor merely a step in me accomplishment of a goal. It is a finality. The game is over. The company is bankrupt. The relationship has ended. There is no next step to be taken to make it work, because it is not going to work. It is the end of the road.

Winners know that and accept it. They embrace the failure and go through the grief process. They express their feelings about it, get angry and sad, grieve it, and move on. They do not do the useless things that keep people stuck, like chasing something dead that should be given up or sitting there protesting the reality of what is inevitable or has already occurred. Remember the example of the woman who had for thirty years remained bitter over the loss of her relationship. She should have had the funeral and moved on.

Solomon put it this way:

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure. (Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 NIV)

When your goal is alive and has a chance of succeeding, the right thing to do is persevere. But when it is over, the right thing to do is to go into a house of mourning. Sorrow, Solomon says, can he good for the heart. Mourning enables you to work through the loss, and then your heart will be available for new things. But if you don't lay the loss to rest and mourn it, then thy heart still holds to the dead dream and is not available to win the next time. The woman who had lost a cherished relationship at forty would not lay her loss to rest and mourn it. She clung to the useless ghost of a dead relationship and thus for thirty empty and bitter years was not available to a new one. As a result of her inability to grieve, this woman experienced a much bigger loss than the loss of a relationship. She could have lost a relationship but had a life. Instead, she lost a relationship and a life.

Look your failure or loss right in the eye, have the funeral, express your feelings, and kiss it goodbye. Remember what Jesus said about remembering Lot's wife. She could not let go of her old life, and therefore she turned to salt instead of achieving a new life.

When experiencing the death of a dream, remember that not everything is lost. If you have gone through the loss process wisely, you have gained something extremely valuable. You have gained experience, learning, character growth, and the tools you need to never have to go through that failure again. As God tells us, he can bring good out of all things, and he can cause your worst failure to work for your good. Even it all your hard effort ends in the failure of a cherished goal, it never ends in nothing if we respond in his way.

I like to look at it this way:

A winner owns his failure, and God owns his shame.

When we let God forgive us, comfort us, and be with us in the sting of failure, then we can face it and own it in the way that ultimately helps us. God takes the shame of it by offering us unconditional forgiveness and acceptance. Then we can grieve, not as those who have no hope, but as those who do have hope because we know that God is with us.

Step Nine: Learn that You Can Learn

There is a big difference between a victim and a winner. Victims see things the way they are and think they will always be that way because uncontrollable forces are acting upon them. But winners have a different attitude, especially about failure and trying something new to see if it works better. They know one of the most important things we can ever know: they know that they can learn.

If your hope lies in your abilities, then you are on precarious ground. For if your dream works out because you are able to accomplish it successfully, then all is well. But if you put everything you have into your dream and it does not turn out well, where is your hope then? You have come to the end of your ability, and there is nothing there but failure.

But if you have in your toolkit another instrument of hope--your ability to learn--then virtually nothing seems hopeless. If you can't accomplish your dream now, you can learn how to do it. Winners think this way every day, and it s not just some form of self--esteem jargon, its something much deeper than that. It is hope in the very nature of the way God created the universe and our relationship to it. It is like having hope in gravity.

God made humans with the ability to learn in a more complex way than any other creature. We can observe what we need to know to accomplish a goal, and then we can pursue that knowledge. We can learn with a purpose in mind. He gave us the ability not only to achieve the purpose, but also the ability to actually do the learning required to achieve it. You can learn to do what you need to do:

* A couple can learn to communicate.

* A depressed person can learn to overcome depression.

* A parent with a child out of control can learn how to discipline effectively.

* A person without a career can learn a new skill.

* A person with a weight problem can learn how to lose weight and keep it off

* A person without faith can learn about God.

* A person who gets a bad job review can learn to do better.

* A person with a pattern of failed relationships can learn the relationship skills that are needed.

* A person who picks bad people over arid over can learn why that happens and how to spot the bad ones.

When you know that you can learn, you don't need to feel stuck. You see failure as a step in getting to the end point because it shows you that there is some kind of information or skills or wisdom or knowledge that you need to learn in order to get there. And because you believe that you can learn, you are not hopeless, but empowered.

Every week John and I do a public seminar called “Solutions.” We have been doing it for years, and now it is available by satellite broadcast across the country, probably at a location near you. Exposure to thousands of people in these seminars has given us the opportunity to hear one thing over and over again. It is the theme of a person moving from hopelessness to fulfillment through learning God's ways to do life and putting then, into practice. We continually hear people say things like, “I had no hope when I first came here, and now everything is different.”

What is different? Did the world change? No, it is the same. What changed is this: they found the truth of Proverbs to be real when it says, “Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off” (Proverbs 24:14 NIV). Listen to that! It says to know this powerful source of hope: wisdom. Wisdom leads to hope.

If you believe that finding the wisdom needed for a certain situation will reveal an answer, then you will always have hope in the power of learning. It is a lesson that will serve you for the rest of your life.

Only the Best Fail

We often see people who remain in a stable job for ten, twenty, or thirty years. They may call their job a career, but it isn't really. Instead of experiencing newness and growth in each of those years, they relive the same year ten, twenty, or thirty times. In their thirtieth year they are no different from the way they were in their first year. They are not trying anything new, and they are not growing. It is the same old same old. Often they remain in stagnation and never step out of the rut because of a fear of failure. As a result, they never become the best at anything, or what is worse, they never achieve their own “personal best.” They refuse to fail, and only those who fail become the best.

Those who will not risk failure are very different from the others in stable jobs who have grown each year and learned a long the way. Their thirty years on the job are all different years, not the same year repeated over and over.

What would you do if your goal was a political career and the following things happened to you? The love of your life dies; you have a nervous breakdown; you fail as a businessman; you are defeated when you run for state legislator; you lose a job; you are defeated when you run for speaker of the state house; you are defeated for nomination to Congress; you lose a re-nomination; you are rejected to become a land officer; you are defeated for the U.S. Senate you are defeated for the nomination of vice president; you are again defeated for the Senate.

How would you feel? Would you withdraw from the race? Would you think you are a loser? Would you think you are nuts to believe you could ever accomplish anything in politic? Would you give up? Or, would you become president of the United States and one of most heralded leaders of all time, negotiating one of our country's most difficult periods of history and literally saving the country as we know it today? If you could handle failure, you would do exactly that. You would be Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln knew the truth of the Bible, which says, “For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity” (Proverbs 24:16 NIV). With faith and the understanding that failure is not the end but common to all good people, you, too, can get up and rise to the heights that God desires for you. Who knows, you might even become president!