Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 53 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Welcome adversity in your own style
— From No Limits: Blow the CAP Off Your Capacity by John C. Maxwell
Bummer. Just hit a snag. So what now?
It’s our choice. We can focus on finding a solution or an alternative to the initial plan, or focus on our bad luck, moan, and complain.
Totally our choice, but sometimes it’s not all that easy. In No Limits, leadership guru John C. Maxwell says, “You can’t moan and lead at the same time.” And the same goes for success, “You can’t complain and get ahead at the same time. Moaning about your troubles and moving in the right direction rarely happen together.”
One way of moving forward and avoid feeling sorry for yourself is to personalize the way you see and face adversity and annoyances. Make your point of view about this as unique as you are.
What exactly does this mean?
Maxwell tells the story of how PGA pro golfer Richard Lee handles adversity on the course. When prompted by Maxwell to share the best advice he had ever received, Lee answered, “Welcome the ball.”
Intrigued, Maxwell asked him to explain. “I play golf for a living,” Lee said. “Every shot is important to me. Any shot can either make me or break me in a tournament. Early in my career, my mother-in-law could see how, when I had a bad shot, I would get really disappointed and my negative emotions would start to fill my mind and hurt my play. One day she said to me: ‘Richard, you will always have days when you make bad shots, every golfer does. As you walk toward your ball you will have a decision to make: will I dread seeing the lie of my ball and begin filling my mind with negative thoughts and my body with negative emotions? Or will I welcome the ball and be glad I am a golfer, and realize that I have an opportunity to make a great recovery shot? If you always welcome the ball, regardless of your lie, you will more often make good recovery shots.’ ”
And ever since, wherever Lee’s ball lies, he walks up to it and welcomes the ball, thus making a great difference in his game.
This is a fantastic way of thinking about adversity in terms of making a recovery shot.
How can you personalize the way you see adversity in a way that resonates with you? How can you turn it into something that you welcome and look towards a recovery shot afterward?
“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.” – William Arthur Ward
ACTION
TODAY: Take some time to ponder whether you welcome the ball or you get all bent out of shape about annoyances when they happen. How can you welcome the ball?
FUTURE: Murphy’s Law says that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” We’ve all lived through it. O’Toole said that Murphy was an optimist… and O’Malley’s law crowns them all: “If it can’t possibly go wrong, it will.” This is not meant to be pessimistic but to share a bit of Irish popular humor to give you a good laugh. 😉 The reason why I bring this up is because, in a future, when faced with a challenge, you can ask yourself, “What’s the worse that can happen?” and then move forward. If the outcome is as bad as what you thought, you can deal with it as you had anticipated; if it’s not as bad, then all the better!
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