CHAPTER 1
The Wisdom of Our UniqueLife Lessons
A worldview to which we subscribe is that this place where we liveis "earth school." As in all schools, there are lessons to be learned andskills to be mastered. As human beings, we are given the opportunityto learn our life lessons and to grow—or not to grow. Each of us hasan individualized curriculum. As we master each life lesson, new onespresent themselves in an ongoing array of challenges and opportunities.Knowing this, the wise leader is ever alert for the lessons that may beembedded in the challenges or obstacles he or she confronts. The wiseleader is a reflective practitioner who continually tries to learn, grow,and master each life lesson both personally and professionally.
When Steve's son Brian was in his early teens, a little over twentyyears ago, he came home from summer camp with a ring in his newlypierced ear. To say that Steve was angry would be putting it mildly.Prior to that summer, Brian had broached the topic of piercing withhis father, who made his views about the subject quite clear. Hisfather told him that it wasn't a good idea for him to put holes in hisbody and that it wasn't manly. It was something that was okay forgirls but not for boys. While away from home, Brian chose to disobeyhis father and have his ear pierced anyway. To buttress his case, Brianbrought a letter from his fellow campmates saying how cool Brianlooked with his new earring and how all of his friends had decidedto do the same thing. Steve was really angry; he thought about allthe things he could do to punish his son.
A friend of Steve's happened to be present when Steve firstlearned what Brian had done. Steve's friend recounted examples fromhis own life of his own children having done similar things as theywere growing up. He said that he had blown his top and that hisanger over what he had seen as a challenge to his parental authorityhad created a serious breach in his relationship with his children. Hetold Steve, "Let me tell you a life lesson I learned as a result of whathappened between me and my children. You can decide if you wantto risk what happened to me or take a different course." He told Stevethat in close relationships, certainly with immediate family and veryclose friends, any given episode or interaction between you and theother person is never as important as the relationship itself. "Alwaysremember," he said, "that the relationship is more important thanwhat the person may have done or failed to do. If you keep thatin mind, it will affect the way you choose to deal with whateverhappens between you and the other person."
Steve took his friend's advice to heart and chose to learn the lifelesson the easy way. He allowed Brian to keep his earring but insistedon some controls over where and when it would be worn.
Using Our Experiences to Grow Personally and Professionally
Sometimes solving a problem requires you to behave in adifferent way. In effect, to deal appropriately with whatever youare encountering requires that you make a shift, which necessitatesgrowth either professionally or personally. We suggest that when youare encountering difficulty, in addition to trying to solve the problemat hand, ask yourself whether what's happening is, in effect, a messagefrom the universe telling you that it's time for you to grow. Peopletend to look outside of themselves for explanations as to why thingsare happening in their lives; they don't necessarily ask themselvesthe question, "Is there something internally, within me, that needsto change?"
There's a common tendency to resist life's lessons instead ofaccepting or even embracing them. Leaders gain in wisdom whenthey can do just that, when they can say, "What a great problem I'mfacing. Bring it on! Let me fully appreciate the whole thing." Whenyou face your problems from this new perspective, they tend to goaway, or shrink and shrivel up. Yet prior to doing that, they seemedalmost insurmountable. Sometimes embracing a lesson allows youto learn it fully, and then move past it; if you resist the lesson, youcan't get past it because you're standing in opposition to it. There'sa wall there that you're trying to overcome. By moving toward theproblem rather than away from it, you may find an opening to getthrough, or even a way around it, and suddenly find yourself standingon the other side.
When you embrace a problem, it is important to recognize thatthere may be a lesson in it for you. You are the participant, but you'realso the observer of whatever is unfolding. In the role of observer,step back—not just to gain perspective, but also to think about whatlesson is there for you before embracing it.
Life Experiences Can Promote Our Spiritual Growth
Since this is earth school, everything you experience is a life lessonto promote your spiritual growth. Every obstacle, every stumblingblock is, in essence, a steppingstone toward greater growth. It's easynot to see things in this way because life's events often hurt or aredifficult. Life is far different from school, however. In life, first youhave the test and then you have the lesson; in school, on the otherhand, the sequence is reversed. Life is a much tougher and moredemanding environment because you're always being tested so youcan learn, grow, and move past whatever level you're on. The onlyway you can do that is through facing and overcoming challenges.You rarely grow in easy circumstances. Life is like spiritual isometrics.You have to keep pushing and pulling to build the spiritual muscleyou need to move forward.
When things are difficult or they don't feel right or are notgoing well, ask yourself this question, "What is the spiritual lessonhere that I need to pay attention to?" It is helpful to ask yourselfthat question aloud, as though you are addressing it to the universe,because frequently the lesson is not readily apparent. Often it takesreflection and prayer to gain insight as to exactly what the lesson is—whetheryou need to open up or loosen up or find a better balance,or be more compassionate, and so forth. The supply of lessons createdto assist every one of us in growing spiritually is limitless. The firstchallenge is to identify and understand the nature of the lesson athand. When you've done that, you've taken an important step towardmastering that particular lesson. Think of the process as a series ofskills you need to acquire and ask yourself, "What skill is it that Ineed to cultivate in order to meet the particular challenges I amconfronting at this moment?"
Problems Are Opportunities in Disguise
One of the attributes of wise leadership is an awareness thatall problems have opportunities and possibilities embedded withinthem. Problems are lessons that can move you forward, sometimeseven leading to major life breakthroughs. We subscribe to thenotion that no door closes without another one opening. There isa pattern or cycle in life in which what looks like a negative oftencontains the seeds of something positive because it opens up the nextopportunity. It is the possibility behind the problem that offers hope. That'swhy wise leaders cultivate optimism, and why this perspective isso important.
In Paul's personal life, the ending of one relationship opened upthe possibility of another, much better relationship coming along,which would not have been possible if the other one had not ended.So what could have been regarded as a sad negative experience (onerelationship ending) actually became a prelude to the next possibility.We believe that every problem has something within it that can beturned into something positive. Within negative events, there is akernel of something positive if we look for it, name it as such, andthen empower it by giving it energy. It is incumbent upon wiseleaders to show people the positive potential inherent in the problemsthey are confronting.
Our nation will never forget the events of 9/11, one of the mostterrible events ever to occur on American soil; yet even within thatunimaginable anguish and pain has been the opportunity for bravery,heroism, people coming together, outpourings of generosity, caring,and compassion, and a renewed sense of patriotism and the resolveto defeat international terrorism. Even within this most horrific ofproblems, the possibility of something positive existed.
Clouds Actually Do Have Silver Linings
While some people believe that behind every silver lining is adark cloud, we hold the opposite view. From a literal perspective,clouds distribute the water that nourishes all life, and under the rightconditions that water produces a rainbow, which from biblical timeshas served as a symbol of possibility and promise—a silver lining.
When circumstances are cloudy, wise leaders need to askthemselves, "What is the silver lining in this situation?" If you don'task yourself that question, you may miss discovering a way to takeadvantage of the cloud. Wise leaders are able to take advantage ofclouds and darkness by seeing the light or silver lining that can comefrom seemingly negative circumstances. They have the proactiveability to create a better day by seizing the negative moment andinverting it. In the same way that valleys help give meaning tomountain heights, negative circumstances can be used to illuminatecontrasting positive possibilities. By encouraging people to lookfor silver linings, wise leaders can help them to become possibilitythinkers.
If wise leaders not only look for silver linings themselves, butalso encourage the people with whom they work to search for thepositives within cloudy events or cloudy circumstances, there willbe a positive multiplier effect. People may even see different silverlinings in the same cloud. Helping people in your organization toprocess events in this way will help them grow. Wise leaders canchallenge others by asking, "What is the positive opportunity here,the silver lining, and can you find it?" When people are given theopportunity to discuss and explore problems from this perspective,you may be surprised by how often they will actually find a silverlining.
Life Lessons Can Be Learned the Hard Way or the Easy Way
How you respond to life lessons is entirely your choice. Youcan choose to resist the lesson, which makes it much more difficult;resistance creates friction, friction creates heat, and heat burns. Whenyou resist a lesson, you end up burning yourself. Or you can embracethe lesson, which makes the whole process easier. Embracing thelesson at hand doesn't necessarily mean that it will be easily learned,but it may not take you as long to gain insight and grow. Resistancetends to slow everything down. Our attitude often determineshow hard or how easy the lessons are in our lives. Some peoplehave extremely hard lives but are able to march right through theirlessons, while others don't face that much difficulty, but whateverdifficulty they do have seems to end up being magnified. It's not thelessons themselves as much as our reaction to them that makes thingsdifficult; some people really do make mountains out of molehills.People with a strong sense of faith often find that their lessons areeasier, less overwhelming, and less lengthy.
Many people deny things that are happening to them. Theyfail to see the lesson at hand or simply try to rationalize it away.However, the cosmos is mysteriously constructed in such a way thatyour lesson will not go away just because you attempt to go awayfrom it. The lesson you need to grow pursues you relentlessly invarious guises, and it will escalate until you can no longer ignore it.Lessons are like a physical illness that can be treated fairly easily ifyou go to the doctor right away and take the prescribed remedy, butif you ignore the symptoms and warning signs, over time the illnessbecomes more serious. So we all need to ask, "How can I address mychallenges at the lowest possible level before they grow, and growin undesirable ways?"
The Weaknesses within Our Strengths Help Us to UnderstandLife Lessons
Whatever people do best belies an inherent concomitant weaknessin their abilities. For example, someone who is very humanistic willsometimes hesitate in making a tough decision or in doing somethingthat will be hurtful to someone else, even though it should be donefor the good of the organization. So that extreme humanity also hasthe power to make a person overly sensitive. There's a teaching inTaoism that too much emphasis on being pretty makes one ugly. Inother words, too much emphasis on anything that is positive revealsthe weakness within that same character trait. Someone who's reallyskilled at making money could end up by being greedy, and so forth.
When people appreciate those things that they excel at, it cancreate a blind spot within them. They might say, "Don't talk to meabout X because I'm really good at X." In your areas of strength, itseems counterintuitive that you might also be weak or vulnerable.The last place you might think to examine when you're having aproblem is one of your strengths, and yet that's the place it may bemost helpful to explore when identifying and grappling with lifelessons. Because this seems to be counterintuitive, it can come asa surprise to learn that people have weaknesses embedded withintheir strengths, and vice versa. This is a fractal that mirrors therelationship between chaos and order in the universe at large. Chaostheory reveals an ongoing dance between chaos and order whereembedded within order are seeds of chaos, and vice versa. Perhapsthis relationship is best symbolized by the yin-yang symbol. Withinthe white yang energy is a small black dot of yin energy; conversely,within the black yin energy is a small white dot of yang energy. Thewise leader knows this and looks where others won't.
Each Lesson Mastered Opens a Gateway to the Next Lesson
Yogi Berra observed, "It's not over until it's over." With respectto life lessons, however, it's never over, because each lesson leads to thenext one. We never exhaust the syllabus for our lives. As RoseanneRosannadana said, "You know, it's always something; if it's not onething, it's something else."
Here's an irony for you: the mastery of a life lesson leads to thenext one, but so does the failure of a life lesson. Either way, there'salways another lesson awaiting you. But success at a life lesson meansyou advance, while failure means you must repeat the same lesson.Repeating it usually means that whatever lesson you're facing ispresented to you in a more severe form. It's like retention in thirdgrade in elementary school. If you fail the lesson, instead of beingpromoted you have to repeat third grade to master it, but this timeyou have an even tougher teacher. Mastery means you're promotedto the next grade and a new set of lessons.
Life is structured so that every time we reach some level ofmastery, another level begins. It's as if the ceiling of one levelbecomes the floor of the next—much like going from the top classin middle school to the bottom class in high school. This progressionrepeats itself again and again throughout our lives. Now you see theappropriateness of the term "earth school"!
Embedded in this whole process is the notion of movement. Ifyou master a lesson and reach the next stage, yet do not continue togrow, then you stagnate. There really is no rest for the weary. Youare never going to reach a stage where there are no new lessons toconfront. The wise leader knows that it doesn't matter how wealthyyou are or how healthy you are or how successful you are—the cycleis unending.
Each Ending Creates the Opportunity for a New Beginning
Steve's youngest son went through a divorce. He grieved over theloss of the relationship, but in the end it created the opportunity forhim to form a new relationship with someone else—a relationship thatwas much healthier than the first. This same kind of transformativeexperience may also happen with the loss of a job and with otherendings. As events in our lives come to an end, it seems to createopenings for other events to unfold. What we do with those newopportunities is always up to us. We subscribe to the adage thatwhen one door closes, another opens. That's a helpful perspective tohave because when things are ending, we may be so focused on theending, or the loss we are experiencing, that we can fail to recognizethe doorway of opportunity that is opening.
