Living the Significant Life (23 page)
Read Living the Significant Life Online
Authors: Peter L. Hirsch,Robert Shemin
“Oh,” replied the kitten in surprise, “you see, I’m a little hard of hearing. I thought you were cheering me on, and that inspired me to keep trying.”
We believe very strongly in the power of encouragement. Using the belief principle means becoming “hard of hearing” to any and all limiting beliefs you may encounter. It’s simply a numbers game. More bad news leads to limiting beliefs. More good news leads to powerful beliefs. The best news of all is that we can choose what news we get.
You’ve probably heard about the power of affirmations. They work—and the reason they work so well is that they are simply positive talk that is sent into the subconscious on such a regular basis that they actually reprogram the way you think and feel about yourself. We do not believe in affirmations that are nothing more than lies, because lies don’t work. If you’re broke and don’t want to be broke anymore, don’t bother with affirmations like “I’m rich!” That’s called delusion; it’s a lie. If you’re broke, the most powerful affirmation is “I’m broke, and I don’t like it! It stops now! I’m done being broke!”
That’s all you have to do to discover new, powerful beliefs in yourself. It also works for replacing limiting beliefs with positive, supportive messages.
Although this is a truth people often forget, you have control over what you think
.
In fact, like the choice of what you believe, the choice of what to think is one of the very few things over which you truly do have control. It determines your beliefs, which dictate what is or is not possible for you to accomplish in your life.
Some personal growth and development teachers and trainers say to “focus on the results.” We don’t say this because it hasn’t worked for us. What has worked for us is to focus on our beliefs and on what’s possible, to ask powerful and inspiring questions, and to think thoughts that encourage and inspire.
Your thoughts and feelings inspire the results you accomplish in your life. When your thoughts and feelings are, in some unexplainable way, aligned with what is right and true, they simply proceed toward an inevitable conclusion that you call the result.
Do you want to feel wonderful? Think wonderful. Don’t assume that once you’ve achieved certain hoped-for or anticipated results, the wonderful feeling will follow. That’s the big lie. Positive thoughts and feelings are not the
effect
of positive results. They are the
cause.
Just try—remember that?—to walk around depressed, dejected, and angry at life for throwing dirt in your face, and see what you get: more dirt! It just doesn’t work any other way. Want dirt? Ask for it. Want gold instead? Change the question.
When Hunter Anderson arrived home from work, he found his wife, Anna, sitting in stunned silence at their kitchen table. The telephone receiver was in front of her, and she didn’t seem to notice as he entered the room.
“Anna? You okay?” he asked.
She looked up, startled, and shook her head.
“No. Nothing is okay. My mother has lung cancer. Lung cancer. I can hardly even say it out loud,” Anna replied.
“Lung cancer? How can that be? She’s never smoked a cigarette in her life, and neither has anyone in your family.”
“I know. It seems impossible, but apparently it happens.”
“What’s her prognosis?”
Anna sat for a moment, then teared up for the first time since getting the phone call. “It’s not good. The doctor said she has maybe four to six months, and that’s with aggressive treatment. He’s talking about surgery, chemo, radiation—it’s just a nightmare,” she said.
“There must be something more. That can’t just be it,” Hunter said.
“Dr. Olson is the best oncologist in the area,” Anna replied. “If he thinks there’s no hope, there’s no hope. Four months! Jenna’s birthday is in May. My mother might not be here for Jenna’s birthday. She’s never missed one of the kids’ birthdays, not even when she broke her leg and was in a cast up to her hip, remember? I can’t believe this is happening.”
The next few days were a blur. Anna’s relationship with her mother had always been extremely close, and it seemed impossible that it was coming to an end. She navigated her daily routines as though she were sleepwalking; her stomach was clenched into a knot of fear, dread, and hopelessness. Hunter tried to be supportive, but he felt helpless. He could pick up dinner on his way home from work, help the kids with their homework, and be there when Anna needed someone to talk to, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter. His mother-in-law would die soon, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Anna accompanied her mother on her next visit to the oncologist, and it did nothing to calm her fears or raise her spirits. The waiting room was filled with patients wearing scarves or hats to cover heads now bald from chemotherapy treatments, and the rack in the corner held brochures about hospice care and how to make a living will. Anna tried to stay upbeat for her mother, but she could barely pay attention as the doctor reeled off a daunting treatment plan beginning with an aggressive surgical procedure scheduled for the next morning. “Have her at the hospital by six,” he said. Anna nodded numbly as he described what to expect in the coming days. This couldn’t be happening. What was the point? Her mother was going to die anyway.
At nine the next morning, Anna found herself sitting alone in a hospital room, minutes after kissing her mother good-bye as she was wheeled off to surgery. “She might die on the table,” she thought. “I might never talk to her again.”
As Anna stared vacantly out the window, engrossed in her thoughts, her family’s longtime minister tapped softly on the door.
“Hey there,” Reverend Bardwell said. “I was hoping to catch your mother before her surgery, but I got caught in traffic. Have they already taken her?”
“Yes, a little while ago.” Anna wasn’t really in the mood for company.
“How are you holding up?” Reverend Bardwell asked.
“Not well, to be honest,” Anna replied. “I’ve never faced anything remotely like this, and I’m not sure I’m up to the task. I just really don’t know where to turn.”
Reverend Bardwell smiled slightly. “Well, you can probably predict what I’m about to say. Have you thought about turning to God? If there were ever a time to believe, this is it.”
“I know, I’m trying, but I keep thinking about what Mom’s doctor said. He hasn’t given us much hope at all, and he’s the expert. He’s seen hundreds of cases like hers, and he says there just aren’t many good outcomes.”
“Then it’s time to turn to a higher power than the doctor,” Reverend Bardwell replied quietly.
They talked for more than an hour. The minister recounted stories about situations in which steadfast belief had triumphed over difficult, even seemingly impossible situations. He reminded Anna about stories of faith from the Bible, and he told her about people from their own church who had used their strong beliefs to overcome immense obstacles. It sounded good, but medicine was science. Surely that was stronger than any kind of belief.
Before he left, Reverend Bardwell pulled a small spiral notebook from the pocket of his jacket. He jotted down the author and title of a book on visualization techniques, and underneath he wrote, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23).
Ripping off the sheet of paper and handing it to Anna, he said, “Repeat that a few times when you start to feel hopeless. I think you’ll see a difference.”
During the next few days, keeping vigil at the hospital, Anna had plenty of time on her hands. To her surprise, she’d found the book Reverend Bardwell had suggested in the hospital gift shop, and she read it from cover to cover, making a few notes in the margins here and there. As her mother slept in her room or dozed off during chemo treatments, Anna visualized thousands of tiny little creatures racing through her mother’s body and eagerly gobbling up cancer cells like the figures in the Pac-Man games her son, Zack, played. Sometimes she pictured her mother bathed in a healing white light. She repeated the Bible verse Reverend Bardwell had given her and found other similar passages about the power of belief. They were comforting.
As the days passed, Anna started to feel lighter and stronger, and gradually she began to believe that perhaps the situation wasn’t as dire as it seemed. Medical miracles happened all the time, didn’t they? As though on cue, the oncologist reported that the combination of surgery, radiation, and chemo had reduced the mass in her mother’s lung more than he had expected. It wasn’t gone, but it was definitely smaller, maybe small enough to buy her an extra month or two. Anna was elated. Maybe she should learn a little more about her mother’s illness. She wasn’t a doctor, but a little research might help her know what to expect as the cancer progressed.
While her children were at school each day, Anna began searching the Internet, looking for more information on lung cancer in nonsmokers. One website led to another, and as she learned more, her belief that her mother’s condition wasn’t hopeless continued to grow and strengthen. The numbers weren’t promising, and certainly there were tragic cases, but there were success stories, too. More and more, Anna came to believe that the answer was out there somewhere, and she was determined to find it.
It was a Thursday morning when she landed on the website of a well-known cancer center in New York City. An oncologist there had just gotten approval for a new clinical trial for patients with nonsmoker lung cancer, and he was looking for subjects. Anna glanced quickly through the parameters, then read them again more carefully. Her mother appeared to be a perfect candidate.
By the time she told Hunter about the trial that evening, doubts had begun to creep in. “She can’t do this by herself, but I don’t know who could go with her. My sister’s baby is due almost anytime, and I can’t leave you and the kids,” she said.
“Not that long ago, you were telling me that there was no hope for your mother,” Hunter responded. “Now there seems to be at least some chance that she can get better. Your belief has gotten you this far. Let’s figure it out.”
A few weeks later, Anna and her mother were back in the hospital, but this time it was a bright room with a view of Manhattan. Looking back, Anna smiled in amazement. Hunter had been right. Neighbors and church members had stepped forward with amazing speed when they’d learned about the situation. Dinners appeared on the Andersons’ table every night, and the refrigerator door sported a carpool schedule to take the children to their games and other after-school activities.
Fifteen-year-old Jenna had grudgingly taken over the family’s laundry, and so far she’d ruined only one item. Hunter had figured out how the vacuum worked, and Zack was in charge of loading and unloading the dishwasher. The house didn’t run like clockwork as it did when Anna was in charge, but everyone was still alive, and the essentials were getting done.
But the biggest change had taken place in Anna. From the moment she had learned of the clinical trial, she’d hardly recognized herself. She, who normally was short on patience, had stayed on hold for twenty minutes until her call to the oncologist’s office had been answered. She, the big-picture person who usually left the details to others, had meticulously filled out the reams of paperwork required before her mother could be considered for the program. She, who famously hated to fly, had eagerly boarded the flight to New York. She, who had always been a bit intimidated by anyone in the medical profession, arrived at the hospital each morning with a list of questions about her mother’s treatment, her progress, and what might lie ahead. Through it all, she continued to affirm her belief that her mother could—no,
would
—be helped.
Five months later, Hunter was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the baseball scores, when Anna burst into the house. “It’s gone!” she said. “It’s really gone! We just came from Mom’s PET scan, and it was clean!”
“Really? That’s fantastic!” Hunter replied.
“Isn’t it? The doctor warned us that cancer is tricky and there are no guarantees, but right now it’s actually gone,” Anna said, still looking a bit amazed.
“How is that possible?” Hunter asked.
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “It all seemed so hopeless at first, then it just turned around. The surgery, the radiation, the chemo, the trial—I guess the combination worked somehow.”
“I think you can claim a little credit for yourself,” Hunter said. “It didn’t turn around until you started believing that it could, and you made the rest of us believe it, too. If you had continued to just wallow in hopelessness, you would never have found the clinical trial and pursued it so aggressively. We probably need to tuck that lesson away for the future. I’m sure it will come in handy again someday. Now I’m going to see if Zack wants to go to the batting cage before dinner.”
“Not so fast,” Anna said. “Jenna’s sixteenth birthday is next week, and she’s got big expectations. We’ve got a party to plan.”
I’ll bet Anna could relate to Walt Disney. Her belief didn’t turn an orange grove into a multimillion-dollar entertainment paradise, but once she learned to trust her belief, it was no less powerful than Disney’s. She dared to believe in something that had previously seemed impossible, and her belief led to action.
PRINCIPLE #11
Strengthen Your Commitment
A chicken and a pig were having a discussion. The chicken said, “I am committed to giving one egg every day.” “That’s not commitment,” the pig said. “That’s just participation. Giving bacon, now that’s commitment!”
Of all the quotes about commitment I’ve heard or read, the following one, from W. H. Murray’s
The Second Himalayan Expedition
, inspires me most:
Until one is committed there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
I have learned a great respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power in it.”
Isn’t that wonderful?
Is there anyone who wouldn’t love to have “all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance” on his or her side to help along the journey of happiness?
Nothing happens without commitment. Commitment is the secret ingredient in every recipe for success and fulfillment. Once you are committed to something, it happens. No matter how long it takes, no matter what else happens,
no matter what
. That’s the power of commitment. It’s truly awe-inspiring!
Commitment Is What You Say Will Be Done
Let’s have an experience of commitment that really brings home what commitment means. So do this exercise. Ask yourself, “Will my children [and if you don’t have kids, use your spouse or your parents] ever starve to death?” Take this question seriously. What’s your answer?
We have never met anyone who said anything other than “No! Never! Not a chance!” And everyone says it immediately, apparently without any thought or hesitation at all.
Here’s the interesting thing: you have nothing to back up that statement. The truth is, you really don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow—or the day after or two hundred days from now. How could you possibly control the future? You can’t. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that your kids (spouse, or parents) will not starve—yet you will state with total certainty that it will never happen to them. How can you do that?
You do it because you are
committed
to it. That’s all. There is no more to it than that.
This is commitment at its clearest and most compelling. It has nothing to do with
how
a thing will or will not be accomplished. Commitment is simply, powerfully, and without question what you say will be done. The how of it all doesn’t matter at all to the making of the commitment itself. Commitment has nothing to do with how. Commitment is what will happen no matter what.
To What Are You Committed?
We’re going to make a bold assertion: whatever you have in your life right now and whoever you are in your life right now are exactly what you are committed to—no more and no less.
Like belief, attitude, purpose, and all of the other qualities we’ve been writing about in this book, commitment itself has no color of its own. The color of your commitment is the color you give it. You can be committed to failure or committed to success. It’s up to you.
You are always committed to something. The only question is, to what? If you are more committed to your comfort than you are to achieving your goals, you will be comfortable, and you may or may not accomplish your goals. In fact, you might be so committed to your comfort that your goals become impossible, for there are times (most times, really) when we must get out of our comfort zone in order to reach for our aspirations.
Let’s think back to our discussion of fear for a moment. Have you ever spoken in front of a sizable group of people? It’s considered by most psychologists to be the number-one fear of all time. Why do you suppose that is?
As we noted earlier, most people have a huge, even monstrous, fear of looking bad. Can you imagine anything worse than making a fool of yourself in front of hundreds of people? Would you be willing to be introduced with great fanfare to a big audience and then bomb, let them all down? We wouldn’t—and we’re certain that you wouldn’t, either.
So what’s the real problem here? The problem is what the speaker is committed to. In the case of people who are scared to death to speak in front of a group, the problem is that they are committed to looking good, to doing it right, to not blowing it. They are locked in their comfort zone, and that’s what they’re really committed to: comfort.
What if, instead, you were committed to inspiring and encouraging everyone in the room—would that make a difference? We promise you that it would. It has for us.
Peter’s career requires that he speak to large groups of people on a regular basis. At first, that scared his socks off. He was not in his comfort zone at all. The reason he was so frightened was that he was more committed to doing it right and looking good than he was to the men and women who had come to see and hear him or to what they needed and wanted. He was interested in their thinking well of him. He wanted to be “good”—not for them, really, but for himself. He wanted to be liked, appreciated, and recognized, considered important and maybe even famous. It was all about him and his ego. That’s what he was committed to.
When he finally got the message to commit to serving the audience, to inspire, encourage, and commit to others’ success more than to his own, he became a successful speaker. Before that time, he was too committed to himself to be of much use to others.
Commitment is powerful. Whether it’s for you or against you, it is, as always, up to you.
Have you ever met anyone committed to failure? We have—far too many times for our liking. And when you see a person who is committed to success, you sure can tell, can’t you?
Have you ever seen an entire company or enterprise committed to success? It’s amazing. (Remember the story about Nordstrom?) You can almost feel its commitment, and it’s not just superficial optimism and cheering, either. You just know it’s going to succeed, and the reason you know that is that it is living and working its commitments.
Do you remember the children’s story
The Little Engine That Could?
Kids love it when the little engine begins chugging up the long steep hill, pulling the circus train behind it, affirming again and again, “I think I can, I think I can.” That little engine is
committed
.
Most people are committed to convenience and comfort. Are you? Winners, in contrast, are committed to success, high achievement, happiness, and fulfillment. Are you?
The next question is, “How do I get committed?”
The Meaning of Commitment
First, let’s have a clear understanding of what commitment really means.
Commitment is not necessarily a do-or-die affair; you don’t have to throw yourself onto railroad tracks in service of your goal to prove you’re committed to it. And you don’t need to commit hara-kiri if you fail to reach a declared goal when or how you said you would.
When you are committed to something, you simply agree to play fully—win, lose, or draw. If you have committed to spending the evening playing a board game with your spouse and children, you don’t blow it off because you suddenly realize that your favorite movie is on TV. You play the game, and you do it with a good spirit, because you said you would do it. If you have committed to making ten sales calls to new people this week, and it’s Friday afternoon and you’ve made only nine, you don’t trot off to play eighteen holes of golf. You make the tenth call, because you said you would. Commitment is as simple as giving and keeping your word and doing your best. Commitment is doing what you said you would do, whether you feel like it or not.
Do you remember the baseball player Reggie Jackson? Reggie’s nickname was “Mr. October” because that’s when the World Series is played—and no matter what, Reggie would come through in those championship games. Once he hit two home runs in a World Series game with a 104-degree temperature and a bad case of the flu. That’s why Reggie is in the Baseball Hall of Fame—Mr. October, Mr. Commitment.
Do you remember when President John F. Kennedy committed the entire country to landing a man on the moon in only ten years? “I believe,” Kennedy said, “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of putting a man on the moon before this decade is out.”
Crazy, right? At the time it sure was. The United States was way behind the Russians in the space race, but the
Eagle
landed with a giant step for mankind—and right on schedule, too. America, the land of the free—and committed.
Scratch any happy, fulfilled person from any walk of life, and just beneath the surface you will find the thread of commitment that is common to all of them. People are simply attracted to those who can be counted on to honor their commitments, no matter what.
Leaders Leverage Power
In the business world, the fast lane on the highway of success is the lane of leadership, because accomplishment through others is a major key to success. This secret to leadership is summed up in a statement attributed to Andrew Carnegie: “I would rather have 1 percent of the efforts of a hundred people than 100 percent of my own.”
That’s because leverage works. You can achieve a hundred times more through a team or network of people than you can ever do all by yourself. No man or woman is an island, and the nature of people is that they will do what you do and do what you say, if you are a person who keeps his or her word—in other words, if you are committed.
Leadership is the fast lane. People will follow you if you are committed.
You must make a commitment before you ask for one. Commit to your dream the way a baby commits to walking. The child tries and tries and tries again until he or she walks. There is no maybe, no stopping, no comfort zone, there is only doing—walking.
Remember, we do not get paid for what we know, we get paid for
what we do
with what we know. We don’t get paid for
who
we know, either. We get paid for
what we can accomplish
with and through whom we know. And the doing of both of these, and anything else that matters, requires commitment.
Ed McElroy of U.S. Air once said, “Commitment gives us new power. No matter what comes to us—sickness, poverty, or disaster—we never turn our eye from the goal.”
Stew Leonard is the owner of “the world’s largest dairy store” in Norwalk, Connecticut. His store began as a thousand-square-foot, mom-and-pop retail operation, and it has grown to more than a hundred thousand square feet with annual sales of at least a hundred million dollars from just one store. Now Leonard has branched out to open other stores in Connecticut and New York.
Early in his business, Stew placed a three-ton rock beside the front door of his store. Chiseled in the rock is the following statement:
Rule #1: The customer is always right.
Rule #2: If the customer is ever wrong—reread Rule #1.
That’s Leonard’s commitment—carved in stone for all his customers to read. The motto is chiseled in rock, Leonard says, “because it will never change.”
Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success in life is just showing up.” True, perhaps—but “showing up” isn’t all there is to commitment. It’s the other 20 percent that rules, that has the real power and makes the difference between failure and success. That 20 percent is commitment.
Commitment isn’t necessarily a life-or-death matter. If you make a commitment and play fully but don’t reach your goal, you’re not going to have to give up your firstborn child. When you are committed, you just play the game as
though
your child or something else that really matters to you were on the line.
The great football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “There is only one way to succeed in anything . . . and that is to give everything. I do, and I demand that my players do. Any man’s finest hour is when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle . . . victorious.”
It’s about commitment.
Finally, Walter Cronkite said, “I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.”
Please understand that commitment is not just for leaders. Even though this section of this chapter focused on leadership, commitment is a principle for all of us. We must commit to being good parents, spouses, role models, employers, employees, teachers, students, or anything else we pursue.
Take a moment now to review your values and purpose, and also take another look at your beliefs. Then make a list of the top five commitments you are willing to make right now. Ask yourself the following:
What are you committed to doing?
What kind of person are you committed to being?
What five things would you tell the world you are committed to right now?
Don’t give a thought to how you will accomplish these commitments. There’ll be time enough for that later on. Write your five commitments below:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.