The Lies We Believe

by Dr. Chris Thurman

  Consider the real-life parallels to that. Have you ever heard parents say that they can’t wait to get their kids raised and out of the house so that they can have some time to themselves, yet once the kids are gone, these same parents nearly go crazy with all the time they have on their hands?

  Have you ever heard a man say he couldn’t wait until retirement so that he wouldn’t have to work any longer, yet once retirement came, he became depressed, maybe even suicidal, because he lost his work-related identity? That was one of the themes in Joseph Waumbaugh’s novel The New Centurions, which relates the story of a police officer who killed himself after he was retired from the force because he no longer felt he had a reason to exist.

  The point of all this is to challenge you with another great truth that has survived the test of time: the virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize. It is the hard work we put into the trip itself that is our victory in life, not getting to the destination.

  I have had my struggles with “the virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize” truth. My tendency is to be so prize-minded that my efforts along the way get little or no credit. Graduate school felt like that. I felt as if victory was to be obtained only when I got my doctorate, not in my efforts to get it. Postponing victory until after five years of graduate school was a long time to wait. Writing my first book felt the same way. I worked hard for more than a year to write it, but I didn’t allow myself any feelings of victory until it was finished. The effort to write it seemed to have no virtue, whereas I put much of my sense of victory in the actual prize of finishing the book.

  In each case, I cost myself a great deal. In retrospect, I can see that the virtue was in working on a doctorate, not in getting one. I can also see that the virtue was in writing a book, not in its finally coming out. This “scoreboard” mentality, where the effort on the field is considered unimportant and the final score is considered the only thing that matters, crushes a lot of us.

  Accepting the Struggle

  There is another spin on this issue: pursuing a dream but not achieving it. How many times have you felt like a loser because something you were earnestly trying to accomplish didn’t come through? So many times, our efforts don’t result in what we hoped they would. The salesperson invests tremendous amounts of time in making an important sale to somebody, but it doesn’t come through. The athlete trains diligently for a major competition but doesn’t place in the top three. Parents put their all into raising well-rounded, healthy children, yet one of them makes numerous self-destructive decisions totally out of keeping with the way he was raised. Life is full of these situations where our efforts aren’t rewarded with a successful outcome or at least aren’t as successful as we had hoped.

  In these situations, most of us would feel that we had failed and that there was no value in our efforts. Our struggle would not feel worthwhile to us because the prize never came. As before, let me suggest that the truth we need to face is that the virtue is always in our efforts, not in what they yield.

  Yes, I know this sounds trite, but if understood on a deeper level, this truth becomes very important. It creates more willingness to try and less resentment and bitterness if our efforts do not turn out so well. Let me take you into the counseling office again to show you the importance of this truth.

  Hal was a full-blown perfectionist, which caused chronic feelings of depression and anxiety for him. Throughout his life, he struggled with a feeling that his performance was never good enough. In college, he made grades that most of us would kill for, but to him, they were mediocre.

  He felt the same way about his performance in sports. He was an avid golfer, but he was chronically upset about his golf game because it was never “good enough.” He might shoot the best round of his life, yet walk away upset because of the one or two holes he played imperfectly.

  In our sessions together, Hal started to accept the “to err is human” truth discussed earlier in this book, and his depression and self-hatred lessened. However, in spite of this progress, Hal started to feel that his improvement should be coming faster. He wasn’t going to be satisfied until he had his perfectionism “perfectly” cured. So we discussed this issue.

  “Dr. Thurman, I’m getting very impatient with therapy. Things aren’t going fast enough to suit me. I’m not getting better quickly enough!”

  “You feel you should be changing faster?” I asked.

  “Yes. I feel that I should be over this problem by now,” he answered, as if not wanting to be challenged on it.

  “Hal, it sounds to me like you’re being perfectionistic about your perfectionism,” I said.

  “What! What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, you have been perfectionistic since the time you were a very young boy, being that way day by day for more than forty years, and after twelve sessions of counseling, you feel as though you should be cured. How realistic is that?”

  “Not very, I guess,” Hal admitted. “But I can’t really feel good until I whip this thing.”

  I shook my head slowly. “No virtue in the effort, just the prize,” I mumbled, more to myself than to Hal.

  “What’s that?” Hal asked. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

  “You seem to take no satisfaction from the fact that you are trying to fight your perfectionism. Instead, you’ve decided that you can’t claim victory until you completely defeat the problem.”

  “Well, that’s true, isn’t it? Until I defeat my perfectionism, there is no victory.”

  “I don’t agree with you,” I said bluntly. “The fact that you came here for help and are trying to be less perfectionistic is your real victory, your ‘virtue,’ if you will. It’s not a matter of whether or not you’ve beaten it yet.”

  “That sounds nice in theory,” he shot back, “but while I’m still struggling with perfectionism, I’m continuing to be depressed, angry, and unhappy. That isn’t much of a reward for all this work I’ve been doing.”

  “But you’re doing all that you can. Can’t that be enough?” I asked, knowing full well that Hal wouldn’t see it that way.

  “No, it isn’t enough. I’m not going to be content until I see some results for my efforts. That’s just the way I am about things.”

  “But I thought ‘the way you are about things’ is why you’ve been so unhappy and why you came to see me for help,” I countered. “You sound like you’re making a case for staying the way you are.”

  “No, I’m just saying that it’s hard for me to accept mere effort as the victory. What I want is the end result—that’s the victory I’m after.”

  “I understand that, Hal, but I think this attitude often gets you into emotional trouble. So many times the reward for our efforts is way down the road, if available at all. In light of that, it seems to me that our effort to try to accomplish something worthwhile has to be the victory.”

  “Maybe, but what you want me to accept is pretty foreign to my whole way of thinking,” said Hal. “I’m not sure I can buy into it.”

  “Believe me, I know what you are talking about. The idea that the effort is the key thing didn’t always fit into my way of thinking, either. But I believe it to be one of the critical truths we need to live by if we are going to be emotionally healthy. Given that you play golf, let me put it this way. The virtue is not actually in breaking par but in making an effort to play your best. As simple as that sounds, it is the truth.”

  “So you are telling me to fight my perfectionism by letting my efforts to change be enough—at least for now—and to quit focusing so much on whether or not I whip this thing. That, I guess, will come by making the effort, right? Sort of like playing golf: just work on keeping your head down and left arm straight, and the ball almost has to fly in the direction you want it to.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I agreed. “All we can do is make a good effort. That is our victory, our virtue. Then the ball goes where it goes.”

  Winning the Prize Is the Only Thing?

&nbs
p; In my efforts to help Hal focus on effort versus results, an interesting piece of the puzzle emerged. When Hal was a youngster playing Little League, his father would take him out for a hamburger and a malt after a game only when he played well. On nights when Hal played poorly, his father drove him straight home. From the experience, Hal surmised that the bottom line was how well he performed, not how hard he tried. His whole life might have been different if his father had said things like, “I’m sorry you didn’t do too well tonight, Son, but I’m proud of the effort you gave it. Let’s grab something to eat and then get home in time to play a little catch before it gets dark.”

  As a youngster, Hal needed his parents to help him understand that “the virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize.” He needed to know that however well or poorly he played, the important thing was that he gave it his all. Since he was not told that, he fell victim to the Vince Lombardi mania that says, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” What rubbish.

  Here’s a better perspective for you to have on winning and losing. Teddy Roosevelt was shorter than most men. He had poor eyesight. As a child, he was often quite sick. He was married in 1880 to Alice Hathaway Lee, who died just four years later. He ran for mayor of New York City and lost. He ran for president in 1912 and lost. He organized an expedition in 1919 to explore the remote jungles of South America but died of a blood clot before getting very far into the jungle.

  At a quick glance, it would seem that Teddy Roosevelt had a terrible life. But Roosevelt lived daily by the concept that the virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize. Here is how he expressed it:

  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat; who strives valiantly; who errs and may fail again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion.2

  Did this attitude help Roosevelt through those terrible phases of his life? You be the judge. Here is a brief summary of his life’s accomplishments: commissioner of the New York City Police; assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy; colonel in the Rough Riders; governor of New York; vice president of the United States in 1900; at age forty-two, the youngest man ever to serve as president of the United States (1901–9); author of two thousand published articles, essays, and books; father of six children in two marriages; and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.

  Teddy Roosevelt was a winner every day of his life—whether he won an election or lost it, whether he made progress on a task or suffered a setback—because Roosevelt’s personal definition of a winner was someone who made an effort. Making the effort and being “on the field” were what counted, not if you finished win, place, or show.

  When Losing Is Winning

  Champions in sports, business, politics, industry, and the arts know this truth: if you do your best at something, you end up a winner even if the scoreboard says you’ve lost.

  I realize that sounds contradictory, but stay with me a moment and I’ll show you how it works.

  During the 1980 Olympics, an American athlete named Eric Heiden took all five gold medals for men’s speed skating. In the first four events Heiden set new Olympic speed records: 38.03 seconds for the 500-meter race; 1 minute 15.18 seconds for the 1,000-meter; 1 minute 55.44 seconds for the 1,500meter; and 7 minutes 2.29 seconds for the 5,000-meter. In the final event, the 10,000-meter race, Heiden not only broke the Olympic record, but also set a new all-time world speed record of 14 minutes 28.13 seconds.

  As amazing as these victories were, they came as no surprise to those who had followed Eric Heiden through the years. Heiden had been winning every time he competed in an amateur race. He was recognized as the greatest men’s speed skater who had ever lived. Sports writers knew it; coaches knew it; even Heiden’s competitors knew it. The plain and simple fact was, no one could equal Eric Heiden when it came to speed skating.

  Now, you may think that such knowledge would demoralize and deflate skaters who had to compete against Heiden. After all, what was the point of entering a race when you knew in advance you had no chance whatsoever of beating the champion? Depressing, right?

  Just the opposite proved true. When Heiden won the 500-meter race, silver medal honors went to Evgeni Kulikov of the USSR, who turned in his personal fastest time ever for the 500-meter race. When Heiden won the 1,000-meter race, the runner-up was Gaetan Boucher of Canada, who clocked his personal fastest time ever for the 1,000-meter.

  And so it continued in every race. The silver and bronze medalists who lost to Heiden actually achieved greater personal speeds than ever before simply because they were doing their best to be the equal of Eric Heiden. This phenomenon became known as the Heiden Effect, which now is defined as achieving new personal victories by striving to equal a competitor one knows one can never be equal to or surpass.

  Would you call Evgeni Kulikov and Gaetan Boucher a couple of losers just because they finished second to Eric Heiden? I wouldn’t. My feeling is that anyone who exceeds all of his personal best levels of performance is a winner, no matter what the scoreboard says. That is the way I am trying to bring up my three children. If they make a solid effort, they’ll be winners in my opinion. And unlike Hal’s father, I let my children know that their dad loves them—unconditionally!

  The virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize. Memorize that truth. Meditate on it. Keep it available for those times you are working diligently on something and the reward is nowhere in sight. When you are fighting a weight problem and not making much progress, remind yourself that the effort to lose weight is your victory. When you are fighting being in financial debt, remind yourself that the effort to pay off your bills is your virtue. If your marriage is faltering and all your efforts to make it better seem to be failing, remind yourself that your struggle to make the marriage better is your victory. I hope “I’m giving it my best shot” can become a victory statement for you. More often than not, it will result in “I accomplished,” which is icing on the cake.

  Grantland Rice was right. It is how you play the game that really matters.

  Growthwork

  This chapter, as with the chapters preceding it, has challenged you to alter your old way of thinking about certain ideas you’ve heard or experienced all your life. Before you move on to the next chapter, I want you to do another growth-work assignment.

  Specifically, I want you to take one of the truths we have covered so far and write down the pros and cons of thinking that way. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having that tape up in your head? Let me give you a little help to get you started.

  Let’s say you choose to do a comparison using the truth “to err is human.” Here is how you might want to do this in your journal:

  Truth: To Err Is Human

  Advantages of Thinking This Disadvantages of Thinking This

  • It fits reality. • It could lead to becoming indifferent about mistakes.

  • It allows for mistakes.

  • It takes pressure off me. • It could be used to justify making mistakes: “After all, I 'm only human.”

  • It allows me to focus on

  learning from mistakes vs.

  wasting time and energy • __________________________ __________________________

  being self-condemning.

  • _______________________ • __________________________

  _______________________ __________________________

  The point of all this is to get you to use your common sense to assess the cost/benefit side of thinking a certain way. The truth will always have more benefit to it than cost; lies will always cost you more than they help you gain. Take a shot at this by choosing a truth that is especially important for you to grapple with, and compare the pros and cons of thinking it.

  13

  LIFE IS DIFFICULT

  Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning

  the instrument as one goes
on.

  —Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  Does the name Vinko Bogataj ring a bell? No?

  Well, let me give you some hints about who this very famous person is. He drives a forklift in a factory that manufactures anchor chains. He lives a quiet life with his wife, two daughters, and mother-in-law. In his spare time, he paints and carves wood.

  Any guesses yet? None? Well, let me give you more hints. Vinko Bogataj lives in Lesce, Yugoslavia, and is probably the most famous retired ski jumper in history. Still no guesses?

  Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’ve probably seen Vinko Bogataj. You see, Vinko happens to be the poor “agony of defeat” guy of ABC’s Wide World of Sports fame. He was the guy who took an incredible head-over-heels fall while in a ski jump competition in Oberstdorf, Germany, in 1971. Unfortunately for Vinko, Wide World of Sports was there to capture every inglorious second of his spectacular fall. They have been broadcasting Vinko’s fall at the opening of their show every week for years, permanently immortalizing him in the “Sports Hall of Shame.” Jim McKay, the voice of Wide World of Sports for the thirty years it has been on the air, says that perhaps the single most-asked question about the show concerns this poor skier from Lesce.

  I don’t know about you, but I kind of understand how Vinko must have felt when he messed up for all the world to see. In my own not-so-glorious ways throughout my life, I have made some pretty spectacular falls. Mine weren’t there for the whole world to see as was Vinko’s, yet I still felt as though I had about the same amount of embarrassment and shame that went along with them. Hardly anything feels worse than these moments.