by Larry Senn
Learning to assume the innocence in others is a powerful way to spend more of your time up the Mood Elevator, at home, in your community, and at work.
13
Nurturing Faith and Optimism
I have learned that some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet are those who have suffered a traumatic event or loss. I admire them for their strength, but most especially for their life gratitude—a gift often taken for granted by the average person in society.
—SASHA AZEVEDO
Living life up the Mood Elevator greatly depends on how you react when you face adversity. Life happens—including seemingly bad things. It is what you make of those things in your thinking and the path you choose in response that determines your quality of life.
Marilyn Hamilton came back from adversity stronger and more purposeful. Growing up in Fresno, California, Marilyn had it all: a loving family and good looks (she was a beauty queen). She was also an accomplished athlete and an adventurous spirit who eventually journeyed to Australia to teach school. But one fateful day, while hang-gliding near her hometown, she neglected to correctly fasten her linchpin to her harness. She crashed into the side of a mountain and woke up a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down.
“I realized I was in trouble when, at the rehab center, I tried to sit up and immediately fell to the side like a ragdoll,” Marilyn said. Weeks of physical therapy followed. The only way she could move around was in a wheelchair. “People looked at me with pity, like I was sick, but I wasn’t sick. I was the same Marilyn, just with a different mode of getting around in the world.”26
Marilyn was distressed to discover that even the best wheelchairs then available were, as she called them, “steel dinosaurs.” She decided to do something about it. Marilyn and her hang-gliding buddies set up shop in a garage in Fresno and designed an entirely new wheelchair using the same aerodynamic materials found in hang-gliders. These chairs were lightweight, fast, maneuverable, and flexible, with parts that could be adjusted to fit the user’s body and specific disability needs. They jazzed them up, painting them pink and purple and other vibrant colors. They even decorated Marilyn’s new chair with rhinestones and named it The Quickie. What they did was much bigger than giving Marilyn a fun, sexy chair that reflected her personality; for people with disabilities, they changed the world forever.
Today, Quickie brand wheelchairs are sold around the world, and one of Marilyn’s original wheelchairs is showcased in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Marilyn has gone on to win numerous medals for wheelchair sports, including US Open tennis tournaments and skiing competitions. She has been featured on network television shows, including 60 Minutes, and has testified before Congress. She received the Minerva Award at Maria Shriver’s Women’s Conference in 2006 and is known the world over as a spokesperson for people with disabilities.
Marilyn observed, “It is not what happens to you in life that molds you; rather, it is how you respond. My motto is, If you can’t stand up, stand out.” Marilyn is a wonderful example of the central theme of this book—that life is what you make of it through your thinking.
Seeking the Right Outcome
In many religions, people are taught the practice of petitionary prayer—asking for a specific outcome: good health, relief from pain, a solution to a problem. Many have found this kind of petitionary prayer a meaningful part of their spiritual lives. But I was taught by my mother to pray instead for the “right outcome.” In essence, the prayer is for the right path to be revealed—that we will have the wisdom to see, do, and say the right things and make the best decisions we can. Woven into this form of prayer is the assumption that we don’t always know what’s best for us. In fact, it’s often unclear whether what’s happening to us is bad or good; time teaches us that many events that appear harmful are blessings in disguise.
There’s an old Eastern tale about an elderly farmer whose entire family is economically dependent on the farmer’s hardworking son. When the son breaks his leg, it is seen as a major disaster—until the emperor’s guards come to the village to round up all the able-bodied young men to fight in a distant war from which many will not return. Suddenly, the son’s temporary disability is revealed as a great gift.
I’ve learned from personal experience that seemingly disastrous events can turn out to be blessings.
As I recounted earlier, the end of my first marriage was the most painful thing that had ever happened to me. But the self-reflection it triggered led to a new life that is better than I could have imagined. I was driven to reflect on what was really important to me and what my purpose on earth was. I realized that I had been taking my three young sons—Kevin, Darin, and Jason, then ages seven, five, and three—for granted. The time I spent with them was more dutiful than wholehearted. Thanks to my new, clearer perspective, my central focus changed to building closer, more unconditionally loving relationships with them.
That whole process jolted me out of a world of distorted priorities, unconscious habits, and unhealthy normal. I began a journey to get to know myself and to discover deeper meaning in my life. Without the wakeup call of that painful divorce, that wouldn’t have occurred.
The experience also caused me to challenge my beliefs and behaviors and to see more possibilities for myself as an evolving human being. It led me to change the direction of my career and ultimately to found Senn Delaney as a culture-shaping firm that embodies my true mission in life.
Many people respond to an adverse event or circumstance by asking, “Why did that happen to me?” This path of questioning leads to lower mood states marked by blame, judgment, and even depression. Instead, when painful things happen to you, try asking, “Why did that happen for me?” This less-traveled path positions you not as a passive victim but as an active person, seeking the path to your own right outcome. It lifts you higher up the Mood Elevator, prompting curiosity, resourcefulness, and optimism.
The Power of Faith
Imagine what it would be like to know that, no matter how serious the problems you now face, in the end everything will work out okay. Imagine knowing that even if a close friend or loved one does something to hurt you, your love will prevail and you will be close again. Imagine going through a seemingly disastrous day confident in the knowledge that this too shall pass.
What I’m describing here is the gift of faith. Faith gives you hope and wisdom. It makes you less likely to catastrophize—to waste time and energy imagining all the terrible things that could happen. Instead it allows you to focus your resources on developing creative solutions to whatever problems you face.
When my daughter was attending business school at the University of Southern California, she asked me why she had to take a complex math course for which she could see no possible use in her career. I shared with her one of my theories about the purpose of college: Yes, it is to educate, but more than that it is to demonstrate that problems that seem difficult or even impossible to solve can be solved. Experiencing this repeatedly helps us develop the faith that we’ll be able to solve the next seemingly insoluble problem that comes along. It’s an important lesson to learn, whether you learn it in college or in life’s own school of hard knocks.
Faith can take many different forms:
Faith in your own competence or ability
Faith that you will find a way through the day’s darkness of difficulty
Faith that you can handle the future no matter what it brings
Faith that your natural state is a healthy one and that it can return if you lose it
Faith in God or some higher intelligence or power that is greater than you and I
In a way, it doesn’t matter which of these forms of faith you find most intuitively appealing. What matters is that you believe in something that gives you hope and confidence for the future. Faith as described here is not passive; it’s not a matter of waiting around and hoping for the best. In fact, it is just the opposite: It is a very active process that liberates all
the energy, creativity, and resourcefulness inside you. Faith frees us from the paralysis that depression and despair can bring. When we live in faith, we see more options and discover more solutions to whatever problems life throws our way.
Faith played an important role in my making it through college. I applied to engineering school in the late 1950s, right after Russia sent Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, into space, sparking an international competition for scientific and engineering talent. Schools like the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), were inundated with engineering applications. They set extremely high acceptance standards and still had to wash out two-thirds of the freshman class who simply didn’t have the grit to survive. I went from being a top student in my small high school to feeling like one of the dumbest of the exceptionally brainy kids in my class at UCLA.
I can still remember the calculus class that started every day at noon, with the bells of Royce Hall tolling ominously in the background. One day our stern, elderly professor ordered me to the blackboard to solve a complex problem just after the bell stopped ringing: “Senn—problem three in the homework.” As I struggled to solve the equation, he was right beside me, erasing my work and shaking his head in disgust and pity. After a few moments, he stopped me and suggested I consider changing my major or dropping the class.
I went home that weekend and told my mother I didn’t think I could make it. Thankfully, Mom didn’t let me succumb to despair. Instead she sat me down and talked to me in a very supportive and affirming way. She said I had all the God-given qualities I needed to succeed in school and in life. I had been created whole, complete, and capable—I just had to believe it. Mom concluded by paraphrasing the promise of Jesus: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.
I learned later that Jesus was referring to the black mustard plant, an annual that grows up to 9 feet tall yet starts from a very tiny seed. If something so huge grows from such a humble beginning, maybe I could build a successful college career from the frail start I’d experienced so far.
My mother also told me that the only thing that could stop me was my own thinking. She gave me a copy of a little book called As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. Originally published in 1902, it begins:
Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:—
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.27
I carried around Allen’s little book for years. Here are a few other useful concepts I took from it:
Every action and feeling is preceded by a thought.
Right thinking begins with the words we say to ourselves.
Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.
I’m sure you can recognize the lifelong influence of James Allen’s thinking on my own approach to life, as reflected in this book.
I did finish engineering school, though I later realized that my passion wasn’t for engineering but rather for working in business with people. I went on to get my MBA, fell in love with solving business case study problems, and discovered that I wanted a career in consulting.
The True Meaning of Faith
Let’s be clear about what I am advocating when I urge you to live a life filled with faith, hope, and optimism. It is not about “the power of positive thinking.” We all ride the Mood Elevator from top to bottom, and we can’t have positive thoughts all the time. What we can do is pay attention to our feelings as a guide to the quality of our thinking. When we do, we can hold our negative thoughts more lightly and take them less seriously. As a result, they will have less power over us and we will function better.
I am not endorsing being naïvely optimistic. There is a wise Sufi saying: Trust in God and tie your camel. In other words, have faith and hope—but at the same time be realistic, plan for contingencies, and be prepared, proactive, and accountable.
I am not recommending that you get carried away with exuberance and unbridled excitement. Just as it is best to not make decisions when you are low on the Mood Elevator, it is also important to not make decisions when you are euphoric with an overactive mind. That behavior has led to many spur-of-the-moment Las Vegas weddings that didn’t work out and many valueless timeshares and condos purchased by people enjoying a relaxing vacation.
Strange as it may seem, wild enthusiasm has much the same impact on the clarity of our thinking as do anxiety or anger. All are intense feelings that seem compelling and that are accompanied by a loud internal voice justifying the action you want to take. Don’t confuse emotions like elation and exuberance with higher mood states like gratitude, wisdom, and creativity. Faith, hope, and genuine optimism evoke a more serene feeling—the product of a quiet mind.
Few things can enhance our experience of life more than faith and hope. We all will face difficult situations and challenging people in our lives. The healthiest and least stressful way to deal with them is with a good measure of faith and hope. So wherever faith originates for you, cherish it and nourish it, even in the most difficult times. It will serve you well.
14
Dealing With Your Down Days
Happiness is not the absence of problems—it’s the ability to deal with them.
—STEVE MARABOLI
The primary goal of this book is to provide tips and pointers that can help you spend more time up the Mood Elevator. But we will all spend time among the lower floors as well, since having low moods is a natural, normal part of life. That’s why a secondary goal of this book is to help you do less damage to yourself and others when you are feeling down.
As sentient beings, possessing the power of thought and emotions is a gift that advances us intellectually. This allows us to imagine the future, plan for things yet to come, muse about possibilities, and analyze and interpret everything that is going on within and around us. Thought has allowed us to conquer polio, write timeless classical music, and travel to the moon.
That same power to imagine through thought can also cause us to worry excessively and unnecessarily, experience periods of depression about real or imagined problems, have moments of paranoia based on our assumptions about others’ motives, be self-righteous and judgmental, and even experience fits of anger and rage. No matter how well you understand the principles in this book, your thinking will at times take you to the lower levels on the Mood Elevator. That’s why learning to do down well is a necessary skill.
Remember That Your Thinking Is Unreliable in Low Mood States
Have you ever said something to a friend or loved one in the heat of the moment that you wished you could take back? Have you ever hit the send button to transmit an email that you later realized was a terrible mistake? If either of these has happened to you, think back to the circumstances. Where were you on the Mood Elevator map when this occurred? Most likely, you were somewhere in the lower half.
Both of these examples illustrate the most important principle in dealing effectively with down days: remember that your thinking is unreliable in the lower mood states, so don’t trust it; try not to act on it right away. Instead question and challenge your thinking before relying on it as a guide to action.
When I get an email that pushes my buttons, dropping me into a state of irritation, anxiety, or anger, I may type a response—but then I will click save to draft rather than the send button. I allow several hours or even a day to pass. By the time I read my reply again, I am usually at a different level on the Mood Elevator, and I can see the flawed thinking it contains. Sometimes I delete the response and start over; other times I’ll thoroughly edit the message to take out the irritation and judgment before finally hitting send.
As for the things we may say to a loved one while in a low-mood state, those are a little harder to control than emails. Technology doesn’t come to o
ur rescue in this case. Instead you need to learn to be very deliberate in your communication style—to avoid saying or doing hurtful things in times of stress and low-quality thinking.
Bernadette and I first got together in the 1970s, the era of the human potential movement. The conventional relationship wisdom at the time was encapsulated in sayings like Tell it like it is, Let it all hang out, and Don’t go to bed with anything left unsaid. As a result, there were a few times when we struggled unproductively until all hours of the night, fighting over issues that, in retrospect, were usually not worth the time and energy.
As we both began to better understand how our minds worked, Bernadette suggested a new ground rule: let’s not take on any significant relationship issue when either of us is on any of the lower levels on the Mood Elevator. The impact of that rule has been quite remarkable. It is one reason why we have such a peaceful, loving, respectful relationship today. We take on critical issues and deal with them honestly and forthrightly—but we do so only when we are both in the higher mood states.
If you’re wondering how we follow and enforce this ground rule, a typical dialog between us might go like this:
LARRY: It looks like you are feeling bothered about something. Is it something you want to talk about?
BERNADETTE: No, not now. My thinking is not clear. If I need to talk about it, I’ll let you know later.
Bernadette may wait a few hours or even a day to see how she feels about the issue when she is back up the Mood Elevator. She may find that the issue simply dissolves in the light of her higher-quality thinking. Or she may find that she needs to talk about it with me. In that case, the issue is usually dealt with very easily and in an almost “by the way” manner.