Category: Leadership

Necessary endings

I’ve not always been grateful when people told me that I should really read such-and-such a book. Too often what gripped their interest didn’t grip mine.

So, when my friend Steve recommended Necessary Endings, I thanked him but never got round to buying a copy. Then the book arrived through the post, a gift from Steve. ‘He must really want me to read it!’ I thought. I’m so glad I did. I’d put Necessary Endings high up in the top ten of important books I’ve read in recent years. Much of it is directed to business professionals, yet the insights relate to ordinary life for ordinary people.

Henry Cloud is the author, a clinical psychologist who also wrote Boundaries which is subtitled ‘When to say yes; how to say no’. I needed to read that book 30 years earlier.

Necessary Endings* conveyed a message to me I needed to hear later on.

Cloud sets out his main ideas in the opening pages. Here are some brief quotes:

‘Today may be the enemy of your tomorrow.’

‘In your business and perhaps your life, the tomorrow that you desire and envision may never come to pass if you do not end some things you are doing today.’

‘…you will see that endings are a natural part of the universe, and your life and business must face them, stagnate, or die.’

The principle is simple: To get to the good that’s right for you, you must let go of what you have already.

That immediately reminded me of a critical scene in the 1975 film, The Eiger Sanction, which stars Clint Eastwood. (I won’t give away the story line or ending but will describe a critical scene. Those who think they might still watch the film may prefer to skip beyond this paragraph.) Near the end, the main character, Hemlock, leads the descent of the north face of the Eiger, heading for a tunnel in the mountain. Others fall to their deaths, but Hemlock survives, though left hanging from a rope over a 4000 foot drop. He’s only a few metres from the tunnel ‘window’ and rescuers standing in the tunnel throw Hemlock a rope which he catches. But he’s already held by his own rope. It’s saving him from falling to certain death. Yet he can’t be pulled to safety unless he cuts his rope, the rope which has literally been his lifeline. That’s a huge risk. What will he do?

I’m not answering that question! But the analogy to Cloud’s point is clear. There are moments when the only way to the next good thing is by cutting free from what holds you now.

Cloud develops his theme masterfully through his book. But, for this blog, the comments which follow are mine, because I’m sharing only what I’ve seen or experienced to be true.

What you have will usually feel safer than anything you don’t yet have. We are secure with the present, because we know it. What might happen in the future is unknown, uncertain and therefore unwelcome. But what we have isn’t better just because we have it! Or just because we understand it. I may know exactly why I’ve got a headache, but that doesn’t mean I want to keep it!

Familiarity doesn’t just breed contempt, it breeds complacency. Our self-preservation instincts bias us to stick with what feels safe. Hence, the person considering leaving secure employment to become self-employed will often choose to stay in the job with the regular salary. The ‘run your own business’ dream is at war with the ‘stay safe at all times’ instinct, especially when there’s a mortgage to pay and a family to feed.

But safer isn’t necessarily better. Some years ago a radio programme interviewed women who’d given up lucrative careers to be stay-at-home mums. They were abandoning professional ambitions and a second income in order to spend time with the family. The loss of income forced their families into more modest lifestyles. But the women reported that the overall quality of family life had increased hugely. Everyone was happier, more relaxed, more content. They’d no regrets about the change. The safe choice would have been status quo; but they ended what they had in order to gain something better for themselves and their families.

(By the way, I don’t know why the husbands weren’t those who let go of their careers! Perhaps another programme covered that.)

For others, the decision those women made might have been entirely wrong. My point, though, is that there are criteria other than ‘safeness’ to be considered when deciding between ‘change’ and ‘no change’.

The choice may not be between a ‘bad’ present and a ‘good’ future. Sometimes the present is good and the future looks good, but of course you can only have one. You must decide which.

That’s far from easy. Alison and I faced that situation choosing whether or not to have more children after we already had two. Two was great, a boy and then a girl, the exact family unit described in old-fashioned books. Yet we’d always thought we’d have a third. Hmm…? Inconveniently there’s no middle ground. You can’t have two and a half children, nor ‘return baby to store’ within two weeks if everything doesn’t work out well. A third would be a decision for life. Our family was wonderful with two, but having another would also be wonderful.  We chose to have number three, and we have no regrets. Nor did we regret it when we chose to have number four!

In some of the most practical decisions of life – having children, moving home, changing jobs, buying another car – there are necessary endings. You have to let go of what’s great to gain something else that’s also great. When new opportunities are possible, we have to choose. And that, after all, is a great privilege.

Failing to recognise the time for an ending can be disastrous. We lived in the north of the USA, right alongside Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes. Those lakes are massive, almost seas. But there are smaller lakes all over the northern part of America, and in the far north they offer the opportunity for ice fishing.

There’s a Wikipedia page headed Ice Fishing. Here are the opening two sentences:

Ice fishing is the practice of catching fish with lines and fish hooks or spears through an opening in the ice on a frozen body of water. Ice fishers may fish in the open or in heated enclosures, some with bunks and amenities.

That description nicely sums up the sport, but almost underplays it. Use a search engine related to ice fishing, and you’ll find a myriad of special tools for sale: snowmobiles to get far out on the ice; augers to cut the hole in the ice; shelters to keep comfortable while fishing and overnight; super-warm clothing; books that will explain how to do ‘jigging with a spring bobber’. And much, much more.

That wouldn’t be my kind of sport, but if it was, there’s one thing I wouldn’t want to do. I would not want to be camped in the middle of a frozen lake as spring warms the air and melts the ice. The goal of the sport is to fish, not to have the ice beneath your feet collapse consigning you to certain death in super cold water.

There’s a time when something feels exactly right, and a time when the same thing has become seriously wrong. Knowing when an ending has come is essential. My friend wanted just a few more years to build up his business. He knew his health wasn’t great, but he’d stop soon. But his ‘soon’ never came. He died suddenly from a massive heart attack. What had been so right for him had become so wrong. There’s a time to end what we’re doing, and nothing good comes from ignoring that.

Sometimes there’s an ending which is not our decision. Elite sports stars may have to retire years earlier than they expected because of injury. Or firms merge and people are made redundant, perhaps with little chance of employment again in their field. Or someone is fired, deservedly or not. Or a relationship, perhaps a marriage, is ended by the other person’s choice, not ours. Or a talent someone believed would take them to the top proves not quite good enough, and the dream dies.

These situations are all very different. What they have in common are disappointment, sadness, confusion, anxiety, loss of self-esteem, and perhaps false guilt.

There’s a saying that if someone goes through life with no failures, then they didn’t try hard enough. There’s some truth in that. Ambitious people push boundaries, but not all boundaries yield. And not everyone wants to cooperate with our plans. So there will be an ending, with all the grief that brings.

Three short paragraphs of advice.

As best you can, end well. Our instinct is to get angry, and let everyone know how cheated or hurt we feel. But that usually only inflicts damage, much of it damage to ourselves.

Lean on others. The temptation is to keep our hurt secret, a private agony we don’t share. That’s not wise. There are times we need strength beyond our own, our burden shared, but others can’t help if they don’t know. Let them in, and they can listen to our anger or disappointment, reassure us of our worth, and give hope for the future.

There’s a saying that ‘when God closes a door he opens a window’. I’m not a fan of trite sayings. Yet, every ending is a new beginning. There have been things in my life which had to end so God could give me the even better future he had planned for me. When something ends and we let it go, we’re not left with empty hands. God gives us new dreams, new skills, new friends, new ways to be useful and fulfilled. There are good beginnings beyond even the worst endings.

I’m grateful to Henry Cloud for his book, and to my friend Steve for giving me a copy. The simple thesis – that there are ‘necessary endings’ – has become an important truth for me, and hopefully also now for you.

* Dr Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings, 2010, Harper Collins Publishers. It’s easily found online, but be careful not to confuse it with a book with the same title by another author.  Cloud also has his own website: www.drcloud.com

Some things can’t be taught

I was listening to a podcast during which the hosts were responding to a listener’s complaint that his doctor lacked compassion. Seems the podcasters also knew compassion-deficient medics. The podcast conversation was about general practitioners (primary care physicians), people we’d expect to communicate care and concern. But apparently these doctors didn’t. And one of the podcasters said she was surprised about that, because, after all, ‘we can teach compassion’.

Really? We can teach the importance of compassion, and perhaps ways in which a doctor can show compassion appropriately. But can we make someone compassionate? Could any content of a lecture result in the uncaring people who walked in, later walking out as caring people? Compassion isn’t an idea or a piece of knowledge. It’s a heart-felt desire to love, support, encourage, sympathise. That’s how it is, not just for doctors but for anyone.

It got me thinking about what else can’t be taught. It wasn’t difficult to come up with a long list. I’ve set down only a few here.

Wisdom  Someone might have a fistful of university degrees, but that’s no guarantee they’ll act wisely. The captain of the Titanic had all the necessary sea-faring qualifications, but on one fateful night lacked the wisdom to take his vessel slowly through iceberg-strewn water. The Titanic was travelling at virtually full speed, leaving only 30 seconds from the sighting of the iceberg to the moment of collision. The captain had knowledge, but on that night lacked wisdom.

Kindness  A couple of years ago I was walking in our local shopping centre, when a female voice with a slightly foreign accent said, ‘Excuse me, didn’t you work in the offices just up the road?’

‘Yes, I did…’ I said hesitantly, turning to see who’d asked the question. I couldn’t place her. I wondered if she’d mistaken me for someone else, but she was right that I used to work in those offices. ‘I’m sorry, I said. ‘I don’t recognise you.’

‘That’s all right, but I recognise you. I worked in the early evenings cleaning the offices, and you often asked me how I was. And listened while I told you. You were kind to me.’

Now I felt slightly guilty, because I still didn’t remember her. But I did speak with the cleaners who came in when others had gone. Their work was important, and they were important. So I enjoyed getting to know them. And, for at least that lady, it had mattered.

But there was not a single class during my theological degrees or business degree on kindness. No-one taught that. Kindness, thoughtfulness, caring and similar qualities should have been talked about, but I suspect they were never on the curriculum for two reasons: a) no-one thought they needed to be taught; b) no-one thought they could be taught.

Spirituality  Now surely that was taught in theological college? I remember lectures on different approaches to spirituality, one of which resulted in the challenge to meditate for as long as we could, with one hour as the minimum. (I did reasonably well for about 30 minutes, after which my mind kept meditating on why the clock wasn’t going round faster. Failed that challenge.) And there was an interesting study on the theme of prayer in Luke’s gospel.

So, we talked about spirituality, but lectures could never make anyone spiritual. Why not? Because true spirituality is practising the presence of God, living close to God, longing to know God and to serve God. It’s the desire for every part of your being to belong to God, and every area of your life dedicated to his purposes. That’ll result in prayer, Bible study, and maybe even meditation, but these are disciplines of spirituality, not spirituality itself.

Someone could sit in classes on spirituality for ten years, and not emerge any closer to God. Spirituality is a thing of the heart, of the mind, of the will, of someone’s desires and motivations and goals. It comes from inside, and can’t be taught from outside.

I could go on with my list. There are plenty more ‘unteachables’: empathy; friendliness; leadership; humility; patience; virtue. And even the supremely important love. If only love could be taught, wouldn’t the world be a much better place? But it can’t, because, like other attitudes and attributes, it lives in the heart and flows out through all that’s said and done.

So, is there no way to help anyone discover and own qualities like these in their lives? It’s not hopeless.

First, some things are caught, even when they can’t be taught.

I was about 20 when I met Paul. He was 25 and married. Paul and his wife were warm-hearted, outgoing, friendly Americans. They’d come to Edinburgh so Paul could study for his PhD in a subject I didn’t really understand, other than it was to do with the New Testament. I had just left full-time journalism, and was studying to pass exams that would get me admitted to university. The long-term goal was to become a minister. Paul and I became friends. Soon I picked up on his passion for study, and in particular for understanding the New Testament. He inspired me to get hold of a book called The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1961 by Stephen Neill. I travelled by bus every day, and read a few pages going out and a few more coming back. Sometimes I read it while walking down the street. Some of it didn’t make sense, but I was hooked. That book, which I still have today, plus Paul’s enthusiasm for New Testament study, gripped me. I passed my exams, and was enrolled at the University of Edinburgh. After a few years I had my Arts degree, then began studying theology. I could have specialised in several areas, but I had only one aim: to do an Honours degree in New Testament. That worked out well, and I was awarded a national scholarship to study for a PhD in (you guessed) New Testament studies.

Paul never told me that I should love studying the New Testament. But his passion became my passion. It communicated. It inspired. It motivated. And therefore changed the direction my studies would take and therefore my life would take. He didn’t teach any goal to me, but I certainly learned one from him.

Second, sometimes coaching gets you where teaching can’t.

I learned to swim when I was about five years old. Who taught me? It would seem my Dad did. But not really. My Dad couldn’t teach me because he couldn’t swim. He understood the basic strokes with arms and feet, but he was hopeless at coordinating his movements and sank like a brick. But Dad wanted me to learn, so he’d take me to the swimming pool and coach me as best he could. Lean forward, arms out front, then pull to the side and push forward again, all while pulling my feet up and out and back. He’d put his hand just under my body, not holding me up but reassuring me that he’d never let me drown. And one day I took off through the water with a near perfect breast stroke, unafraid, somehow having mastered one of those abilities you never lose.

Dad couldn’t teach me, but his coaching and encouragement got me there. I’ve seen that model followed in other areas. It happens in sport when a football team coach, perhaps never the best of players, inspires and guides others to greatness. Or someone helping people become capable public speakers. There’s no formula for that, for each person must find their own ‘voice’ and their own mode of delivery. The good coach doesn’t impose a method, but helps each person become the best they can be by showing them how to apply their own gifts to the task.

Third, each of us can learn by finding our own mentors.

I’ve never had anyone with a defined role in my life of a mentor. But there are people I’ve pummelled with questions, whose example I’ve copied, whose thinking has challenged mine. My pastor friend Peter is one of those. So was Tom, whose life and mine were on parallel tracks through our twenties. He was my confidante, my guide, my companion. Caroline had a passion for mission and a toughness of spirit which motivated and strengthened me in my early days heading up a missionary society. Karen helped me understand and appreciate academic study, and modelled how to motivate as well as educate young adults for Christian service. There are many more, certainly including my scholarly friend Paul I mentioned earlier. (When Alison and I lived in America, we tracked down Paul and his wife and met up with them in Texas. He’s still studying the New Testament and writing books about it. So, still inspiring and challenging me.)

Learning from how others live, from what they think, and from their experience may mean more than anything we’ll learn in a formal classroom. It may not be ‘teaching’ but it’s certainly ‘learning’.

I’ve been immensely privileged with opportunities to study. I would never minimise the benefit of that. But formal learning is not everything. Whether it’s for career, for marriage, for parenting, for being a good citizen, there are qualities and attributes that matter deeply but have to be learned in other ways. In the end those ‘soft skills’ may be the most significant for living a life that fulfils us and serves others.

Be true to yourself

I was appointed minister of a Baptist church in Aberdeen, Scotland. The congregation had gone through tough times since its previous pastor left nearly three years earlier. With a leadership vacuum, divisions had formed. Two months before I took up my new position, a friend met people from the Aberdeen church at a conference. He reported back to me that one person said, ‘It’ll be great when Alistair Brown comes to be our pastor, because we can get back to being what a traditional Baptist church is about.’ Within a half hour, he’d met someone else who said, ‘It’ll be great when Alistair Brown comes, because we can finally get away from being a traditional Baptist church’.

Two views, representing two ‘parties’ in that church, and each thought I was ‘their man’. I made up my mind that I’d be fair to all and pastor to all, but also true to myself and true to what I believed was right. And I was. A few, including some leaders, left the church but the large majority accepted the new leadership, set aside their differences, and inside three years we’d grown so much in numbers we’d moved to larger premises.

Being true to yourself is essential for both personal and professional well-being. It can come at a cost, but there’s a higher price to be paid by living a lie.

What does being true to yourself mean?

It means living out what you believe. The UK runs a national census in every year that ends in a ‘1’. The census is done now by answering questions online but in earlier years everyone filled out census forms. In one of those past ‘1’ years, I was a student looking for summer employment and got hired to help deal with the millions of census forms. My job was in a very large warehouse, almost entirely filled with shelving holding boxes of forms. A small team of ‘experts’ sat at one end coding each answer for entry into the rudimentary computer system used back then. I was a much more lowly file-picker. All I did every day was take an order for a batch of files, find their boxes among the shelves, and transport them by push-trolley to the coders. When the coders were finished with them, I put them back on the shelves. It was brain-numbingly boring work. But they paid me to do it, so I was grateful to have the job.

A fellow file-picker told me one day that when he was given an order to bring a batch of files, he was told not to use a trolley, just bring them one box at a time and walk slowly. He thought it hilarious that he was ordered to take as long as possible to do his job. I didn’t think it funny, just strange, perhaps too strange to be true. Until one of the bosses gave me virtually the same instruction: to fetch files but not to use a trolley and to take my time.

Eventually the explanation dawned on me. It wasn’t just the file-pickers who were temps; so were the coders and so were many of the bosses. Almost everyone working in that warehouse had a financial interest in their job lasting as long as possible, hence a secret ‘go-slow’ policy.

That first time I carried the files one by one to the coders and back to the shelves. And I did it the next day. But then I couldn’t do it any more. This was wrong, just wrong. Deliberately slow work cheated the top officers who needed census results processed promptly, cheated the tax payers who were paying my wages, and, for me as a Christian, I felt I was cheating God by not giving my best. I didn’t sleep well that night; I knew what I had to do next morning. I got my first order for files, went to the shelves, offloaded the boxes on to a trolley, and wheeled it to the coders. Later I did the same in reverse to put them back on the shelves. I kept doing that through the day. No-one said anything.

But they did the day after. I got an order for files, and found my way to their location in the centre of the ‘stacks’. Two file-picker colleagues were waiting there for me. One pinned me against the shelving, while both of them made their views very clear. ‘You do what you want to do, but you’d better not show us up by how you do it.’ I can’t reproduce the hostile tone they used, and I haven’t included the words beginning with ‘f’ and ‘b’ that littered their warning. With a last shove they let me go, and disappeared. It was a moment of decision. But the only decision I could make was to be true to myself. I had to live what I believed, and that was to do the job right. Which I did, day after day. And, as with most bullies, the file-pickers didn’t go through with their threats.

Living with a clear conscience, living as you believe you should – it’s the only way to feel good about yourself, to honour others and God, and to get a good night’s sleep.

It means being honest about experience and abilities. I’ve read hundreds of job application papers. Often they’ve seemed too good to be true. In some cases, they actually weren’t true.

Let’s imagine how Dishonest Joe – DJ – secured the job of his dreams. DJ wrote a great application, sold himself at interview, and chose referees he knew would write positive references. DJ got the job. ‘We’re impressed with what you can do’ they told him.

Except DJ didn’t have the experience he said he had, and couldn’t do what he’d said he could do. His application was a very generous statement of abilities and accomplishments. And every answer at interview could have been a model response in a textbook. Actually, that’s exactly what they were, answers DJ memorised from textbooks on interview technique. He wasn’t at all the person the employer thought he’d hired.

So, how long before DJ was found out? Not long. Anyone can bluff it for a while, and DJ’s early mistakes and uncertainty were written off on the grounds that he was ‘new to this job’. But after a couple of months, who DJ really was and what he really could do was obvious to all. Pretence doesn’t last.

Nothing but problems and unhappiness would lie beyond that point for DJ. If this was real, probably he’d be fired after a few more months, and he should be. If that didn’t happen then he’d find his deceit had landed him in a place of incompetence, with disillusioned colleagues, and challenges he’d no idea how to meet. Perhaps DJ would leave after a year, write another dishonest application, and try to persuade the next potential employer that the last role simply ‘wasn’t a good fit’ for him.

The DJ-like people I’ve met were one of two types. Either they’ve been unaware of their limitations, and think they’ve just been unlucky in the past but now, if they can secure a great job, everything will miraculously ‘work out’. Or they’ve been cynically intentional when overstating their character and abilities, believing that’s the only way to get on in life.

When someone can’t or won’t get real about the kind of person they are and what they can do, only bad consequences follow. It’s hurtful for them, and causes anguish and extra work for those around them.

It means living out your values. I’ve known a lot of travelling sales reps. They were on the road most of the week, trying to persuade existing customers to buy more or cultivating ‘leads’ to win new orders for their product. The company car was their office and hotels were their accommodation.

I asked Harry how his week had gone, and apparently it had been a good one. He’d closed several deals, and he was looking forward to a bonus. Then he added with a smile, ‘One day I drove 200 miles south in the morning, and 300 west in the afternoon.’ I asked how he’d fitted in time with clients along with so many miles. ‘By averaging about 90 mph almost all the way,’ he said, ‘which I don’t like doing because I know it’s wrong. But I couldn’t do my job if I kept to speed limits.’

I thought about that a lot afterwards. My reaction was, ‘If your job requires you to do wrong, you’re in the wrong job.’ But I also realised that ‘sales’ was likely Harry’s only skill; finding an alternative that didn’t create a moral challenge wouldn’t be simple; and he had a mortgage to pay and a family to feed.

But – while sincerely acknowledging the real-world situation Harry faced – I still wonder how someone can stay in a job which requires them setting aside their values. How do they suppress the unsettledness that must generate? Being true to who you are means being true to the values you must live by.

And that doesn’t just apply about a job. It’s a truth for every area of life. If a relationship isn’t right, then it’s not right to be in that relationship. If the cost of a holiday, or new car, or golf club membership is causing financial damage, then these are wrong expenses. If building a career requires everything else to be sacrificed, it’s wrong to wreck your health, weaken your marriage, and alienate your children.

Most people wouldn’t say these things are what they really want. But if it’s what they’re getting, then they’re not living true to their values.

I’d never tell anyone that change is easy. We don’t just wake up one morning, decide to be different and easily start living a new life. But it can start by waking up one morning, realise we’re not living true to our better selves, and begin a journey to the right place. That journey may be long and rough, but supremely worth making.

Misplaced certainties

From about the age of ten I loved photography. My parents’ Kodak Box Brownie camera was as simple as a camera could be, but occasionally I got to push the shutter button, always excited to see (eventually) the photo I’d taken.

But I didn’t have a camera of my own. And I desperately wanted one.

Then, a magazine ran a competition with ten prizes of cameras. All you had to do was answer simple questions and write a slogan for a firm’s product. I begged my mum to let me enter, and together we worked out the answers to the questions. The slogan, which would be the tie-breaker between entrants, was more difficult. You were only allowed about 12 words, but I wrote something like: ‘Tasty Coffee gets you going and keeps you going through the day’. Clearly, my future wouldn’t be in advertising, but mum said the slogan was good, so my entry was posted.

The entry details had said winners would be notified by post soon after the competition closed. My answers were right, and my slogan was brilliant. So I waited for the letter. Mum pointed out that thousands would have entered, so it was unlikely I would have won. But obviously she was wrong. Even if winning was unlikely, it was possible. Within a couple of weeks possible had become probable in my thinking. After two more weeks, probable had become certain. I knew I was a winner, but where was the letter? I hurried home from school every day, and asked my mum: ‘Has the letter come?’ She’d shake her head, and my shoulders would slump. Every day for a month that happened. ‘Any letter?’ – ‘Sorry, no.’ Then my mother took pity on me, and contacted the company who’d run the competition. As gently as she could, she told me I was not one of the winners. I was devastated. I had believed so strongly that I must have won, it had become a certainty.

I had convinced myself something was true which wasn’t. My certainty was misplaced. Not unusual for a child. But it doesn’t happen only with children.

Unjustified certainties can occur at any age and at any time when we let our wishful thinking become more than wishful.

Here are other examples of misplaced certainties.

Prejudice    I went to live in the USA in September 2008, and Barack Obama won the US presidential election eight weeks later. (I don’t claim a connection between my presence and his victory!) The following January Obama was inaugurated as President. His appointment to the highest office in the land was a major conversation item.

I had that conversation with a friend, Sally. Now, Sally was one of the godliest people I’ve ever known, a gracious Christian lady who seemed to love and want to help everyone she knew. But she didn’t seem to have much love for her new President. I asked her if that was simply a difference in politics?

Sally hesitated, looked embarrassed, and then said, ‘I just can’t trust a black man.’

Wow! I hadn’t seen that coming. Perhaps I would if I’d been raised in certain parts of the US. Sally knew her distrust was a contradiction of her Christian principles, but it was a deeply embedded idea with which she’d grown up and which still controlled her thinking.

Prejudice is wrong and often downright shocking. But it’s so innate we may not recognise its existence or find it hard to shake off. It’s one of the worst kinds of misplaced certainty.

Over-rating our own abilities    Have you ever tried to tell someone they’re a bad driver? How did that conversation go? Or, have you ever had a bad boss who knew they were a bad boss? Do you know many preachers or other public speakers who’d admit they’re boring?

  • Most drivers think they’re great drivers; it’s everyone else on the road who make their life difficult.
  • Most bosses think they’re great bosses; they just can’t get equally great staff.
  • Most preachers think they’re great speakers; if only the congregation would stay awake and pay attention.

Some of that may be an exaggeration, but you get my point.

In his 1786 poem To a Louse, the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote:

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion

Very roughly ‘translated’ it’s a wish for the gift to see ourselves the way others see us, freeing us from blunders and foolish notions.

But we don’t see ourselves as others do. And wishful thinking all too easily gives us a misplaced certainty about how gifted we are.

Over-confidence about our decisions    I hear many news stories about people tricked into parting with their money. Scammers persuade them to invest by promising fantastic returns from bonds or shares. People empty their low interest bank accounts to hand over all their cash. And then it’s gone. At best the investment opportunity was a super-risky venture. At worst, there never was a legitimate investment, just a scheme to give cash to criminals. When those stories are reported, the last question the interviewer asks those who’ve lost their money is: ‘Why didn’t you get an opinion from family or a responsible financial advisor?’ Typically the answer is: ‘I didn’t want anyone to talk me out of the investment. I was so sure this was a wonderful chance, and I didn’t want to miss out.’

‘I was so sure… I didn’t want to miss out.’ Reckless over-confidence about a decision, a misplaced certainty with dire financial consequences.

By no means have I exhausted all forms of misplaced certainty to which any of us might succumb. It’s a weakness we don’t know we have until it’s too late.

Are there avoidance tactics we can use, or ways to diminish the danger? Yes there are. Here are four.

Stop and think.    Rationality can’t be the sole guide for every decision, but mustn’t be excluded from every decision. Our minds are not enemies. Using them is not a failure of faith. Jesus commanded us to love God with ‘all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. (Matthew 22:37) We are meant to think.

Here’s a true but sad story. Four friends felt convinced they should buy a flat. They didn’t have enough money, but were sure the money would come in time. In their gut they felt it right to go ahead. So, in faith, they submitted a binding offer to buy. The money never came, and they couldn’t pay the seller. The flat had to be rushed onto the market for as much as they could get to diminish the large debt they’d incurred.

Impulses and intuitions are both friend and foe. They can serve us well, but they can also tempt us into seriously unwise actions. We need to look (to think) before we leap.

Talk to a real friend.    There are times when protecting your private ideas is just stupid. You can be sure the four friends who went ahead without money to buy a flat wished they’d got good financial advice from an expert or wise friend.

Share your big ideas with someone who knows your abilities, your impulses, your dreams. The temptation is to ask someone guaranteed to agree with you. Avoid them. Ask someone who’ll be ruthlessly honest. A superficial friend will tell you what you want to hear, but a real friend will care enough to tell you what you don’t want to hear.

Slow down.    We live in a fast-paced world, and it seems everything must be decided immediately. Yes, there’s a danger of delay, but also a danger of rushing ahead irresponsibly.

As a youngster I dragged my sledge to the top of a super-steep hill, took one glance, felt the adrenalin, and launched myself on the ride of my life. It was a ride that could have ended my life. What I hadn’t considered was the road at the bottom of the hill. My sledge propelled me down that hill so fast it didn’t stop until I was right in the middle of that road. I scampered out of the way of an oncoming car just in time.

It’s dangerously easy to allow heightened emotions and desires to launch us down hills towards disaster if we go too fast. When we ask someone ‘Are you having second thoughts?’ it seems there’s an implied criticism. There shouldn’t be. There are decisions so consequential that we ought to slow down and have second thoughts.

Be ruthlessly honest.    The more we want something, the more we find arguments to have it. Inconvenient arguments we push aside. That’s the weakness behind a lot of misplaced certainties.

Ruthless honesty is possible because it’s a choice – a choice based on willingness to accept either the conclusion we want or the conclusion we don’t want. In other words, a willingness to accept whichever conclusion is best.

My friend George was minister of a large and growing church which appointed an associate pastor to support George’s work. Some months later George realised his preaching wasn’t going over well with the predominantly student-age congregation who came to evening services. He made the associate the principal preacher for those services. Here’s how George described the outcome to me: ‘It’s wonderful to have my associate preaching at evening services because he’s much better than me and numbers attending are going up’. I was impressed by what George told me; impressed that he’d given his young associate the chance, and impressed he was thrilled about the result. I’m not sure I would have made his decision or reacted so generously at the outcome. But George was a ruthlessly honest man, and he wanted the best for his people whatever that meant.

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote this: I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment  (Romans 12:3)

There’s wisdom there: don’t over-rate yourself, and always think with sober judgment. That’s hard, but not impossible.

We’re all prone to misplaced certainty. Our ego wants to believe we excel when we don’t; our will leans towards believing we should have whatever we desire; our hearts are drawn to every opportunity that attracts. So we convince ourselves things are right that aren’t right.

But what’s not right for us is also what’s not good for us. Knowing that – really knowing that – will save us from a lot of foolishness.

Procrastination

I’m a procrastinator. There, I’ve said it. I’ve been meaning to do that for a long time.

That last sentence is a joke, but not the first sentence. Apparently I was born on my due date, but it’s been downhill ever since in respect of getting things done in good time. Homework for school was always last minute. I needed ‘extensions’ for most of my university essay assignments. Preparing sermons involved stealing hours of sleep the night before the preaching date. It was the same when I wrote books. Editors gave me final deadlines so I would submit the work. I coined the phrase, ‘A deadline is the mother of motivation’ because nothing else got me going.

Not everyone procrastinates, but the procrastination club does have a lot of members. And those members ‘never quite get round to doing…’ everything from buying groceries or returning a phone call, to making life-significant decisions like changing careers or proposing marriage. For some, it’s not just procrastination about proposing marriage but procrastination about getting married. I worked beside a woman who’d been engaged for twenty five years, and she and her fiancé still hadn’t fixed a wedding date.

Procrastination is not laziness. The lazy person can’t be bothered to get off their couch, but the procrastinator could be energetic and active about many things, just not the right things, not the things that should be done. They’re postponed until…? Well, procrastinators prefer never to answer the ‘when’ question.

Nor is procrastination necessarily indecision. Often the procrastinator knows exactly what to do but just doesn’t get round to doing it. It’s inaction as much as indecision.

Why procrastinate?

Here are reasons that have sometimes applied to me.

I procrastinate when I’m not sure what to do or how to do it    There’s a warning light showing on the dashboard of my car. It’s not obvious what that light signifies, and the car is running fine. So I’ll do nothing and see if the light goes off. I should cut our tall hedge lower, but should it be down to six feet, seven feet, or compromise at six and a half feet? I’ll have to think about that… So far, that’s been for about a year. This kind of procrastination is compounded either when I have to choose between several options or when a decision can be delayed, because then it will be delayed.

I procrastinate when I’ve so many things to do I don’t know which to do first    I could prepare the talk I have to give next week. I could read the book I’m committed to study. I could walk the dogs. I could hang the pictures that have rested on the floor against the wall for ages. I could finish repairing the liner on the garden pond. Or I could do any of another twenty things. The multiplicity of tasks is a fog I can’t see through to what matters most. So, instead, I’ll go and play golf. A casual game of golf is neither urgent nor important, but a lot more pleasant than dealing with the things which are. Procrastination loves diversion to unimportant alternatives.

I procrastinate when I don’t want to do a hard thing    I don’t actually want to cut the hedge. It’s not an easy or fun job, so inability to decide on its height justifies delay. If I would be fined if I hadn’t started cutting my hedge by 12 noon, I’d say, ‘Okay, it’ll be 6 feet 6 inches’ and get the hedge trimmer out. But with no looming fine, I put off the work. Which is what I do with many ‘not easy and not fun’ things. One day I’ll probably have to do them, but not this day. Procrastination thrives on hard-to-do stuff.

The let-me-do-everything-now people of this world can’t understand why procrastinators are procrastinators. It’s just not sensible. It’s not rational. But rationality doesn’t have complete command in virtually anyone’s life. Our shortfalls are different, and, in my case, it includes procrastination.

I have no doubt, though, that procrastination is damaging and can be dangerous.

In practical things    My car’s warning light does mean something’s wrong, so perhaps one day the engine will fail or I’ll have an accident. My taller and taller hedge won’t kill anyone, but it is getting progressively harder to cut.

In relational things    At the end of a church service, a delightful older lady asked me if I’d give her a call as she had something she wanted to talk about. It didn’t sound urgent, so I put if off… After two weeks she called me. She was polite but she was mad at me. I’d said I’d call, but hadn’t. She felt unimportant.

In economic things    I was driving from Glasgow to Aberdeen late one night, a journey of nearly three hours. Mid way home – probably around midnight – I became aware of headlights in a field off to the side. Had a car gone off the road? I glanced over. No, the headlights were moving. Then I realised. It was the time of year when farmers cut down their crops, and this farmer was driving his combine harvester up and down his field. ‘Foolish man,’ I thought. ‘He should be in his bed.’ I got home, went to sleep, and woke the next morning to the sound of the wind howling, rain lashing and then hailstones crashing down. What if the farmer hadn’t worked through the night to get his harvest in? He’d have lost it. Delay would have been economically disastrous.

In psychological things    I thought I was bad when my email inbox had 500 messages. Until, that is, I found a colleague had 5000. And then I heard of someone with a crazy number like 50,000. But comforting yourself that you’re not as bad as others is false and cold comfort. I still had 500 emails I’d not actioned, and that weighed on my mind. What had I read and then neglected? What important message had I never even read? A procrastinator lives with constant anxiety that more and more things are mounting up, things that should be done but aren’t done. It’s a heavy burden to carry.

Have I found the answer to procrastination? Certainly not.

But I am better than I once was.

Here are the four key steps to improvement that I’ve taken.

  1. When I don’t know where to start, I start somewhere that matters. In other words, I no longer divert to something easy but unimportant. Instead, I take anything from my must-do list and do that. The result is one thing less on the list, and a feeling of satisfaction that motivates me to take on another must-do item.
  2. When I actually do something I’ve been postponing, I reward myself. The reward can be as small as a coffee and cake moment, or reading a (short) chapter of a novel. I’m celebrating an accomplishment. And the reward motivates me for more accomplishments.
  3. I remember a sentence I read many years ago in a ‘spiritual autobiography’ of the Scottish theologian, William Barclay. He was talking about ‘writer’s block’ for those who prepare sermons or academic papers. I won’t get Barclay’s words exactly right, but it was as snappy as ‘The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair’. Just sit down and start. That advice has helped me many times.
  4. I came up with a phrase of my own, and have used it to challenge congregations or audiences to actually make the changes in their lives they’ve always said they would. My phrase is: ‘Today is yesterday’s tomorrow’. Some promised yesterday that they’d lose weight. Some resolved to repaint a room. Some decided to get up earlier and exercise. All of them promised to start tomorrow. But they didn’t. All they did was invent new tomorrows. So I challenge them: today is the tomorrow you promised yesterday. This is the time – perhaps the last time you’ll have – to make the change you promised. Now or maybe never. And I accept that challenge personally. A promise for tomorrow is meaningless if that tomorrow never dawns.

Perhaps the most famous procrastinator in English literature is Shakespeare’s Hamlet. His lack of action is blamed for the deaths of many. I certainly hope my procrastination has never led to such dire consequences. But there have been negative consequences, and I regret each one.

And I’ll regret procrastinating about posting this if I don’t do it now!