What Could Go Right?
What Could Go Right?
As I write this, baseball season is winding down and the playoffs are just a couple of weeks away. That reminds me of a conversation I once had with a lawyer friend.
I had a mentoring relationship with him, and several times we were in meetings where big ideas—blue-sky ideas—were discussed. I noticed that his initial response was to conjure consternation on his face and then proceed to lawyer the idea to near death. You know what I mean by lawyer: lawyers are often paid to consider all the things that could go wrong and to attempt to mitigate risk as much as practical.
We have all heard the commercials for some supposed wonder drug, and the announcer spends more time warning of terrible side effects than actually marketing the benefits of the drug. Thank the lawyers.
Well, my lawyer friend is an outstanding person with high-caliber leadership capacity. So I brought up this proclivity to immediately focus on the negative. “Are you aware that your first response to a big idea is to discuss what could go wrong?” I asked. “That though you always come around to the positive, your first instinct is contrarian?”
He was surprised. But as he mentally replayed our meetings, he said quickly, “You know, you’re right.
I’ve been trained to see what could go wrong. I need to be retrained to see what could go right.”
It was baseball season then, too. We’re both dads who’ve watched our kids play many games. The first instinct of young outfielders is to run forward when the ball is hit their way because it looks like the ball is going to drop in front of them. More often than not, much to the outfielders’ embarrassment, the ball flies over their heads. Bad things happen when a ball goes over an outfielder’s head.
Coaches repeatedly attempt to retrain this instinct to run forward when the ball comes off the bat. They tell their players again and again, “When a ball is hit in the air toward you, your first step must always be back.” That may sound simple, but kids have a very difficult time redeveloping that first-step instinct.
I said to my friend, “You have to retrain your first-step instinct toward what could go right. You must develop a possibility instinct. You must see the potential of a preferred future. Your first thought should be, What if? After that, perform your due diligence. Do commission feasibility studies. Do a risk analysis. Review contracts, and do all that important lawyer stuff. But start with a focus on what’s possible.”
“You must develop a possibility instinct. You must see the potential of a preferred future.
Your first thought should be, What if?”
What do our faces say when we face possibility? Our faces usually communicate what is going on in the deepest part of our beings:
Interestingly, “growing up” is largely a matter of learning to hide our spirit behind our face, eyes, and language so that we can evade and manage others to achieve what we want and avoid what we fear. By contrast, the child’s face is a constant epiphany because it doesn’t yet know how to do this. It cannot manage its face.1
My lawyer friend’s face immediately conveyed his instinct to doubt when presented with an outside-the-usual idea. George Orwell wrote, “At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.”2 That’s a little frightening.
We speak about saving face; I also think we can change our faces from what to what-if.
The story is told that President Thomas Jefferson was traveling across the country on horseback with a group of trusted companions. They came to a river that was swollen because of a recent downpour. The bridge at the crossing had been washed away, and each rider was forced to attempt to cross the river on horseback. The currents were rapid. The danger of drowning threatened each rider.
There was a stranger standing by who needed to cross the river. He watched as several riders plunged into the water at great risk but made it to the other side. This stranger asked President Jefferson if he could ride double and be carried to the other side. The president immediately agreed. At double the risk, he took his horse skillfully through the raging water and safely to the opposite bank.
As the stranger dismounted and settled back on dry ground, someone in the group challenged him about why he asked the president of the United States to take him across the river under the circumstances. The stranger was stunned and admitted that he had no idea that it was the president who aided him.
“All I know,” he said, “is that on some of your faces was written the answer ‘now,’ and on some of them was the answer ‘yes.’ His was a ‘yes face.’”3
When God brings me the possibilities He has prepared for me within my area of destiny, what does my face say? When I see feasibilities that are beyond human imagination, what is my instinctive response?
I can choose to call those God-made opportunities anything I will, so I choose to name these things possible. I want everything in my inner being to be reflected through an unqualified “yes!” face.
Is your first instinct to see possibilities or problems? Drop a comment and tell us about it.
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 76.
George Orwell, the Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 4, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (1968), journal entry, April 17, 1949, quoted in “Famous Lines by Robert Andrews” New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 160.
Karl Menninger, with Martin Mayman and Paul Pruyser, The Vital Balance (New York: Viking, 1963), 22.
Photo by Mike Bowman on Unsplash
Adapted from Live Ten (Thomas Nelson) by Terry A. Smith. All rights reserved.
Having a “yes face” is an important part of being a hospitable leader. It’s hard to make people feel welcome when your face says “go away.” Have you downloaded “The 5 Welcomes of Hospitality” from my book, The Hospitable Leader? It’s not too late: click here for the free download.