Maxwell Leadership Podcast: How to Deal with Discouragement

Mark Cole:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is your podcast and our goal is to add value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole. I get the privilege of working alongside John Maxwell and our incredible team helping you and I become better leaders.

Today, we’re going to talk about something that every person experiences in their lifetime. They experience it multiple times in leadership, but to be honest with you, not everybody knows how to deal with it. I’ll even say not everyone knows how to even admit they deal with it. Now see, I’m talking about discouragement. In today’s episode, we came to discourage you. No, I’m just kidding. In today’s episode, John Maxwell teaches us how to strengthen your resilience by understanding the best practices for dealing with discouragement. Then, after John is finished with his lesson, my co-host, Traci Morrow, and I will be back to talk about how we’ve learned to deal with discouragement in our lives, in our leadership.

But first, if you’d like to, you can watch this episode on YouTube by visiting maxwellpodcast.com/youtube. Let me say this, if you come over to YouTube for the first time, let us know you’re out there. We would love to say hello. Also today, if you would like to download the bonus resource for this episode, which is a free fill-in-the-blank PDF that accompanies John’s lesson, you can visit maxwellpodcast.com/discouragement and click the bonus resource button. That’s all for now. I promise you, John Maxwell is going to encourage you as he talks about discouragement.

John Maxwell:

As I have watched attitudes kind of mess up or sag or fail or come short of what they should be, I’ve come to the conclusion that what happens is there are some things that really cause people’s attitudes to “be set back”. The first one is discouragement, and I have watched people who become discouraged, many times their attitude begins to sag. And so here’s what I’ve discovered about discouragement, that is not a great discovery. You already know this. Number one, everyone gets discouraged. Let’s just start there. This is not something that a few people have happened to them. We all get discouraged. Is that not true? Huh? How many of you got discouraged in the last week? Huh? Sure. It just happens, doesn’t it? Just happens, bad news, we get discouraged. But the second thing I know about discouragement is everyone, and this is really what the lesson’s about, everyone does not respond to discouragement the same way. We’re all discouraged, but the response is different.

In regards to discouragement, there are two kinds of people in the world, splatterers, they hit rock bottom, fall apart, and stick to the bottom like glue. They just splat. And there are bouncers, they hit rock bottom, pull themselves back together and bounce back up. And the question is, are you going to give up or get up? It’s a choice. The difference between you being a splatterer or a bouncer is determined by your difference maker, your attitude.

So let’s talk about how do we deal effectively with discouragement? Number one, get the right perspective. Whenever you’re discouraged and you need to kick your attitude in without any question at all, the first thing you have to do is work on perspective. Number two, see the right people. Well, again, I’ve talked to you about the elevator principle and the winning with people. There are some people who lift you up, some people that bring you down. And is it not true that when you’re discouraged, you got to go find you a lifter? Huh? Got to find somebody that can lift you up. Walt Whitman struggled for years to get anyone interested in this poetry. He was discouraged. Then one day received a note. “Dear sir, I’m not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of leaves of grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” It was signed Ralph Waldo Emerson. Probably made his day, don’t you think?

Say the right words, not only see the right people and get the right perspective, but say the right words. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was at one time the greatest heart surgeon in England, says this in his excellent work, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure. “Most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you’re listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself.” That is just a terrific statement. Most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself. Remarkable. Most of your unhappiness in life comes from listening to yourself. Think about it. You wake up in the morning and right away there are streams of thought coming into your mind. You haven’t invited them, you didn’t ask for them. You are not consciously doing anything to produce them, they just come and they start talking to you.

You see, listening is passive and talking is active. And what Martyn Lloyd-Jones was trying to say to us is, to get out of discouragement, we need to be talking to ourselves. We need to say the right words. We need to do something active to get us out of this discouragement. Often I quote what I lecture, and that is, “It’s not what happens to me, it’s what happens in me that really matters.” But you got to talk to yourself. Number four, make the right decisions. I love the definition of courage. Courage is the willingness to look at life as it is. To look at yourself as you are and to come to terms. A lot of discouragement, I think, that we have with people is we have expectations of them that are not realistic. When we are unrealistic in our expectations, we’re going to be set up all the time.

When I read that quote on courage, the willingness to look at life as it is, to look at yourself as you are and to come to terms. Wow, this is about Duke Ellington. Ellington was the master of a kind of music known by older members as Swing, and he had been developing and honing the Swing sound for 10 years, and by the time Swing became a national phenomenon, it had really been identified with the White stars. Yet, Duke Ellington really was kind of the genius behind it. Yet even in his disappointment, the Duke was the most dignified of men. He said, “I took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues.” J. Wallace Hamilton wrote, “Every person’s life is a diary in which he or she means to write one story and is forced to write yet another. All of us envision the life we hope to live, but are invariably forced to make adjustments. Those who best weather disappointment are the ones who keep writing even though it’s not the history that they had planned to record.”

Wow, there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Mark Cole:

Hey, before we jump into today’s content, let’s talk about time. I want you to think of tasks that steal your time, the things that keep you busy, but they’re just not necessarily the best use of your time or the most productive for you. Maybe it’s your inbox. Maybe it’s the management of your inbox, the thought of your inbox, the management of your inbox. Maybe it’s managing your calendar or processing payroll. Now, what if I told you that delegating those tasks, saying no to those tasks, could help you reclaim an average of 15 hours every week so that you can say yes to the things you love, the things you’re gifted at, the things you need to be doing. Does this sound too good to be true? It’s not. All it takes is focusing on your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. That’s where our friends at BELAY can help.

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Hey, Traci, this is so fun for you and I, you always have this brilliant smile on your face. I know you have been discouraged, and I know that we’re such good friends and coworkers, co-leaders, that you don’t hold back for me, but I cannot remember one time that I’ve seen you discouraged. So this is going to be fun, because I really do like what John does. Jake provided me kind of a study of the word discourage and I love it. It’s an old French word meaning to deprive of our cause, to lose courage. Now, watch this. This is what I love. There’s a seed of courage in every one of us, and discouragement is when you’ve lost something, not found something. So you don’t find discouragement, you lose courage, and that’s where discouragement comes in. And so Jake, shout out to you, dude. That’s really helpful.

Traci Morrow:

That’s so good.

Mark Cole:

Isn’t it true? Because so often, I wake up, man, I’m discouraged. No, I lost my courage.

Traci Morrow:

Right. Yeah, that’s so good. Mic Drop. And that is our podcast. Thanks for tuning in today.

Mark Cole:

Thanks for joining in today.

Traci Morrow:

So I think we joke around a little bit, but John starts out by saying that everyone does get discouraged. And so just to kick it off and go real and go deep, how do you as a leader, Mark Cole, deal with discouragement?

Mark Cole:

Well, if you’re listening to the podcast, just kind of pause and let’s have some moments of silence. If you’re watching the YouTube, here’s the Kleenexes. Let’s take a few minutes, gather around the fire, everybody. Sorry, you got to watch the YouTube sometimes because we’re silly. But yeah, I really could talk about it. And there’s times, Traci, to where I do talk about discouragement. I grew up thinking that discouragement was taboo. We don’t talk about it. I don’t know if that’s kind of the positive world that you lived in. I lived in a glass house. I was a preacher’s kid, so nothing was ever wrong at our home. There was never a reason to be discouraged. Everything had to be on the up and up because all the people needed us to be on the up and up. There was a real pressure there.

The older I got, the more that I realized that was not sustainable. And I’ll never forget, Traci, it’s so funny that I did not know, we did not script how you were going to come out of John’s talk. I remember within the last two years of carrying, probably, a burden that felt more heavy to me than I had ever carried as a leader. Now, I’ve carried some relational burdens that were bigger and losing things and relationships that were important to me, but I can’t remember carrying a leadership burden than I was carrying. And I went to John and I was kind of embarrassed to tell my mentor, Mr. Upbeat, Mr. Woo, Mr. Positive, Mr. Everything Awesome All the Time that I was really struggling. And John slowed down on a plane trip, I’ll never forget it, and he told me of two times that were excruciatingly discouraging to him. And I went, “John, why do you never talk about those?” All of a sudden, my misery loves company activated, and I was like, “Yes!”

I said, “John, this will help everybody. Let’s have a session on discouragement.” And then John went on to talk to me about the fine line that we, as leaders, especially leaders that are focused on the high potency or potential in each other, how critical of a line it is to play between raw and candid expression of, “Man, woe is me. The world is against me. Wow. Does anybody else realize how heavy the globe is on my shoulder?” And leading people to show that, as John says, as a standout seg statement, discouragement is a choice. And so to choose to talk about it means that I’m choosing to stay in it. And it’s a fine line for me, Traci. I try to live very candid and I subscribe by this. I’m either up or I’m getting up. You’ve ever heard somebody say that, right?

Traci Morrow:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

I’m either up or I’m getting up. And I’m going, “Yeah, good thing we didn’t talk last night because I was plummeting. I was straight down.” So it’s a fine line that we’re talking about here, for sure.

Traci Morrow:

John will say sometimes, “Give yourself 24 hours to grieve something. Give yourself 24 hours to celebrate something and the next day come back at it.” And some things you need more than 24 hours to grieve a loss of somebody dear to you or something like that. But do you, as a rule, give yourself 24 hours to go through something in as you are dealing with discouragement as a leader?

Mark Cole:

I do. And 24 hours is really-

Traci Morrow:

Kind of your rule in your head.

Mark Cole:

It’s a great rule. You know what’s interesting is, a month ago, a month ago, we had the Super Bowl here in the United States. You’ll hear, we’ve got people all over that listen to our podcast. We love every last one of you in every country, especially Philippines. We have so many people. Listen in the Philippines, Traci.

Traci Morrow:

Love that.

Mark Cole:

So hello to all of our podcast listeners and viewers in the Philippines. But in the United States, one month ago, we had what we call the Super Bowl. It’s where the two best American football teams, that’s not soccer, that’s an oblong ball.

Traci Morrow:

American football.

Mark Cole:

American football. And they come together and it reminded me as I was watching that game of the way that the Kansas City Chiefs got to the Super Bowl, which was with a very silly foul by a person that made a late hit from Cincinnati Bengals that hit somebody on the way out. It gave them a penalty with no time left. They got 15 extra yards. They made the kick and won the game. They showed that player still on the bench. All the other teammates had went into the locker room, disappointed, discouraged, and he’s sitting there with his head between his hands. Except one important factor, there was another football player that walked out of the locker room and went to sit with him as he just thought about it.

Traci Morrow:

Wow.

Mark Cole:

Now, in a world where we have young people and even us more mature leaders alike, staying in discouragement a little too long, and so mental health becomes a crisis.

Traci Morrow:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

People considering drastic measures to hurt themselves is now a crisis. Here’s my big thing. I think it is okay to be discouraged. I think it’s important to not let yourself be discouraged for too long, and it’s never okay to let someone sit in discouragement by themselves alone.

Traci Morrow:

Alone.

Mark Cole:

And if that’s the only thing I can give you, my dear fellow leaders and podcast family, don’t allow someone to sit in discouragement alone. We need each other. Is it okay to be discouraged? Sure. Is it okay to be discouraged for a long time? No. It’s really not. Get out of it. Figure it out, let’s get this thing done. But if it’s okay to be discouraged, and it is, it’s not okay to be alone. Find somebody and be with them. Be present with them if you feel like they’re discouraged.

Traci Morrow:

I appreciate that you said that. I think that’s important not only to reach out to somebody if you’re the one who’s discouraged, but if you notice somebody discouraged, check in on them and walk that path with them. Thank you for mentioning that. I appreciate that. Then he goes on to talk about, John talks about in discouragement, there are two kinds of people, and to bring the mood up a little bit, he gives funny names to it, as John always does. Splatterers and bouncers.

Mark Cole:

And just for my southern United States friends, when John said, splattered, I thought of scattered, smothered, and covered, going to Waffle House with how we like our hash browns. So forgive me, but for all of you in the south, you just felt me right there. You pumped your chest right there with me.

Traci Morrow:

And for those of you in California, my fellow California friends, were like, “What does that even mean?” We have no idea.

Mark Cole:

Trust me, you don’t want to know, Traci.

Traci Morrow:

We don’t know.

Mark Cole:

You don’t want to know.

Traci Morrow:

We have no idea. But he talks about the splatterers who, when they hit rock bottom, it’s just such a visual, hitting rock bottom and just splattering, falling apart and sticking to the bottom like glue versus bouncers who hit the bottom and they come back up. Have you ever mentored as a leader, have you ever been able to, or do you take an interest in, or is this something that you are intentional to do? Or how would you speak to leaders who are listening to the podcast if you have a team member or several who are splatterers? Have you been able to, or do you have advice for mentoring a splatter team member to become a bouncer, and if so, what does that look like, that process?

Mark Cole:

Yeah. It goes back to, and it’s interesting that I’m going to take us right back to this. Maybe there’s somebody out there that really needs to hear this. I think that when you see someone dealing with discouragement, whether they’re making a mess of themselves and it’s getting messier by the moment, or whether they’re a bouncer and they bounce back pretty quick, I think taking an interest in people that are going through discouragement, don’t judge them whether they splatter or whether they bounce. Just extend a hand of love that the fact that they’re either having to bounce or splatter. So a lot of times we look at the way people handle things and we don’t judge them for what they’ve gone through. We judge them for how they handle it. Well, that’s a splatterer or a bouncer. I would just encourage us to spend less time trying to assess how they handle it and deal with the fact they’re having to handle something and be there for them during that.

However, when someone remains coachable, Traci, that’s a splatterer, they’re just splattering everywhere, but their coach, “Help me. I realize I’m making a bigger mess. I realize that I’m ugh, putting it all out there for everybody to see.” If there is a coachable attitude, and I look for that. If somebody’s not coachable, the last thing they need you to do is tell them to quit making a bigger mess out of it. They turn you off. They feel even more judged. They feel even more discouraged by the time you talk to them. If you can find a way to determine if someone is coachable in the moment, which for me is when they ask questions, which for me is when I say, Hey, I’ve got an observation. Would you like to hear it? If they go, yes, great. Let me give it to them. If they say no.

So anytime someone’s in discouraged, whether they’re bouncing or whether they’re splattering, I’m always going to ask a question, “Hey, what can I do to help you right here? Would you like a little coaching or do you just need an ear? Do you want to talk so good, or do you want to just listen or you want to just sit quietly?”

Traci Morrow:

I like this because for those of you out there, you can assess yourself if you’re a splatterer, you can assess yourself, what you need so that you can teach the people around you. Maybe they aren’t asking questions. You can say, “Can you just ask me this question? How can I best support you when you’re splattering?” And then you can come to the mindset as a splatterer, recognize, “I just need to sit here for a little bit. Can you sit here with me?”, and then understand that at some point you need to come to a place where you decide to stand up and let yourself bounce back up, but also decide to ask some questions so you can help yourself or let someone help you get back up. I love that, and I appreciate that because it’s helpful. If you’re a bouncer, you cannot always be the most gentle and kind person to a splatterer because you want them to just bounce back up. “Come on, get over it.” And that’s not good leadership. It’s not good leadership when you judge it, like you said, and you just try to pull them up instead of asking those questions. So that’s important.

Mark Cole:

Important. Can I say something? And again, we’ve got maybe halfway through, Traci, for those that listen to all of mine and your application, which is all of you. I know nobody shuts us off in the middle of us.

Traci Morrow:

I’m certain of it.

Mark Cole:

I’m positive of it. Let me say this. I grew up, I’m 50 plus years old, and I grew up when mental illness, discouragement, depression was taboo. If you did talk about it, people looked at you like you had a third eye. You really had people just say, “Buck up. Buck up. Get it right.” We’ve come a long way as humans in this area, and I want somebody that’s listening to me today to know, I don’t want you to hear this message of just buck up. Discouragement is a choice. And you’re going, no, that’s right. I’m not choosing this. This is getting me every time I wake up. I am depressed. I am discouraged. Please get help.

Traci Morrow:

Yes.

Mark Cole:

Don’t listen to something like this and feel further discouraged. That’s not the point of this lesson, is to create this, hey, something’s wrong with you because you can’t get yourself out of discouragement. That is not the point of this.

Traci Morrow:

No.

Mark Cole:

If there is a deeper concern that you have, we love you. We’re here. We understand. I’ve had many people that’s gone through mental anguish, mental challenges, could not get through it without some help. Get some help.

Traci Morrow:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

See if there’s a psychologist or a psychiatrist that can help you get through long lasting discouragement and don’t try to listen to one more motivational talk telling you how awful you are. That’s not the point today. And I just wanted to say that because we would be misunderstood or even considered tone death if we didn’t realize, as humans, we have come a long way to realize there are significant mental health issues out there, especially since COVID-

Traci Morrow:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

That need to be diagnosed and helped. Not a motivational talk to say discouragement is a choice. Get over yourself. So I just wanted to put that out there.

Traci Morrow:

I’m so glad that you did, because we have that in my family and in my own children, and it is a game changer when you get help, medical help about something that you can’t just have a good attitude about it and just try to encourage yourself. Sometimes it really is a medical thing. So I think at this point in his lesson though, he switches. What we’ve been talking about is sort of talking about how to deal with discouragement. But at this point, when he talks about dealing effectively with discouragement, about getting the right perspective and seeing the right people and saying the right words, this is really a great opportunity, I feel like, in the lesson, to do a deep dive into what we talk about on the Maxwell Leadership app, our Growth app and our platform is the attitude of having a good attitude and mentoring about an attitude.

So can you maybe do a little bit of a deep dive in that and how attitude is the difference maker? John talks so much about that. I know our attitude guide, expert guide, Chris Robinson, is amazing with so many of his lessons and how someone might make an attitude adjustment with some mentoring and an attitude guide and how that might turn it around and help them with discouragement.

Mark Cole:

Well, I love that you said that, and I love that our team made this available to me. John wrote a book. If you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see it’s The Difference Maker by John, and it says, “Making your attitude your greatest asset.” And I do believe, you mentioned Chris Robinson, our guide about attitude and its importance. I do believe that, I see that attitude or courage instead of discouragement, as a muscle. You have to train yourself. It’s not like, boom, I want to be strong. I want to dead lift 400 pounds. And we go, oh my gosh. Okay, I think I’ll go to the gym and just put it up. Okay, rack them up, guys, I got this. Let’s go. We have to work toward it.

Traci Morrow:

Absolutely.

Mark Cole:

Attitude is the exact same way. That doesn’t just happen. There’s some that has a greater propensity. Again, there’s others that have to overcome some really significant challenges to choose a good attitude. But if you’ll imagine it as a muscle, something that you have to exercise, something that you’re working on. I’m right now in an exercise right now, since the beginning of the year, and we’re two months in. And it’s still going strong, Traci, in that I’ve made a decision that when I see the negative side of something first, I stop, I catalog it in my little book that I get, and I come back and visit it in my quiet time the next morning. When I’m looking at you, and the first thing that I go is, “Wow, Traci, did you comb your hair today?” Now, she did. If you’re watching YouTube, Traci looks fabulous. Today as every day. But my first thought is when I see somebody, “Oh gosh, do I have to talk to them again today? Oh gosh, I do not want to go into this meeting with my leadership.”

When I have a thought, I catalog it and I go visit it the next morning in my quiet time because I want to know what is causing the first thing in my mind in this situation to be negative rather than positive. And it is absolutely intriguing what I have discovered in just two months.

Traci Morrow:

Interesting.

Mark Cole:

It’s absolutely intriguing that a lot of times it’s because of something you said crossed to me last time that I’m still holding on to that makes me say, “Your hair does not look good today.” Is it not interesting that it has nothing to do with the fabulous way your hair looks, it has everything to do with, I didn’t-

Traci Morrow:

Holding a grudge.

Mark Cole:

… close something the last time we were together that carried over to today and makes me negative on the first impulse.

Traci Morrow:

Isn’t that interesting?

Mark Cole:

I am really enjoying it. By the way, that may help you. Go catalog it any time your first thought is a negative thought about anyone or something, catalog it and go visit it the next morning in your quiet time.

Traci Morrow:

Wow. I love that. I did write that down, and I’m going to practice that too. And I’m also going to go check my hair here.

Mark Cole:

No, no.

Traci Morrow:

But that kind of does lead to my next question because then John talks about, he quotes, “Most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you’re listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself.” I do love that quote. I even quoted that in my book, Real Life Marriage, because I heard it first, since we’re talking about Super Bowl, that’s so funny. I heard it first from an former Eagles player, John Dorenbos. He was the long snapper. He ended up being on America’s Got Talent as a magician. I don’t know if you ever watched that show.

Mark Cole:

I did.

Traci Morrow:

He has a great life story, but one of the things that he said that really stuck with me, I always attributed this quote to him, but he said, “Don’t listen to yourself, talk to yourself.” And I have quoted that for so long, because what we say to ourself, what we’ve hearing ourselves say, we don’t even realize that narrative is running all the time. And so learning to talk positively to ourselves is an intentional step that really can turn around the narrative that is going on in our head, maybe that’s really dated back to our childhood, where we are echoing things that were said to us. I’m getting into relationships here, but things that were said to us as children, that we’ve come into a agreement that we are allowing to run through our head and that we now speak to that, is a powerful thing. And so I’m curious for you in that positive attitude kind of thing, what are the kinds of things that you say to yourself to encourage yourself, Mark?

Mark Cole:

One is always the favor. So I’m a person of faith. You guys know that by now listening to the podcast, the favor of the Lord is so real. When I think about what I get to do on a daily basis, I get to hang out with John Maxwell. For 20 years, I’ve been riding shotgun with him and helping people, and I realize the significance of what I do. It’s humbling, but it’s also extremely invigorating because I couldn’t have gotten here, there’s no way that I could have orchestrated the life that I live. There’s no way. There is no way.

Traci Morrow:

No way.

Mark Cole:

Let’s start with the incredible community that I live in. The United States, I enjoy that. I enjoy some of the rest of your countries out there as well. I love the state of Georgia. It’s nice. People talk like me. That’s really nice to be around people that talk like me. We understand each other.

Traci Morrow:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

But I love my community, Buford. And I go, “What’s the chances that I could have made just a series of good decisions and ended up with so much favor, so much blessing?” And so the first thing that I work hard on is to make sure that I recognize I’m living a life that is almost euphoric, and it’s keeping that in perspective so that I never get entitled. Number two, I realize the life is not given to me for me, it’s given to me for others. And so anytime, a very small, crazy example, my wife is a professional, and I do mean the word professional, homemaker. She is incredible at the load she carries for our family so that I can carry a different load for our family.

So we’ll go out to eat, and I guess, I could be called the breadwinner, but that is a joke in my opinion, because the way that it takes both of us. But we’ll go out to a restaurant, and invariably, we’ve taught our family this. Everybody that goes with us, friends, our family alike, they always go, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the meal. Thanks for the meal. It’s just a real, probably, southern thing. But everybody thanks. My wife will go, “Hey, Mark, thank you.” And I’ll go, “Stephanie, thank you.” I never want to be seen that I am the provider for our family.

Number one, I want them to see God’s the provider, but number two, I want them to see we are the provider for each other. So there’s not a time that does not go by that we go out to eat or something like that, that all of our family thanks me or Stephanie and Stephanie and I thank each other. And so that’s a very simple thing to say, “Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not something I carry alone. I encourage myself by realizing it’s bigger than me, and it’s not just for me.”

And then the final thing that I really work hard at to make sure that I will encourage myself is to ask myself how to multiply it. It’s never a destination. Oh, okay. Got enough money in the bank now. Ooh, this car is just nice enough. Oh, thank goodness for this home. And it’s not greed that drives that. It’s a sense of greater abundance so that others can be blessed in a greater way.

Traci Morrow:

That’s good.

Mark Cole:

And so I never want to be satisfied with, ah, I’ve arrived or I’ve got enough. And it’s always the hope for more, bigger, better, not from a greed, but from a stewardship standpoint that keeps me from getting discouraged.

Traci Morrow:

I love that. And I know we’re getting short on time, but I do want to hit on this last one, if you don’t mind. And that is, he has a great quote at the end, and I’ll butcher it, but I’m certain that you wrote it down better. But he talks about the flip side of what you just talked about in the positivity and the favor of the Lord is, some people are out there feeling like they were wanting to write one story, but they were forced to write another right now, and they’re making some adjustments in their life. And I’ll let you hit on that quote, but if you could encourage a little bit here, the people who are making adjustments to their story, that they’re continuing to write, that they’ve been forced to write a different story, and there may be a little discouraged maybe like that great Duke Ellington quote, the story about the Swing story where he took the high road and decided to write some Blues instead of be grumpy and grouchy and feel mistreated like he was, but maybe encourage us a little bit, those people who are feeling like, man, I don’t feel favored right now. I’m feeling like my story is not at all what I wanted it to be.

Mark Cole:

And I’ll butcher this too. I had Jake go back and play it a couple of times for us, Traci. But John said something toward the end of the session today that I had Jake go back and rewind because it was just really incredible. He said, “One best weathers disappointment by continuing to write even though they are not living the history they wanted.” And I thought, wow, how many of us get to a breaking point in our life and we stop writing, ee stop living. I, right now, have just an incredible privilege of having more family around me in a more intimate way than I ever imagined. And I laugh about it. We cut up about it at times, but the privilege that I have right now to pour into some little youngins in my life, some little kiddos that just today, at the recording of this podcast, I went and I watched a little boy, my grandson, look at me like, I want to look at my Heavenly Father one day, as if God, my Father, the maker of the world, had time to just stoop down and spend time with me.

I went to a little dad’s day. His dad couldn’t show up, and Robert Whitt took me around to all his friend and said, “This is my GPa and I have the best GPa in the world.” And he began to share, because I was able to step in a great deficit time of his life. I think there’s a way to look at this as, wow, this is a lot more in a very works difficult time in my life to take on some other things, but what a different perspective to say, wow, this is an opportunity to give a little boy something at a stage in his life that would make him look at me. I can never imagine anybody looking at me like he looked at me today because it’s the adoration I feel toward my Heavenly Father.

And so I say all that to say, if you’re going through something really, really challenging, and again, let me encourage those of you that have chronic discouragement, depression, please get some help. We need you around. Your best days are ahead of you, your best days are ahead of you. Others, if you are just having a moment of discouragement, perhaps you, those that are having a moment of discouragement, maybe there’s another angle to look at it. Maybe your discouragement is someone else’s courage. Maybe the thing that is disappointing you is somebody else’s appointment. Maybe the thing that is bringing you down is getting you to a level to lift somebody else up. And if we can turn our perspective around from discouragement and retrieve our courage, go get our courage back. I want to be the best granddad to my family, and they’re giving me an opportunity right now. They’re giving me an opportunity. It was unanticipated, it was unexpected. It created some challenges, but I’m getting ready to do something and am doing something that I always wanted to do, and that’s the way that we look at and deal with discouragement.

What a great, great-

Traci Morrow:

Such a great lesson.

Mark Cole:

… lesson today. Hey, we have a question from Joshua. I love the questions, by the way, the encouragement, the atta-girls, atta-boys that you send in to Traci and I and others. We’re grateful. But I love this question from Joshua. By the way, he listened to the podcast, Transferring the Vision From the Heart and the Head. Great podcast. Go back and listen to that. We’ll put it in the show notes. Here’s Joshua’s question. He said, “When you’re not in a positional leadership role, what can one do when the organization lacks a clear vision or if leadership is poor at communicating it?” He went on to say, Joshua, I love your answer to your own question. He said, “I guess step one to answering my own question is leading them to listen to this podcast.” I like it, Joshua.

Traci Morrow:

Good job, Joshua.

Mark Cole:

Good job. But seriously, Joshua, let me, seriously, it is going to be things like that. You need to put seeds, you need to put books. You need to put moments into their life that will give them a chance to see the reflection of their leadership. I have often, I can think of one situation to where it felt very similar, Joshua, to the way you’re describing in your question. I went to a leader that was unclear. I thought his vision was off from what the founder wanted anyway, and I went to him and I said, “Hey, can I ask you a question? How can I lead better from your vantage point?” That was my only question. Now, I didn’t have respect for him and his input. When I asked him that, Traci, I was very surprised. He said, “What would make you ask that?”

And I said, “Because I think that you might have a vantage point that I don’t have, and I always want that.” He gave me an answer. I went back two weeks later, Joshua, and I said, “Let me tell you what I did with your answer.” And I kind of tell. He said, “Would you spend some time and tell me blind spots I might have in my life?”

Traci Morrow:

Wow.

Mark Cole:

I went with the intent to get connected with him. He gave me something that did help me. I gave it back to him and got what I ultimately wanted, which was a chance to speak into his life. So Joshua, I hope that helps. For all of you that, listen, we went a little long today, but Traci, we could have went a lot longer.

Traci Morrow:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

Thanks for being here. Hey, at Maxwell Leadership, we exist to bring powerful, positive change to the world because everyone deserves to be led well.