How Is This for My Good?

Jack Canfield (who got it from bezillionaire W. Clement Stone) has a tip for when bad things happen to you: Become a “reverse paranoid.” Instead of being lost in the badness aspect of it, ask, “How is this happening for my good?” How might the universe be setting you up for something better?

Clients hate being in the liminal state they sometimes find themselves (liminal: strung between two worlds) in their careers. They live in anxiety and despair. Because I see it every day, I KNOW that good frequently arises from where they are now. A laid-off executive’s mother becomes suddenly and terminally ill, and he’s able to help her through her last days (and sees it as a gift). A young graduate doesn’t get a job in another city with a financial services firm, which folds several months later. A student leaves his graduate program and gets a fabulous dot.com marketing job. A professor can’t get a job teaching but through a side-rail job at an agency is pushed closer to her dream of working in a corporation. An exhausted, bitter attorney gets plugged into independent selling of cosmetics and becomes a happy, wildly successful director.

I get excited when I see clients struggling to make a better world from the one that just collapsed around them. If they can tolerate the discomfort of the transition from what they knew to what’s POSSIBLE, and they don’t give up, they WILL find a better way. The only time I despair is when clients start moving heavy furniture into their dark cave of misery with a clear intention to stay there. They’re gonna be there a long, long time. . .and angry, to boot.

I’m sorry if you’re having challenging experiences right now. But see what occurs to you if you look at it in a different way, and ask: “How is this happening for my good?” You’ll be amazed at what’s possible for you.