No plan was ever executed without a few hitches, nor do all aspects of a plan bear fruit. They never do. Learn from failure, adjust, and/or move on. God always provides what we need to do what he asks of us. His grace is sufficient.

Mass Readings Audio http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/18_07_08.mp3

Welcome to the fifteenth episode of By Your Life. Thank you for joining me. If you haven’t already, please subscribe on the right side of the page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It is my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace, and to trust that it is good for business. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we will reflect on the readings for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

In the first reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, the Lord gave Ezekiel an awful assignment. He didn’t sugar-coat it either. The Lord said, “I am sending you to the Israelites, a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. Their children are bold of face and stubborn of heart—to them I am sending you.”

I can just hear Ezekiel thinking to himself, “That’s just great God. Thanks a lot!”

Have you ever been given an assignment that totally overwhelmed you? When I think back over my career, every job I had included projects and challenges that I had never faced before and really had no clue what I was doing when I started. I spent most of my career in the telecommunications industry developing new products, markets or businesses, so we were literally forging new ground all the time. When we started out, we had to first assess whether the new project made sense to pursue strategically, whether we could do it technically, and then figure how much investment would be required before the venture was profitable and if it could earn a sufficient return.

It was common for us to face “nay-sayers” as we developed our plans. As I look back, one of my favorites was the president of our division when we presented our plan for mobile data solutions back in 2000-2001. As we shared the potential opportunity for wireless data, he pointed to his mobile phone and said, “No one is going to use this thing to surf the internet!”

I guess he was wrong. In hindsight, his comment is even laughable, but at the time, his lack of faith in our business plan was a major obstacle.

It is hard to accomplish great things when people don’t believe in the vision. Even Jesus faced his share of “nay-sayers” throughout his earthly ministry and still does today. In Mark’s Gospel, we hear about his rejection at Nazareth. Because of their lack of faith, “he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.”

In our mobile data business case, the president moved on when the division was sold to a private equity group and the plan was eventually implemented.

When I said that for most of my career, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing when I started a new job or project, it was only half true. I didn’t know the specifics about most of these projects, but that wasn’t my job. I had to assemble the team who had the knowledge and ability to figure things out. We always faced obstacles and things always came up that we hadn’t anticipated. But, we planned for the unexpected, learned from our mistakes, and solved problems as we encountered them. But, we still had to deal with negativity. No plan was ever executed without a few hitches, nor did all aspects of the plan bear fruit. They never do. The question is, how to you respond when you encounter a problem?

Learn from it, adjust, and/or move on. As Henry Ford said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Today, when I work with various teams, I hear complaints about people who are negative and are always shooting down new ideas. These “Negative Nellies” are hard to work with and awful to work for. What’s worse is that nay-sayers love to be right. It almost seems as if they want a project to fail so they can say, “I told you so!”

The problem is, these people don’t think they are negative. They call themselves realists. To some extent, they are right because the gift these people bring to a team is their ability to identify obstacles and the obstacles are real. However, when nay-sayers stop at the point of criticizing an idea, instead of using problem-solving skills to figure out how to overcome the challenges, they are just being negative.

It is difficult to get things done when you’ve got negative people on your team. How do you get them on board so their negativity won’t sabotage your efforts?

First, acknowledge that the nay-sayers are right. Obstacles exist. Instead of ignoring or succumbing to negative comments like “That will never work!”, try to find out why they think that way. Getting obstacles out on the table so that the team can discuss solutions is an important part of the project planning process. When I encounter people who think, “We can’t.” I like to ask, “Well then, what can we do?”

The best way to get support of the nay-sayers is to involve them in coming up with solutions—and there always are more than one solution to every obstacle, sometimes it just takes a little persistence to find them. As Thomas Edison was quoted when speaking about his attempts to perfect the lightbulb, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Edison certainly had a spirit of perseverance, as did St. Paul. In the second reading from his second letter to the Corinthians, he writes:

“That I, Paul, might not become too elated, because of the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’

I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

St. Paul not only found the blessing in his adversity, he was clear about the source of his strength and ability to persevere. The Lord gives us what we need to accomplish what he asks. His grace is sufficient.

What about you? Are you a nay-sayer on your team?  Alison Ledgerwood, a social psychologist, conducted research on how people think. In her TED talk, she shared the results and concluded that our view of the world has a fundamental tendency to tilt toward the negative and our minds tend to get stuck there. From her research, Ledgerwood concluded, “It is easy to shift our thinking from good to bad, but far harder to shift from bad to good. We literally have to work harder to see the upside of things.”

So, chances are, there is a little Negative Nellie in you too. What can you do about it? Ledgerwood offers solutions, but they take work. She quoted research that shows that “writing for a few minutes each day about what you are grateful for can dramatically boost your happiness and well-being and your health.” She suggests that practicing positive thinking takes, well, it takes practice. When we practice something, it involves intentional thought and effort. Just asking, “What happened that was good?” or ask I like to ask my clients, “What are your wins?” can get you to force your mind to find the positive.

Perhaps, more importantly, be aware of how negative thoughts can have a lasting affect on others. Despite their good intentions, leaders who only point out what’s wrong with a situation, how people failed, or why something won’t work, create a more lasting negative impact on their teams. That one mean comment can bring a person down and keep them down.

So, do your part and be an encouragement to others. In the end, however, it is each person’s choice to stay stuck in the negative or to choose to be positive. As the Lord told Ezekiel in the first reading, “You shall say to them: Thus says the LORD GOD! And whether they heed or resist—for they are a rebellious house—they shall know that a prophet has been among them.”

Let us ask the Holy Spirit to give us sufficient grace to persevere and find positive in a world that tends to tilt toward the negative so that we may be an encouragement to others.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. 

May God bless you abundantly and may you glorify the Lord by your life.  Amen

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Many thanks to Fr. Stan Fortuna for his musical gifts, especially the traditional and contemporary versions of Come Holy Ghost (Come Holy Spirit) that you hear in this podcast. You can find more from Fr. Stan at  http://www.francescoproductions.com/ or on Facebook.