Don McMinn

When my grandson Benjamin was five years old, we were arm-wrestling on the bed. Benjamin took a short break, crawled to the corner of the bed, and whispered a prayer, “God, give me strength to beat Papa.” When he returned to the tournament, I bowed my head and prayed, “God, give me strength to beat Benjamin.” He went back to his prayer corner and prayed, “God, don’t listen to Papa’s prayer.”

Benjamin always wins our arm-wrestling contests (as well as thumb-wars), so hopefully his faith in God and the efficacy of prayer was affirmed. But the incident did disclose an interesting conundrum. How does God negotiate conflicting prayer requests? For instance, organizers of a Fourth of July parade pray for good weather while local farmers are praying for rain to end the drought. 

Abraham Lincoln spoke of this mystery in his second presidential inaugural speech—and also proffered an answer. 

On March 6, 1865 (about five weeks before the Civil War ended), Lincoln addressed a divided nation. In his speech he said, “Both (North and South) read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

There’s a higher principle at work, and Lincoln expressed it well—the Almighty has his own purposes.

This should not discourage us from praying—after all, the Bible teaches “by prayer and petition, make your requests to God”; but we’re wise to frame our requests knowing that “our God is in heaven, he does what he pleases.” 

We wouldn’t want it any other way.

When praying, I avoid prejudicial requests. I don’t pray that UT Austin will beat Oklahoma in their annual football game, though I may pray for the safety of the players. I don’t pray about the weather; it is totally controlled by God. I avoid giving God advice, or telling him what he should do. And, I don’t pray for his aid if it might harm someone else.

Also, my prayers are shorter than they used to be. Ecclesiastes teaches, “Don’t be hasty in bringing matters before God. After all, God is in heaven, and you are here on earth. So let your words be few.” Sometimes, long public prayers seem unnecessary. (Relative to long public prayers, someone once said, “If your prayer is short, I will pray with you. If it is long, I will pray for you. If it is extremely long, I will pray against you.”) When praying, sincerity and intent matter much more than word count.

Our best option is to embrace the sovereignty of God and keep our prayers simple. I often pray, “God, be God in my life and in the lives of those I love.”

We’ve often heard that first impressions are important, and they are. But don’t neglect final impressions because we are also highly influenced by endings. Regardless of how an experience started and played out, we remember most how it ended. 

There’s probably a more tactful example of this idea, but this anecdote—involving colonoscopies—is telling. The experiment was conducted by Redelmeier and Kahneman. 

“In the late 1980s, colonoscopies were painful, and not merely dreaded. The discomfort of the procedure dissuaded people from returning for another one. By 1990, colon cancer was killing sixty thousand people every year in the United States. Many of its victims would have survived had their cancer been detected at an early stage. Was it possible to alter their memory of the experience so that they might forget how unpleasant it was?

“To answer the question, Redelmeier ran an experiment on roughly seven hundred people over a period of a year. One group of patients had the colonoscope yanked out of their rear ends at the end of their colonoscopy without ceremony; the other group felt the tip of the scope lingering in their rectums for an extra three minutes. Those extra three minutes were not pleasant. They were merely less unpleasant than the other procedure. The patients in the first group were on the receiving end of an old-fashioned wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am colonoscopy; those in the second group enjoyed a more subtle ending. The sum total of pain experienced by the second group was, however, greater because the scope was in the body longer.

“An hour after the procedure, the researchers entered the recovery room and asked the patients to rate their experience. Those who had been give the less unhappy ending remembered less pain than did the patients who had not. Human beings who had never imagined that they might prefer more pain to less could nearly all be fooled into doing so. As Redelmeier put it, ‘Last impressions can be lasting impressions’” (from The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis, page 235). 

How can we take advantage of this insight? 

When planning an event, end with a nice, feel-good experience.

Several years ago I took 36 friends on a trip to Europe. On the last night of the trip we were staying in a convent in Rome. I had arranged for a professional tenor to sing a concert—just for our group—in the chapel prior to a four-course meal. It was an incredible ending to the trip; people are still talking about it. No one mentions the fact that it rained that last day in Rome, which made touring difficult. The nice ending of the trip trumped previous inconveniences.  

When an unfortunate event occurs, its impact can be minimized by orchestrating a positive ending. 

In 1989 Lexus introduced its first car, the flagship LS400. Their slogan was “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” But the car had flaws and all 8,000 vehicles were recalled. The cruise control failed to disengage, the plastic cover around the high-mounted rear brake light warped, and a poor connection between the alternator and battery could cause the battery to run down. 

This could have rendered Lexus stillborn—it’s first car was flawed. But the company took full responsibility for the problems and its dealers did the repair work at no charge to the customer. But here’s what made the big difference: An older couple had bought their LS400 in a major city and drove it to their small town which was 500 miles from the nearest dealership. When Lexus heard about the dilemma they flew mechanics to the small town and repaired the car at the couple’s home. The story went viral and became a memorable legend—“Lexus will always take care of their customers.”  

Think carefully about how you end all relational encounters: a conversation with a co-worker; a lunch meeting; a consulting contract; a worship service; an athletic event; a planning retreat, or a dinner party. A well-orchestrated ending can make a significant difference.

Warren Buffet has been called the Oracle of Omaha. He’s the most successful investor in history. His estimated net worth of nearly $85 billion makes him the fourth-richest person in the world. He has pledged to give 99% of his fortune to charity during his lifetime or at death. He has given $37 billion dollars to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

A reporter once asked Buffett why he’s giving most of his money to the Gates Foundation when he could easily start and fund his own foundation. His answer: 

“I don’t think I’m as well cut out to be a philanthropist as Bill and Melinda are. The feedback on philanthropy is very slow, and that would bother me. I’d have to be too involved with a lot of people I wouldn’t want to be involved with and have to listen to more opinions than I would enjoy. In philanthropy also, you have to make some big mistakes. I know that. But it would bother me to make the mistakes myself, rather than having someone else make them whom I trust overall to do a good job. In general, Bill and Melinda will have a better batting average than I would.”

Warren Buffet knows what he’s good at (allocation of capital) and focuses on that and looks to other people to do things he’s not good at. We should follow his example. 

Know your strengths

Every person has a few core strengths—perhaps one or two. They are normally innate; you may have studied and worked hard to develop your signature strength, but it was probably in you at birth.

What do you do well? What comes naturally for you? Some extreme examples would include: Picasso—artist, Michael Jordon—athlete, C.S. Lewis—philosopher, Einstein—scientist, Edison—inventor, Dickens—writer. For most of us, our core strength is not this obvious; we have to search for it, but it is there.

Here are some suggestions on how to discover your strengths.

Focus on your strengths

If we’re only good at a few things, that means we’re not very competent in many areas. Should we try to shore up our weaknesses or focus on our strengths? 

Professor Martin Seligman wrote, “I do not believe that you should devote overly much effort to correcting your weaknesses. Rather, I believe that the highest success in living and the deepest emotional satisfaction comes from building and using your signature strengths.”

Granted, sometimes we have to do things we’re not good at because we’re not able to delegate them to others, in which case we just need to be conscientious and diligent. For instance, if you’re not good at math and financial accounting, try to find someone who is and ask her to help keep your finances in order. But if no one is available, you’ll have to do it yourself. This also applies at work: if your job requires you to do something you’re not good at but you can’t delegate this to someone else, you’ll need to do the best you can. 

Often, lack of funds forces us to do things ourselves. I know there are skilled workers who are better than I am at certain tasks, but I don’t have the money to pay them, so I do the work myself. Buffett has no such restraints, but I do.

In general, discover your strengths and then arrange your life such that you spend most of your time and energy doing what you’re good at. 

I agree with business consultant Marcus Buckingham when he says, “Look inside yourself, try to identify your strongest trends, reinforce them with practice and learning and then either find, or carve out a job that draws on those strengths every day. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was put in.” 

 

I’m always amazed at the oversized impact that small gifts can make. 

Small physical gifts can be impactful.

During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were hostile enemies engaged in a high-stakes race to achieve supremacy in space. The Russians used dogs in their program, and two of them—Belka and Strelka—became the first animals to orbit the Earth and return alive. 

In 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came up with the perfect idea to improve relations between the two countries. He sent President Kennedy a puppy: Pushinka (a puppy born to Strelka).  

The gift helped thaw their frosty relationship. Kennedy warmly thanked his Soviet counterpart in a letter, noting that the ride Pushinka took from Russia to America might not have been as dramatic as the one Strelka took, but it was still “a long voyage and she stood it well.” Kennedy and Khrushchev remained on cordial terms, even though the Cold War lasted for three more decades. 

A simple, kind deed can have an enormous impact. 

The African bishop, Desmond Tutu, was once asked why he became an Anglican priest. He replied that in the days of apartheid, when a black person and a white person met while walking on a footpath, the black person was expected to step into the gutter to allow the white person to pass and then nod his head as a gesture of respect.

“One day,” Tutu said, “when I was just a little boy, my mother and I were walking down the street when a tall, white man, dressed in a black suit, came toward us. Before my mother and I could step off the sidewalk, as was expected of us, this man stepped off the sidewalk and, as my mother and I passed, tipped his hat in a gesture of respect to her! I was more than surprised at what had happened, and I asked my mother, ‘Why did that white man do that?’ My mother explained, ‘He’s an Anglican priest. He’s a man of God, that’s why he did it.’ When she told me that he was an Anglican priest, I decided there and then that I wanted to be an Anglican priest too. And what is more, I wanted to be a man of God.”

Desmond Tutu not only became a priest, he influenced his entire nation. He, along with Nelson Mandela, led the successful fight against apartheid, which changed South Africa.

The priest that deeply impacted young Tutu’s life probably never knew “the rest of the story”; but through one simple act of kindness (not one word was spoken), he deeply impacted one life that would deeply affect an entire nation. 

A few choice words, spoken at the right time, can have an oversized impact.  

In a previous post I wrote about the life-giving and life-changing sentence that Benjamin West’s mother spoke to him when he was a child. One choice phrase solidified his destiny in life. In like manner, we can use simple phrases— “I’m so proud of you.” “I’m so sorry that…” “You’re so good at that.”—to deeply impact other people.  

Don’t underestimate the power of small gestures and choice words.