Make trouble work for you

Make trouble work for you

One evening, many years ago, my then-14-year-old daughter Stephanie
went for a walk with a friend, promising me she would be back home
before 10 p.m. I didn't pay much attention to the clock until the 10
o'clock news ended and I realized that she hadn't come home yet. I
started to get nervous and irritated. I began pacing the house, wondering
what to do. At 11:30 I got in my car and started cruising the
neighborhood looking for her. My thoughts were understandably
anxious, part fear and part anger. Finally, at 11:45, I drove back past my
own house and saw her silhouette in the window. She was home and
safe.
But I kept driving. I realized that I was thinking completely
pessimistically about the entire incident and I needed to keep thinking
before I talked to her. As I drove along I observed all the pessimism I
was wallowing in: "She doesn't respect me. She can't keep a promise.
My rules and requests mean nothing. This is the tip of the iceberg. I'm
going to have problems with her for the next four years at least. Who
knows where she went and what she was doing? Were drugs involved?
Sex?

Crime? I'm losing sleep over this. This is ruining my peace of mind and
my life. Et cetera."
By recognizing how pessimistic my thoughts were, I was able to let the
thoughts play completely out before taking a deep breath and telling
myself, "Okay. That's one side of the argument. Now it's time to explore
the other side." One of my favorite tricks for flipping my mind over to
the optimistic side is to ask myself the question: "How can I use this?"

How could I use this incident to improve my relationship with my
daughter? How could I make my rules and requests more meaningful to
us both? I began to build my case for optimism. I realized that great
relationships are built by incidents like these. They are not built by
theoretical conversations—but by difficult experiences and what we
learn and gain from them.
So I decided to drive a little while longer and let her wait inside. I was
sure that by now her sister had told her that I was out looking for her, so
she was now the one pacing and anxious. Let her sweat a little, I
thought, while I continue to think things through.

I continued to reflect upon my past relationship with Stephanie. One of
the great aspects of it was Stephanie's honesty. She had always radiated
a quiet and confident kind of serenity about life, and found it easy to be
honest with her own feelings and honest with other people. Whenever
there had been incidents with other children, teachers, or other parents
involved in some misunderstanding, I could always count on Stephanie
to tell me the truth. Asking her about what happened always saved me a
lot of time.

As I drove the dark neighborhood I also ran through my happiest
memories of Stephanie as a little girl, how much I loved her and how
proud I was of her when I

went to her concerts or talked to her teachers. I recalled the time in
grade school when I embarrassed her by asking her principal if he would
consider re-naming the school after her. (She had just won an academic
award of some kind and I was intoxicated with pride.)
Finally my mind was completely won over to the optimistic side. "How
can I use this?" gave me the idea that this incident could be made into
something bigger than it seemed—a new commitment to each other to
keep agreements and trust each other.

When I finally got home I could see that she was scared. She tried to
blame the incident on her not having a watch. She wanted me to
appreciate that, somehow, she was a victim of the whole incident. I
listened patiently and then I told her I thought it was a much bigger deal
than that. I talked about my relationship with her and how I had
cherished her truthfulness throughout her childhood. I told her that I
thought we might have lost all of that tonight. That we might have to
figure a way to start over.

"It's not that big a deal," she protested. But I told her that I thought it
was a very big deal, because it was all about our relationship and
whether we were going to keep agreements with each other.
I told Stephanie I wanted her to be as happy as she could possibly be,
and the only way I could really help that happen would be if we kept
agreements with each other. I told her how scared I was, how angry I
was, how her staying out had ruled out a good night's sleep for me. I
asked her to try to understand. I talked about our life together when she
was a little girl, and I reminded her how extraordinarily truthful she was.
I mentioned a few incidents when she got in trouble but how I had gone
right to her for the truth and always got it.

We talked for a long time that night, and she finally saw that coming
home when she says she's coming home—indeed, doing what she says
she's going to do—is a really "big deal." It's everything.
Since that incident and conversation, Stephanie has been extremely
sensitive to keeping her word. If she goes out and promises to be back
at a certain time, she takes along a watch or makes certain someone
she's with has one. The "incident" that night is something neither of us
will forget, because it got us clear on the idea of trust and agreements.

You could even say that it was a good thing.
We have heard of so many incidents where bad events in retrospect
were strokes of great fortune. A person who broke her leg skiing met a
doctor in the hospital, fell in love, married him, and had a happy
relationship for life. Because most of us have experienced a number of
these incidents, we're aware of the dynamic. What seems bad (like a
broken leg) turns out unexpectedly great. We begin to see the truth that
every problem carries a gift inside it.

By choosing to make use of seemingly bad events, you can access that
gift much sooner. By asking yourself "How can I use this?" or "What
might be good about this?" you can turn your life around on a dime.

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