"Our life is what our thoughts make it."

I came across a review by Beverly Gage of a new Harry Truman biography by A.J. Baime in The New Yorker magazine a few weeks ago that caught my attention.  The review started with a really powerful opening sentence:

Americans today seem to believe that we live in especially exhausting political times.  But the rhythms of our moment - pandemic, protest, pandemic, election, insurrection, pandemic, invasion of Ukraine - have nothing on the Truman era.

Okay, that sounds intriguing.  Several years ago, I read the David McCullough biography and can certainly appreciate that Truman became the President under difficult circumstances (you probably remember that Truman was FDR's last Vice President and became President when Roosevelt died at the beginning of his fourth term, learning of the existence of the atomic bomb for the very first time only just after becoming President).  I even remember the famous newspaper photograph of Truman holding a copy of the Chicago Tribune headlines on the morning after the 1948 Presidential Election announcing, ""Dewey Defeats Truman" (incidentally, Truman won that election):

I guess I don't remember learning in school that the late 1940's were as politically charged as today.  But then, Gage explains further:

Between April, 1945, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's death thrust Harry S. Truman into office, and January, 1953, when Truman handed the Presidency to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the war in Europe ended, Hitler killed himself, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, the Cold War began, the state of Israel came into being, the Soviet Union developed its own nuclear weapons, China underwent a Communist revolution, the West created NATO, the world created the United Nations, and the Korean War began.  One could go on.

Wow, okay, now I understand.  My point is that due to a cognitive bias known as the "recency bias" or "recency effect" (the tendency to favor recent events over historical ones), we tend to believe that no one else has ever had it as difficult as we have in the past two years.  Please don't misunderstand me - I am not at all saying that the last two years haven't been challenging.  They have been incredibly challenging.   We've just been through (and technically it's not even over yet) the kind of global pandemic that hits once a century.  And there is no question that society is struggling with racial and social injustice, divisive politics, and challenging economic times.  My point is that other generations have experienced similar challenges, even if they aren't the exact challenges that we've faced the last two years.

I want to make another point.  We can learn a lot by reading history.  For example, one of the best ways for leaders to learn how to deal with challenging times is to read how other leaders in the past have dealt with the challenges of their generation.  I've talked about this concept before in previous posts (see "Past is Prologue" and "Study the Past").  "All of this has happened before", and unfortunately, because history does repeat itself, it will happen again.  What better way to learn how to lead in difficult, challenging times than through reading history?

So, how did old "Give 'em Hell Harry" do it?  Well, for starters, he was an optimist at heart.  Truman once said, "A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties."  He also said, "Men make history and not the other way around."  Truman was thrust into a maelstrom and largely prevailed - he made history - because he saw the challenges facing him as opportunities.  

Throughout history, the optimists have been the ones who have prevailed during the most difficult, challenging times.  Going back all the way to ancient Rome, the emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius said, "Our life is what our thoughts make it."  Marcus Aurelius was a reluctant leader and held one of the most powerful political positions in the world when he became the last of the so-called "Five Good Emperors".  He would have preferred to study his Stoic philosophy.  We are fortunate that he left us with his Meditations, in which he described the virtues of self-restraint, duty, respect for others, and justice.  Indeed, "our life is what our thoughts make it" - if we choose to focus on the positive aspects in our lives (optimism) versus the negative ones (pessimism), our lives will be so much better.  

Drs. Emma Seppälä and Kim Cameron wrote in a recent Harvard Business Review online article, "The greatest predictor of success for leaders is not their charisma, influence, or power.  It is not personality, attractiveness, or innovative genius.  The one thing that supersedes all these factors is positive relational energy: the energy exchanged between people that helps uplift, enthuse, and renew them...When leaders display positive relational energy, it catapults performance to a new level."  Positive energy and optimism are what we need in our leaders during challenging times like the present.

One last point, and it's particularly important.  I am not talking about being superficially and falsely positive.  We have to be realistic, but there is a way to do so while remaining optimistic.  Positive energy and optimism doesn't mean that we turn a blind eye to our current realities.  I go back to what leaders like Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning (one of the best books that I've ever read) said, "“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  Or former Vietnam Prisoner of War James Stockdale, who said, “I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”  Or Mother Teresa, who said, "I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples."  Positive energy.  Optimism.  Attitude.

 

I want to leave with one last quote.  The French writer Voltaire said, “The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”  How much better leaders would all of us be if we chose to be model the positive energy, attitudes, and optimism of leaders like Harry Truman, Viktor Frankl, James Stockdale, and Mother Teresa?