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“Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings.”


A thought by John C. Maxwell from his book, How High Will You Climb? (p. 23). HarpersCollins Leadership Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

This is so important for each one of us to see!

John says, “In Awake, My Heart, my friend J. Sidlow Baxter writes, ‘What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.’

John goes on, “When confronted with a difficult situation, a person with an outstanding attitude makes the best of it while he gets the worst of it. Life can be likened to a grindstone. Whether it grinds you down or polishes you depends on what you are made of.

“Few people knew Abraham Lincoln until the great weight of the Civil War showed his character. Robinson Crusoe was written in prison. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress in the Bedford jail. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote The History of the World during a thirteen-year imprisonment. Luther translated the Bible while confined in the castle of Wartburg. Beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works.

“When God wants to educate a man, He does not send him to the school of graces but to the school of necessities. Through the pit and the dungeon, Joseph came to the throne. Moses tended sheep in the desert before God called him for service. Peter, humbled and broken by his denial of Christ, heeded the command to ‘Feed My sheep.’”

John then says, “Great leaders emerge when crises occur. In the lives of people who achieve, terrible troubles force them to rise above the commonplace. Not only do they find the answers, but they discover a tremendous power within themselves. Like a groundswell far out in the ocean, this force within explodes into a mighty wave when circumstances seem to overcome. Then out steps the athlete, the author, the statesman, the scientist, or the businessman. David Sarnoff said, ‘There is plenty of security in the cemetery; I long for opportunity.’”

And I do too, don’t you?

Yes, yes!
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