Spin it in Your Favor
When my Japanese client, Yoshi, was in elementary school, her teacher asked the students to draw pictures of their moms for Mother’s Day, and she posted them on a bulletin board. Yoshi told her mother about her drawing, which made mom quite happy. When the day came for the students to take their pictures home, Yoshi’s picture was missing from the bulletin board. Someone had taken it.
Yoshi feared that she would be punished when she failed to bring the drawing home, but she finally found the courage to do so. But instead of the reprimand she expected, her mother told her, “You must be a great artist if someone wanted your picture so much.” Hearing that, Yoshi was relieved, as if she had been let out of jail. Her mother had achieved a monumental reframe that stayed with Yoshi for the rest of her life.
Spin, Spin Another Look
The trick to life is to spin all events and experiences in your favor. The art of reframing calls you to take the facts of a situation and interpret them in a way that empowers you rather than debilitates you. All events are essentially meaningless, or neutral. Nothing is intrinsically good or bad. It is how we look at them that determines our experience of them and subsequently sets us up for the next experience equal to our interpretation of the last one. So choose your interpretations wisely, for they are previews of coming attractions.
Recently I was selling a car, and I made an appointment to meet a prospective buyer at a local shop. When I got there the buyer was not there, and due to a comedy of errors, he never showed up. But while I was waiting I saw a large plaque dedicate to Akoni Pule, the local congressman after whom the highway I sat next to was dedicated.
Spin, Spin the Experience
Akoni Pule was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives in 1947. He served for two years and then he was defeated for re-election. Then Mr. Pule did something hardly anyone would do. He took a job as a janitor in the congress building so he could continue to be in the energy of politics and learn more about how the legislature worked. It must have been very humbling for Mr. Pule to mop the floor behind the man who defeated him.
Two years later Pule ran for election again, he was elected, and he went on to serve continuously from 1952 until 1965-one of the longest runs in the history of Hawaii. During that time, he championed highway construction, a thriving seaport, and progressed the state such that he became a beloved congressman. After a ten-year effort to build a road that allowed local residents to get to jobs at a new hotel, the highway was named after him.
I found it extraordinarily inspiring that this man who had been a congressman was willing to mop floors to stay in politics. Ultimately this experience, coupled with his perseverance and dedication to serve, yielded him a long and successful tenure, and the love and admiration of his constituents long after his life. What a great story!
Spin, and Spin Again
Looking back on my “failed” attempt to meet the fellow who would buy my car, I decided it was totally worth that trip to learn about Akoni Pule, whose story has provided me with powerful teaching material I have been passing along to my students, and will continue to do so. P.S. Someone else bought the car later that day for the asking price. So no loss, only gain.
When we practice spinning events in our favor, we are far closer to truth than when we spin them against ourselves. It’s all how you look at it.
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About the Author
Alan Cohen is the bestselling author of the newly-released Spirit Means Business, illuminating how you can successfully merge your career and financial path with your spiritual life. He will present a program related to this book on the US Mainland (west coast) in August. For more information about this program, Alan’s books and videos, free daily inspirational quotes, online courses, and weekly radio show, visit www.AlanCohen.com.
