06/24/21: The reason everything happens for a reason

Sent 6/24/21

Two updates!

• I was a guest on the Marathon Running Podcast where host Letty and I discussed the ideas she liked most in Make the Leap
• This week's Fueling the Pursuit episode is with 2x Crossfit Games competitor Fee Saghafi, who is a star in the making and inspired this newsletter

This week's Think Better Newsletter is about the reason that everything happens for a reason. 

The Idea

The day before the Mid-Atlantic Crossfit Semi-Final competition, Fee Saghafi fell ill with a terrible stomach bug. She was unable to keep anything down throughout the entire 3-day competition. Fee had never competed under such adverse conditions, and she struggled, underperforming her expectations heading in.

Fee finished the competition in 7th place--still quite impressive--but missed out on an automatic qualification for the CrossFit Games. Fortunately, because she didn't give up she earned one more chance at the Last Chance Qualifier, which will be held next week.

In discussing her experience, Fee said the following:

"I was able to take away a very specific moment through each event... By the end of the weekend I was like, 'I'm hungry. I'm ready for that Last Chance Qualifier. Everything that happened, I want to tell myself it happened for a reason. It didn't happen just randomly, like [with] no purpose behind it."

I've always been fascinated by the phrase, "Everything happens for a reason." I do believe that everything happens for a reason. But not for the reasons most people believe.

I don't believe there is a higher power dictating events. Nor do I believe we are simply hard-wired to do what we do.

No, everything happens for a reason because we get to decide the reason. We choose to learn from the event, to connect it to what came before or after, and whether to give it importance or let it go. We ascribe the meaning.

Dots don't simply connect. We connect them. And when we choose to assign productive reasons we get better future results.  

The System

The system to ensure that "everything happens for a reason" is so simple as to not even feel like a system. It's to actively find a way to learn from each experience.

Fee showed that she is creating positive reasons and productive connections when she said that she "was able to take away a very specific moment through each event."

Had she not, then the adversity she faced wouldn't have had a reason. It would have just happened, randomly, with no purpose behind it.

But by choosing to turn it into a lesson, an opportunity, a stepping stone...Fee turned the negative experience into something positive, something that will make her better in the future. 

And when she looks back on it, she'll credit that illness as being one of the reasons she became who she is.

I hope she'll also credit herself for making the reason that made everything happen.

The Question

What can you learn from a recent challenge to make you better in the future?

 

Go Be More,

Bryan Green
Author of Make the Leap: Think Better, Train Better, Run Faster and the companion Think Better Workbook
Co-host of the Go Be More Podcast
Co-host of the Fueling the Pursuit Podcast

"In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened."
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 

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