Rewards through Resilience

By Steven W. Sanders

Struggle is a real-world phenomenon, particularly if we want to make a difference in our lives and the lives of others. The struggles we face can be as routine as dealing with the traffic to get to our place of work on time. We may also struggle with physical or mental illness, a family dynamic that is not improving, or a difficult job. In extreme cases, some must live through oppression and life-threatening events brought on by an oppressive regime.

Struggle is an effort to gain freedom from constraints, to withstand or overcome obstacles, or to work against competing forces in order to make a meaningful change or difference. Whether we encounter frequent struggles or only a few, we all must face them, not necessarily by choice. We are aware of the pain and difficulties associated with struggles as well as the feeling of gratification and relief when we withstand, outlast, or overcome them. We learn from struggles, together with building strength of character and resilience the next time we encounter similar challenges. How we engage and overcome struggles shapes our attitudes and perspectives regarding our lives and our ability to make a difference in the lives of others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889434597

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Rewards through Resilience

Steven W. Sanders

Copyright © 2023 by Steven W. Sanders

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

To my dear friend,

Jim Milne

Who inspired me to write this book.

Amicus certus in re incerta.

Acknowledgments

While writing this book, I had a wonderful review team. I’d like to recognize and thank the individuals below, whose contributions were instrumental in propelling me forward as I endeavored through this process. Their feedback, support, and guidance enabled me to deliver the prose you are about to read.

My two daughters, Kimberley and Sara, were with me from the very start as I was conceptualizing what this book would entail. Their perspectives helped me refine my approach and the topics I would cover. They inspired me to pursue this effort with confidence and realize that this book’s topics would resonate with a younger audience.

Annette Torres provided me initial insights when I was first outlining the subject matter that the book would entail. Always taking time out of her busy schedule, she provided meaningful input chapter by chapter, encouraging me to continue, particularly when my creative inspiration seemed to flicker and subject-matter options appeared remote. I’ve always appreciated our close friendship and her unwavering support.

Ken Hower brought many years of people-focused and managerial perspectives to the unfolding content, including primary themes, examples, and stories. I’m very grateful for his thorough review of each section and always enjoyed our lunch sessions during which he would share his feedback: what resonated well and where greater clarity or depth would be helpful to the reader.

Getting a breadth of insights was important in enabling the book to tell the real story of fulfillment and struggle. Sandy Villesvik always provided direct feedback and challenged me to consider alternative avenues to express important points. Changes I made as a result of his input have helped provide a more compelling readership experience.

Many others reviewed, discussed, and provided the timely and periodically tough love input I needed to continue forward in fulfilling my inspired desire to write this book.

I also want to give heartfelt thanks to the individuals who allowed me to interview them, sharing themselves and providing emotionally engrossing, life-changing stories that so beautifully tied together the key points I was attempting to convey. Storytelling is one of the ways the concepts in Rewards through Resilience become intensely relevant to readers as they strive to make sense of and overcome their own life struggles.

Introduction

Life is complex and filled with challenges. Although we endeavor to experience the comforts and fruits of our labors, we also realize that perhaps life is not meant to be easy. The challenges we face are compounded by living in a postmodern and uncertain world.

Yet we can reap fulfillment in our lives, not in spite of the challenges and struggles we face but as a result of them. How can this be? How are struggle and fulfillment even related to each other? Understanding and embracing the relationship between the two is where the magic can begin to occur in our own lives. Once we embark on this new path forward, changes take place which we never believed possible.

This book focuses on how to reap fulfillment through life’s struggles. It provides principles, insights, and tools which will enable you to bring meaningful change to your life and the lives of others. Attaining fulfillment and the road you take to get there are as personal and unique as each of us are human beings. Yet you will be challenged to consider a radical transformation in your thinking regarding struggle and fulfillment that will enable you to break through the world’s own expectations, allowing you to experience and enjoy a greater sense of freedom, completeness, and satisfaction in your life.

One element of this transformation is to view fulfillment as a life journey rather than goal achievement being an end in itself. The intent is not to help you build an intellectual approach or a specific set of skills to apply to some element of your life. Rather, the purpose is to prompt you to shift your perspective to create an emotional connection—of the heart—and a discipline that propels you forward to reach your ultimate destination. You will read compelling stories of individuals from many different walks of life, interwoven throughout the book, to help fortify this connection and inspire you to consider meaningful differences that you can make in your life and those of others.

This book is not prescriptive. It provides an approach and tools to enable fulfillment in your life but does not provide a one-size-fits-all game plan nor tells you specifically what you must do to attain it. Just as important, the book does not indicate which thoughts, emotions, or spiritual experiences you will encounter when reaping fulfillment. (There are capable psychologists who can speak meaningfully on this topic.) The breadth and depth of how you feel internally and when you begin feeling this way will be uniquely personal. Several chapters in this book deal with key elements of struggle and fulfillment. The stories, referenced above, provide the examples and help make important personal connections that impact us emotionally. The book’s exercises will help you to forge your own life journey toward fulfillment more meaningfully. But you are the one who is ultimately in charge of your life’s direction as well as the difference you make in the lives of others.

The book’s content is grouped into two parts. First, the book will help you shape your foundation toward attaining a more fulfilling life. This section defines struggle and fulfillment, then enables you to get a baseline awareness of your important life characteristics. You will uncover perspectives on a virtuous life, the worldview of fulfillment, constraints that can keep us from becoming our best selves, and life’s hard realities with which we must contend and which can hold us back from attaining fulfillment. In the book’s second part, you will be provided with a framework and tools to help you reap long-term fulfillment. You will encounter what it means to engage and overcome struggle, then see struggle and fulfillment portrayed within three examples of people with very different life experiences. You will then have the opportunity to create your framework and action plan toward a more fulfilling life, intensifying your focus on desired life changes and making the most of life’s journey ahead of you. In summarizing the book, the epilogue shares a story of someone who led a fulfilling life but didn’t see it that way until making a radical and timely change in perspective regarding his own life.

Here are a couple of thoughts to consider as you begin reading: first, our viewpoints begin in childhood, carry into adulthood, and develop throughout our lives. Today, our view of fulfillment and what’s important in our lives are influenced enormously by the modern media, professional sports and entertainment, celebrity role models, content taught in our schools, perspectives of our friends and family, and national, state, and local governmental policies. In a sense, we experience a pipeline of ideology beginning early on, sometimes strongly held beliefs on how the world operates and how we should function within it, influencing our beliefs and what we must do to attain greater joy and satisfaction in our own lives.

As a result of these influences, some of which can have significant impact on our thinking, we may tend to lose sight of those life elements which are most important and sustaining for our own long-term growth and positive impact on the world. The change we undertake begins with each of us individually. Our sense of completeness, satisfaction, and joy tie directly to our own well-being and to those whom we love, care for, and serve.

Although the world around us and its perspectives on what’s important change, sometimes at a torrid pace, there are core principles that guide us toward fulfilling lives that themselves remain grounded and permanent.

This book is written to help you make a positive difference in your life. The content is straightforward and clear and hopefully will provide some fun and enjoyment along the way. But as a close friend and colleague of mine, who read the book’s manuscript, shared with me: This book is not easy to read. Many times, the reader is challenged with thought-provoking, penetrating, and difficult questions. Some may make the reader feel uncomfortable. The exercises in the book’s final chapters will require time and commitment to complete, much as with the questions that are asked throughout the book. But that is life, isn’t it? We all must do the hard work to make a meaningful difference, whatever that change is which we’re intending to make. And this book will help the reader to make a meaningful life change.

Don’t let my friend’s comments dissuade you from reading further. Simply begin with your eyes open and hearts receptive to the content you are about to encounter. Make this experience be personal and wonderful. And remember, as you read the book’s chapters and complete the exercises, you are always in a safe place.

My wish is that each of you will take at least one golden nugget of value from this book to apply to your life. If this volume helps just one individual to make some positive life change and impact, the time and effort to create the content will have been worth it.

Next, we present a vivid example of reaping fulfillment through struggle, someone with whom we are all familiar yet whose life you will view in perhaps a uniquely different way.

A Vivid Example

Let’s take a look back on someone of whom we all know, someone whose own life journey encompasses much of what this book is intended to convey. Abraham Lincoln was the United States’ sixteenth president. He is arguably the greatest presidential leader in US history and someone with whom we can associate tremendous success and personal fulfillment. Many of us are familiar with key events associated with Lincoln’s presidency during one of the nation’s toughest time periods. But are you familiar with Lincoln, the person—Lincoln the Unknown¹—the road he took and how his talents, passions, experiences, struggles, and personal characteristics were so significant to his life and his future role as president?

Like the man himself, Lincoln’s life was one of incredible paradox. He is one of the most fascinating people we have come to know. He grew up within enormously difficult circumstances, yet through personal initiative, perseverance, and with the help of others, he was able to overcome them, succeed, and reap a life of fulfillment. He was constrained from getting an education and destined to become a farmhand and rail splitter but instead taught himself to read, write, and speak convincingly to become one of the greatest speech writers, orators, and conversationalists of all time. His life was one of sadness and despair, yet his humor was infectious and fostered an unsurpassed influence on others through storytelling, parables, and jokes and conveying wisdom through laughter. As a young man, he had low self-esteem and experienced many failures but grew through them to gain deep self-awareness of his personal strengths and shortcomings, develop impeccable character through integrity, truth, and honesty, and become highly self-confident, a rock of resolve, particularly during difficult situations.

As president, having obtained important victories while in office, he had everything—immense notoriety and fame, power almost second to none, financial wealth, and beauty through charisma, influence, and engaging self-expression. Although he enjoyed their fruits and benefits, he never used them for personal gain or advantage. Always unassuming, he strived consistently to serve a broader purpose in life to preserve the nation and emancipate those in bondage. Additionally, his treatment of others was consistent with dignity and respect, independent of the person’s position or whether friend or enemy. He experienced infrequent but amazing joy while concurrently suffering some of the most agonizing setbacks and defeats. As challenging as his life circumstances were, they helped shape him to become the greatest president in American history in which a literal unknown transformed into one of the most recognized and heroic individuals ever.

Lincoln consistently strove to become a better version of himself while making a positive impact on the lives of others, including those closest to him, and the country. Horace Greeley, an adversary of Lincoln but who paid him enormous respect, stated, He was open to all impressions and influences, and gladly profited by the teachings of events and circumstances, no matter how adverse or unwelcome. There was probably no year of his life when he was not a wiser, cooler, and better man than he had been the year preceding.²

Lincoln was born in 1809 in one of the most lonely and desolate regions in all of Kentucky.³ He grew up in extreme poverty without any formal education, living each day basically to survive. At seven, his father bartered the Kentucky farm…and moved his family into the gloom and solitude of the wild and desolate forests of Indiana… For years, there in Indiana, Abraham Lincoln endured more terrible poverty… He lived in a cabin that smelled. It was infested with fleas, crawling with vermin.⁴ Two years later, his mother died, with his father subsequently remarrying a woman named Sarah Bush. Her character, strength, and love had a tremendous influence on Lincoln’s growth and future success.

At fifteen years of age, he began formal schooling where he uncovered one of his life passions: He was finding a real tang and zest…in learning⁵ which for him would become unstoppable and lifelong. His first essay was a plea for mercy to animals. Already the boy was showing that deep sympathy for the suffering which was to be so characteristic of the man.⁶ At twenty-two, his family having moved to Illinois, he had had enough of pioneer farming. He hated the toil, loneliness, and monotony. Longing for distinction, as well as for contact with other social beings, he wanted a job where he could meet people and gather a crowd around him and keep them roaring at his stories.⁷ He began recognizing his real talents and passions, together with his conviction for the country’s well-being. A phrase from Daniel Webster, which Lincoln adopted, stated, Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!⁸ As with other great leaders, he demonstrated an active ambition toward attaining a higher station in life. This character trait is a vehicle they all used to carry out their mission in life.⁹

He conquered his fears and learned to speak in public, priceless activity that broadened his perspectives and awakened his ambitions. He discovered a unique ability to influence others through his speech. Knowledge of this ability strengthened his courage and self-confidence more than anything else he had done or experienced. Even though he had not attended college, he discovered that neither had the great playwright Shakespeare nor author Robert Burns. While working on a riverboat on the Mississippi, he had docked in New Orleans. There, for the first time, he beheld the true horrors of slavery: human beings in chains and whipped and scourged. The scene there was so revolting that Lincoln moved away…with a deep feeling of unconquerable hate.¹⁰

After suffering a string of business failures, he refocused and began to study law. In New Salem, he met the love of his life, Ann Rutledge. Lincoln found here at New Salem the only supreme happiness that he ever knew,¹¹ only to have it taken away a short time later when she contracted typhoid fever and died. His melancholy and depression led to an emotional breakdown lasting for many months and diminished only when Lincoln directed himself to continue his studies to become a lawyer, a promise he had made previously to Ann. Eventually, he succeeded in becoming a lawyer through a friend’s outreach to board Lincoln in his home and pay for his clothes. Then sometime later, he met and subsequently married Mary Todd. The two were complete opposites in terms of personality, temperament, and character. Their marriage was as tragic and turbulent as the events leading up to the eventual wedding day. In a letter to a friend, Lincoln wrote, Nothing new here except my marriage which to me is a matter of profound wonder.¹² Lincoln’s demeanor during these remaining sixteen years of his life showed a profound sadness that at times engulfed his entire persona.

Nonetheless, it was Mary’s drive and influence (inspired by her original desire to marry a future president) that helped Lincoln stay on track toward the presidency. He lost his bid for Senate in 1858 (after serving four terms in the House). But he returned to run for president in 1860. When he won the party’s nomination, It was the most dramatic moment of his life. After nineteen years of desolating defeats, he had been suddenly whirled to the dizzying heights of victory.¹³ He obtained the presidency by taking full advantage of a unique and unforeseen opportunity: a split within the opposition party over slavery. The contender, another Northerner, had attempted to curry favor with the Southern states and ultimately win the election. With the opposition hopelessly divided, Lincoln realized, early in the contest, that he would be victorious…¹⁴ He campaigned effectively using his character and ability to connect and reason with the public against his opponent.

When Lincoln began his first presidential term in 1861, few Americans had confidence he would do anything significant. They saw a gawky-looking, awkward, former farmhand and rail splitter, a perceived mediocre lawyer and loser in his earlier Senate bid as being incompetent to deal with the country’s supreme challenges which lay ahead. He inherited a true mess from his predecessor. Already seven states had seceded from the Union. What they did not see was someone who developed the enviable ability to persevere and learn from his own failures.¹⁵ As with his life’s ambitions, Lincoln had a vision for the country, then enrolled others to support it. As his closest colleagues quickly found out, he was tough, decisive, and enormously influential. He was persistent. He showed tremendous courage, particularly with his resilience in how he was treated, not just by his opponents but by members of his own party and cabinet. From early in life through adulthood, he was constantly derided, made fun of, chided, and lied about, including the recent presidential campaign and throughout his presidency. His honesty, character, and abilities were brutally attacked by other leading politicians and the press. Yet he always maintained self-control and a holistic view of the situation he was in. He pushed back when the circumstances required, particularly when his authority and leadership came under fire. The rest of the time, he deflected the attacks, paying no attention while staying focused on the important matters at hand and frequently found amusing the nonsense he perceived with some of the remarks.

Lincoln took enormous but calculated risks and fostered innovation by creating safety for those under him, particularly his generals. He fired many generals, but not before he had given them sufficient time and space to demonstrate themselves as