Your mind is naturally driven to solve any puzzle and answer any question you give it. Let’s apply that concept and see what happens.

Again, if you present your brain with a question, your mind will be quick to try to answer it.

What do you think will happen if you ask yourself, “What’s wrong with me?”

You will immediately attempt to provide answers to the question, such as:

• I make stupid decisions.
• I don’t think things through.
• I am insecure and lack confidence.
• I’m ugly and my momma dresses me funny.

Yay! You’re definitely uncovering answers to life’s most important questions there!

Or, you are wasting valuable resources answering poor quality questions. Likewise, answers to bad questions won’t ever be much good.

And now, knowing that the quality of your questions determines the quality of your answers, you can actively ask yourself better questions.

There are definitely comments that bite and sting. But other times, people mock you in a way that is so absurd it doesn’t hurt at all. Then, it just becomes entertaining.

It’s important to realize how absurd these insults are, and to be able to laugh at them heartily!

Be amused by this random list of reasons I have been mocked and insulted:

• For rollerblading
• For getting out of debt
• For trying to be honest
• For not watching TV or the news
• For not owning much stuff
• For traveling with wheeled luggage, while those mocking me carried heavy backpacks. (I was way off, apparently.)
• For taking time to do my job well. (It’s amazing this actually happened.)
• For not buying a house with a huge mortgage
• For wearing protective gear on the motorcycle. (Which happens fairly often, believe it or not.)
• For understanding audio principles and how to mix live sound
• For reading too much — by my boss, who said it while firing me!

Each of these insults has a story, and each story makes me smile. I’m quite okay with being mocked for reasons like this. In fact, I enjoy it!

Likewise, you can enjoy being mocked — especially when it’s absurd.

Wife and I have been gathering experiences that lead to an underlying concept. It’s controversial and it definitely isn’t fun at first, but it is present in most everything we’ve gone through the last several years.

It is daunting, and it requires a big picture perspective to fully grasp the concept. And it seems to only make sense the more you encounter it.

(Enough talking about it already, because I hate when a person talks about something for ten minutes before telling you what it is!)

The more and more I think about it, the more I can accept this concept:

What doesn’t work out, does work out eventually.

But until then, it’s an absolute mess!

Really. Think about some “bad” things that did work out after the fact. Consider a few from our own past.

Jobs we have lost have pushed us into better career paths and even pay raises.

Family needs have brought us to locations where we needed to be.

Blocked opportunities have kept us available for fantastic opportunities later.

Overcoming bad habits with good ones has given us a platform to encourage others to do the same.

Specific awful events in our past have given us common ground and experience so we can counsel others going through the same thing.

The list goes on and on, just from these recent years.

“That’s no good,” you might say. “There’s nothing good that will come from my situation.”

I absolutely disagree.

Be patient and hopeful, and hang on.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a random thought. It was good enough for me to get up and write it down. This morning, I was curious to see if it made any sense, since it was written while I was half-asleep.

Thankfully, it actually did make sense.

Now what was so important for me to write down when I should have been sleeping?

Apparently, I was pondering advice before going to bed, and my non-conscious mind kept processing the topic while I slept.

Days or weeks ago, I found some wisdom I’d like to share with you. I’m not sure where it came from — probably a book — or else I would quote it.

Essentially, the concept was this: Beware of advice. Do not grant advice power over you or let it deter you from your course. Advice should not be confused with wise counsel. The giver of the advice does not know what God is doing in your life, and their advice is likely out of context and irrelevant to your unique situation.

Whoa.

It reminds me of a story from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. An eye doctor excitedly hands his far-sighted patient his own pair of glasses, since they have helped him for two decades now. Surely they will work for the patient, too!

Yeah, that’s not gonna work.

Which leads right into the note written by my sleep-brain:

Advice without context and understanding isn’t advice at all — it’s just opinion!

Upon conscious reflection, I agree — with myself.

Without both context and understanding, so-called advice is merely opinion. It is well-intentioned but useless. It should not distract you from your purpose. It should not redirect your life.

This kind of advice can largely be ignored. We all have enough opinions from others to last several lifetimes, and we do not need to collect more.

Opinions are everywhere and are nearly worthless.

Wisdom, on the contrary, is much harder to find.

A few weeks ago, on a Monday, I made a poor decision at work. I chose to release some software before it had been thoroughly tested. Though it was working fine in our building, other locations weren’t using it yet. The worst case scenario? Other locations would be unable to send our products out the door — all due to faulty software.

Well, that’s exactly what happened.

Tuesday morning, I learned other locations had big problems, taking them down for an entire day. And it was all my fault. My mistakes added up to a big mess, and now I needed to clean it up.

In fact, it took me all week to put out the fires I started and undo the problems I created. Ouch.

I was noticeably sad for causing my team members so much frustration with my bad software. Mistake or not, I desire to enhance the efforts of others — not cripple their efforts! The last thing I want to do is frustrate others.

My friend, a coworker, tried to cheer me up and downplay my actions. That was as good a time as any to share what I am learning now.

I told him I’m learning to be grateful for my mistakes and faults, because they constantly remind me how much I need God. If everything I touched turned to gold and I never screwed up, why would I ever need God? My perfection, then, would keep me from God.

Instead, I’m pretty messed up, and my mistakes show me how much I can’t make it on my own. How much I need to rely on Him.

And although I hate making mistakes and want to avoid them, I can be thoroughly grateful for my mistakes with this perspective.