Dr. Robert H. Schuller is founder and senior minister of the famed Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. His book, Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do has helped many people to hold on to hope and faith in the face of adversity during these rough economic times. Following is an excerpt from Part II of the book, entitled: Here’s How You Can Be Tough Too!

Don’t surrender leadership to faces. Lots of people do that. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve done it myself. You read an audience. You see an eyebrow raise or hear a throat being cleared. Through body language, someone suggests that he may not support you. You read on his face that he’s going to criticize you. He’s not going to back you. He’s against you. Before you know it, you have been intimidated by body language into silence and retreat. At that point you have surrendered leadership to a face. Don’t surrender leadership to fences. Fences are limiting concepts that you allow to influence your goals and dreams. Because of these concepts, we throw away ideas and dreams that we are sure we’ll never be able to realize. They also cause us to lower our goal with the result we strive for and achieve far less than our capabilities.

These fences are negative self-image perceptions such as not having an education, not knowing the right people, not having enough money or not being a member of an organization. Never surrender leadership to fences or locked-in thinking. Locked-in thinking is the thought process that says, “It’s never worked before. Why should it now?”

Or, “This is the way it’s always been done; so it must be the best.” Nobody is guiltier of locked-in thinking than trained, educated professionals. They have been so disciplined, so trained that as they develop a discipline, an expertise, they also develop locked-in thinking. The elevator at the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego couldn’t handle the traffic. The experts – engineers and architects- were called in. They concluded that they could put another elevator in by cutting a hole in each floor and installing the motor for the new elevator in the basement. The plans were drawn up. Everything was in order. The architect and the engineer came in to the lobby discussing it. The janitor, who was there with his mop, heard them say they were going to chop holes in floors. The janitor said, “That’s going to make a mess.”

The engineer said, “Of course. But we’ll get help for you, don’t worry.” The janitor replied, “You’ll have to close the hotel for a while.” “Well if we have to close the hotel for a while, we’ll close the hotel. We can’t possibly survive without another elevator.

The janitor held the mop in his hands and said, “Do you know what I’d do if I were you?”
The architect arrogantly asked. “What?”
“I’d build the elevator on the outside.”
The architect and the engineer looked at each other.
They built the elevator on the outside – the first time in the history of architecture that an elevator was built on the outside of a building.
Don’t surrender leadership to frustrations. There are people who reach a point where they just can’t handle people anymore. They can’t handle government regulations any more. They can’t handle cash-flow problems any more. Anyone who has dreams and goals also has frustrations: lack of money and time, high interest rates, disappointments when your best people let you down. Such frustrations can mount up, and if you surrender leadership to them, you’ll soon cash in, give up, throw in the towel, quit. Don’t give in to such temptations.