• If relationships are important to you, you’d like to have a successful dating career and eventually a successful family.
• If skateboarding is important to you, you’d probably rather skateboard like Tony Hawk than like I skateboard. You'd like to be a successful skater. 
• If money is important to you, you’d prefer to have more money than less as you get older. You’d like to be a financial success.
• If enjoying life is important to you, you’d prefer to have a job that you look forward to going to in the morning rather than one you dread. You want a successful career.

People Illustration: Any one who has seen the Star Wars series or the Indiana Jones trilogy knows the incredible excitement that producer George Lucas can pack into a movie. But it’s doubtful that Lucas would have made anything at all out of his life, had he not first given up his old dreams. You see, during his teen years, a lot of people considered him a loser who was going nowhere in life. He never applied himself in school and dreamed only about racing cars. But his dreams all ended just a few days before his graduation. While driving home from the library in his Fiat, he prepared for a left turn by glancing in his rearview mirror. But as he started the turn, he heard the sound of another car, a blowing horn, and the impact of speeding Chevy crunching into the driver side of his car. It should have killed him. The little Fiat turned four or five complete flips before it wrapped around a solid oak tree. The impact was so great that it actually moved the entire tree a couple of feet over, leaving a huge hole in its former position.

After the accident, George was a changed person. He decided there must be some reason he survived, and set his mind to get his act together and make something out of his life. He left his racing dreams behind and decided to go to college. There, he developed an interest in literature and writing. And instead of driving racecars, he began filming them. Today, he’s glad for his decision to let his old life and his old dreams die, so that he could go a new direction. You see, without giving up his old life, he would have never found his niche in the film industry, and no one would have ever seen Star Wars. (Facts from Skywalking: The Life And Times Of George Lucas, by Dale Pollock, Harmony Books, 1983, pp. xiii-39. Wording by Steve Miller, found in Reach Out’s Illustration Database at www6.gospelcom.net/reachout)

For many people, the car wreck would have been nothing more than a tragedy. But for Lucas, it was a wake up call. You see, some students see only the grief in their heartaches, whether it be the breakup of their family, their failure in a sport or a class, or a breakup with a boyfriend. Successful people like Lucas had these problems too. But the difference between them and people who lose in life is that the successes learn from their tragedies and setbacks. They become better people.

Listen, you can become either "bitter" or "better" from tragedies. And the only difference between these two words is the letter "i". "I" have the choice as to whether to grow or wither from my tragedies.

Activity: To illustrate this point, I want to give you a test. (Options: Use as either handout or overhead or Powerpoint.) Perhaps use as an overhead or powerpoint as well.) Look at the back of your student sheet. As I read the statements about each person (these are all real people), I want you to decide whether you think the person was a success or failure in his field. Write either the letter "F" for failure, or "S" for success before each one. (If you copy and paste this into your word processing program for copying onto paper, you might want to change the font to something more "youthy," like "Andy".)

Would you have given up on politics if you had been defeated 7 times in your run for political office? Any guesses as to who it was? I’m glad that Abraham Lincoln didn’t give up. He was defeated for legislature, defeated for speaker, defeated for nomination to Congress, defeated for Senate, defeated for nomination to Vice Presidency, defeated again for Senate. Yet he hung in there and succeeded in becoming the 16^th, and one of the most respected, presidents of the United States.

Illustration or Object Lesson: When I reflect on these people who refused to let their failures make them quit, I think of the difference between a super ball and a raw egg. (A super ball is one of those very hard rubber balls that bounce so high.) If you take a super ball and  throw it against the wall, what happens to it? (It bounces back.) What happens the harder you throw it against the wall? (The faster it bounces back.) What happens to a raw egg when you throw it against a wall? (It splatters.) What happens the harder you throw it against the wall? (The worse it splatters.)

This defines two types of people: raw egg people and super ball people. When raw egg people hit an obstacle, they splatter. The harder they hit, the harder they splatter, giving up on their goal. When super ball people hit an obstacle, they bounce back. The harder they hit, the harder they bounce back. 

Discussion in Small Groups:  The people we just talked about were super ball people. With every failure, they kept bouncing back. Get with a couple of people around you and discuss this question. Why do you think they kept bouncing back, whereas many people would have given up? (Allow a few minutes for their insights.)

Now, share with the class your thoughts. (Answers may include: #1 - Their goals were extremely important to them. Some of our goals aren't really that important to us, so we give up easily. #2 - They may have had tenacious, stubborn personalities. #3 - Perhaps they had enough successes in their lives to balance out their failures. #4 - They believed in themselves in spite of their failures.) 

I want to leave this discussion emphasizing that their goals were extremely important to them. Do have some goals that are worth enduring for? 

Endurance - you’ll never be successful without it. Do some of you feel the need for more of it in your own life? Perhaps academic work doesn’t come easy for you. Perhaps your home life is in shambles and beneath your cool expression you’re wondering if you’ll ever make it in life. I want to end with one more illustration.

I can’t make it through the grocery store line these days without noticing Tom Cruise staring at me from a magazine cover. How many of you saw him play Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible or one of his many other movies? His accomplishments are pretty incredible. At 37 years of age (in year 2000), he has starred in blockbuster after blockbuster, is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, has been recognized for his achievements in acting by a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination, and has the physical agility (and guts) to perform 95% of the stunts in Mission Impossible II, including dangling off that cliff at the beginning of the movie. It’s easy to look at Cruise and assume that he probably always had everything going for him. He must have been very successful in high school and popular with the girls. Think again. His life is actually the story of a survivor who learned to turn his shortcomings into assets.

Do any of you struggle with family problems? Tom’s dad was consumed with his work and finally abandoned the family when Tom was 12. Some of you know the gut-wrenching feelings he must have suffered through in middle school.

Do you ever struggle with financial problems? Tom couldn’t afford some of the things other kids had because his dad refused to pay child support for his four children. He and his sisters had to work to contribute to the family income. They sometimes survived on food stamps.

Do you ever struggle with social problems? His social life was disrupted regularly by moves that forced him to change schools an average of once a year (8 elementary and three high schools). Lots of kids made fun of him. He was always the new geek, never the cool guy that girls flocked to. Lots of kids made fun of him.

Do any of you ever feel dumb? As if Tom didn’t have enough problems to deal with, he was always in remedial classes for slow learners. He was later found to have a learning disorder called Dyslexia, which makes it incredibly difficult to learn skills like reading. Not knowing what was wrong, he just thought he was dumb and would often come home crying. With dyslexics, their brains often tell them that things are backwards. He couldn’t even distinguish his right hand from his left.

Do you often fail at sports? Concluding that academics weren’t his forte, he plunged into athletics. He played football but was too small to excel. Wrestling, however, is divided into weight classes, giving him the opportunity to compete. But when running some stairs (trying to lose a pound to compete in his weight class) he slipped on some papers his sister had left and tore a tendon on his leg. So much for athletics. Unable to wrestle on the team, he tried out for a part in their high school play. He landed a starring role and fell in love with acting. A theater agent just happened to be in the audience the night of the performance and encouraged him to go into acting. The rest is history.

I’d like for you to reflect for a moment on Tom’s life. It would have been so easy for him to grow bitter, conclude that life sucks and hate all the people around him. But instead, he learned from his shortcomings. He draws from the heartache he experienced as a child to express emotion when he acts. He learned to work harder than others by having to learn with a disability. He says that his school difficulties were a character course that made him a better person. As a result, he goes the extra mile for his producers and has the people skills that make people love to work with him. (Sources: 1 – "Cruise Control" (excerpt from 'Cruise')( Cosmopolitan ) Frank Sanello; 12-01-1995; 2 – "Man With a Mission," ( The Calgary Sun ) Lisa Wilton, Calgary Sun, 05-21-2000; 3 - "Conversations With Cruise," Vanity Fair, June, 2000; Tom Cruise, by Phelan Powell, Chelsea House Publishers, 1999)

On the bottom of your student sheet, you’ll find a place for "Action Points." The point of these character sessions is not head knowledge, but life change. I urge you to write down a couple of areas of your life in which you feel that you have need of endurance. It may be a class that you just don’t get. Write down that you’ll make an appointment with a counselor or your teacher to try to make your way through it. Maybe it’s a family problem that you came in this morning ready to give up on, but now you think you should hang in there. I’ll give you a few moments of quite to reflect and write.

There are two things I want you to come out of this session with:

1) Don’t be discouraged by your failures. Remember, the road to success is paved with failures.

2) In order to succeed in life, you’ve got to endure.

I’ll leave you with the words of Winston Churchill, the one who had written on his report card, "shows a conspicuous lack of success," the one who failed the test three times to enter the British military academy, but the one who became one of the greatest men of the 20^th century. One day he was invited back to his old school to give the commencement address. This great, eloquent man stood before them and said simply this:

"Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never give up."

And then he sat down. Thank you. (If you're a guest speaker, go sit down.)