Thank God For Unanswered Prayers

Fresh out of business school, I took a job with Citibank and headed to Europe to travel for a month before joining the workforce. While I was away, the division that hired me started to shut down, and my “exciting opportunity” turned into a bleak position in a dying unit. Instant failure.

Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. I had received two offers from Citibank, and turned one down. After I lost my first job, Citibank wanted to shift me to the position I previously refused. I balked, and instead spent 10 months getting paid by Citibank, doing a few odds and ends in the dying division, while I looked for another job.

Fortunately, things also work in unexpectedly positive ways. I found the best job of my career by answering an ad that Seth Godin placed in the New York Times. His ad said, “Before you come to our open house, read The One to One Future by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers.”

I bought the book on the way to Seth’s event, intending to skim it in his parking lot, but ended up reading almost the whole book in my car. A month later, I sent an email to Don with the subject line, “Hello, it’s me.” I included a strategy document I wrote for a Fortune 500 company based on Don and Martha's book and said I’d like to spend 100% of my time adapting their work. Two weeks later, I was a partner in their firm. We then grew from 10 to 150 employees in three years, I started and ran their Training, Interactive, and Research divisions.

Instant success.

(Thanks again, Seth.)

This is how the world works. You walk through one door and a bucket of water falls on your head. You walk through another and someone doubles your salary.

Of course, most times when you walk through a door, you simply enter another room.

Since people don’t like uncertainty, many of us delude ourselves that we know what’s on the other side of each door through which we pass.

This, of course, is wrong.

Life is messy. Careers are messy. Since you can’t shift the messy nature of our world, you only have one logical choice: shift your mindset. Learn to cherish your mistakes as:

• Learning experiences
• Reminders to stay humble
• Opportunities to accidentally stumble on a better idea
• Ways to understand the depth of your inexperience

The wisest and most experienced people I know often have less confidence in their predictions than anyone else. This is not because they have grown infirm. To the contrary, they simply have enough life experience to understand that there a very real limits to our understanding. In short, they are experienced enough to start understanding the depths of what they don’t know.

Let's start with this: we don't know which prayers are best left unanswered.

Bruce Kasanoff is the co-founder of Ikigai Park City, an institute that helps successful professionals discover their true purpose.

Download his free guide with Amy Blaschka, Give Yourself Permission to Be Your True Self.

An earlier version of this article appeared on Forbes.