The Bulletproof Leader: Overcome FailureSýnishorn

Hope and Positive Reinforcement

During seasons of failure, we need hope and positive reinforcement. Even Elon Musk, the young tech billionaire with an accrued net worth of more than $160 billion, has experienced his fair share of failure. His creativity includes innovations such as battery-powered cars, spaceships, and electronic inventions. Most people are unaware that he was fired from his position of CEO of his Zip2 company. He also received news that he was ousted from PayPal while he was on his honeymoon. Following that, he led six failed SpaceX rocket launches, and both Tesla and SpaceX wavered on the brink of bankruptcy. When many would have given up their dreams, Musk continued to run toward his. Brilliant, creative, risk-taking, and a proven innovator, I can’t help but wonder about the additional success he would have experienced if those companies would have believed in him.

It is easy for feelings of depression to creep in and rob our creativity. Whenever I am discouraged, I fall back on these verses:

Psalm 145:14

Psalm 37:23–24

For hope, I also like to turn to the book of Genesis and the tale of a young dreamer by the name of Joseph. The favorite son of his father, Jacob, Joseph was despised by his brothers. When Joseph was young, he made the mistake of sharing a series of prophetic dreams with his brothers, and those dreams predicted that his brothers would bow before him in a submissive posture. Like any sibling rivalry, this created quite a stir. Filled with frustration over favoritism, the older brothers devised a scheme to drop Joseph into a deep well and then sell him to a band of slave traders. The drama went even darker when, to cover their deceptive tracks, they killed an animal and covered Joseph’s clothing in blood to convince their father his favorite son was dead.

For years Jacob mourned the loss of Joseph. Then a famine hit the land. It wasn’t the inflationary kind of scarcity but the kind that sent his brothers scrambling for scraps of food. On a quest for survival, they traveled to Egypt. In a way that only God could orchestrate, the brothers stumbled into the pharaoh’s court, where Joseph was in charge of managing the nation’s grain. What’s interesting is that when Joseph’s brothers stepped before him to request grain for their family, they had no idea who he was.

Although his brothers didn’t recognize him, Joseph knew exactly who they were. Caught up in a whirlwind of emotions, he eventually let down his guard and revealed his identity. Offering a measure of grace that rivals any tale in history, he tearfully told them, “Don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives” (Genesis 45:5 NLT). His brothers then remembered the dreams Joseph had shared as a boy.

Aching to see his father, Joseph insisted that his brothers bring Jacob and the entire family to Egypt. When the brothers brought the truth to their father, Scripture spells out the scene this way:

“Joseph is still alive!” they told him. “And he is governor of all the land of Egypt!” Jacob was stunned at the news—he couldn’t believe it. But when they repeated to Jacob everything Joseph had told them, and when he saw the wagons Joseph had sent to carry him, their father’s spirits revived. Then Jacob exclaimed, “It must be true! My son Joseph is alive! I must go and see him before I die.” (vv. 26–28 NLT)

When Jacob heard Joseph’s story and saw the wagons of provision, he, too, remembered Joseph’s dreams, and his spirit revived. Jacob went from mourner to worshiper. Joseph provided for his family to move to Egypt, and he gave them favorable portions in the land. Though Joseph had endured false accusations, imprisonment, and the rejection of his brothers, his dream remained alive. This story should give us hope that even when our dreams are delayed, they still have the potential to come to pass.