What a 3-Year-Old Taught Me About Riding Life’s Waves

“This is too scary!”

The cry came from a three-year-old in the second row. Other than his parents, the rows of chairs in the bookstore were painfully empty.

I’d been invited by the store to do a talk and reading from my spooky monster mystery series Monsterious, geared for 8 to 12 year olds. Knowing the event was on a Sunday morning and I didn’t have the opportunity to do school visits to promote it, I expected the turnout to be small. How right I was.

The well-intentioned parents obviously didn’t realize that the age level and spooky factor of my books were not appropriate for their three-year-old. I was halfway through the first of three planned readings from my books when the child let his unhappy opinion be known. I immediately stopped and asked the bookseller to find me a Halloween picture book, which I then read to the child. When I finished, the dad bought one of my books out of pity.

On this fall tour, I’ve had 2 1/2 hour signing lines that snaked through large stores, selling hundreds of books in a night. And I’ve had a crowd of three where I read some other author’s book to a toddler. Such are the ups and downs of being an author. 

But that’s not just author life. That’s life. We all experience that roller coaster in our careers, health, relationships, finances, you name it. The question is not “Will we face storms?” but “How will we ride the waves?”

When things are good, it’s easy to become arrogant, to credit my success to my own genius, and to think it will always be this way. When things go south, it’s easy to become depressed, to believe I’m a failure, and to feel the bad times will go on forever. Neither perspective is true. My successes are a combination of hard work and talent, but also luck and the help of others. My failures are usually a mixed bag too, partly due to my own poor choices and mistakes, and partly from things completely out of my control. 

There’s a wise expression that says, “Don’t believe your own press.” Hold both the good and the bad lightly, enjoying your successes, learning from your failures, and letting them both roll off your back. Don’t take the opinions of others or your own internal self-judgements too seriously.

As you ride life’s waves, anchor your identity and self-worth on something that doesn’t rise and fall, that is as steady as a fixed point on the horizon. For me, that’s my identity as God’s child, believing that God’s love for and view of me is independent of my ever-changing feelings or the outward results of my efforts. For you, that might be another relationship or something else. Whatever it is, find something worthy of the wonderful person you are. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.