ABSTRACT
Striving for success and wanting to avoid failure are universal. People are drawn to stories about famous people and their successes and failures. We cite the concrete experience of disappointment and failure that Walter Payton, the great running back of the Chicago Bears football team, went through early in his career many years ago. Chicago Tribune sportswriter Cooper Rollow (1977) wrote about the sadness and agony that a young Walter Payton experienced as a result of injuring his ankle on the very last day of the football season. Because he had to leave the game early with his injury, Payton lost his chances to win the National Football League rushing title. Rollow quoted Payton from a speech he gave at a dinner in his honor. We quote Payton here for two reasons: to reflect the powerful influence of the intuitive use of paradoxical nonlinear thinking by people in everyday life, and to highlight the inherent wisdom and influence that such paradoxes possess, to say nothing of the different perspective that they provide. To quote Payton,
Introduction and Definition 355 The Energizers 356 Nonlinear Listening and Energizers 358 Types of Energizers 359 Prosocial Redefinition 359 Practice 366 Pedagogism 369 Summary of the Energizers 372 Endnotes 373
Obviously, Mrs. Payton is a wise woman. Of course, what she did was to paradoxically redefine her son’s experience with failure in such a way as to give him relief from the agony he was experiencing and simultaneously energize him with hope for the future. Who knows what would have happened if he had been successful that early in his career? What we do know is that Mrs. Payton apparently was able to do something for her son intuitively that master practitioners routinely do for their clients. We also know that Payton went on to win many awards, and even a Super Bowl ring. He retired (and recently died) as a much beloved sports hero.
