Stop Saying Everything Happens for a Reason

Somebody said it to you at the worst possible moment.

And you nodded, because what else were you going to do.

Welcome to The Real Jason Duncan Podcast.

This whole show runs on one idea: to expose the lies you believe and the truths you don't. Most of us have believed things for a long time that just weren't true, and when you finally see the truth, it changes things.

The most dangerous lies don't look like lies. They look like success. They look like golden cages, where the bars are covered in gold so you can't see them, and as a result people like you and me get deceived, because the lies that trap us look like good things, they look like truth, they look like wisdom.

Maybe there's something you used to believe that kept you trapped and you are so glad you don't believe it anymore. Maybe there's something you still believe, and you don't realize that it's keeping you trapped. This show is about helping you break free from that cage.

I expose these lies twice a week.

Every Monday, I interview someone who believed one of those lies. We talk about what they used to believe, why they don't believe it anymore, and what it costs people to stay stuck inside that lie for another five years.

On Wednesdays, just like today, I bring you a special edition, where I read you a version of the article I write for my newsletter every Wednesday called What's Real?

You can subscribe free at therealjasonduncan.com/articles, and it hits your inbox every Wednesday morning before this episode drops.

This week's post is called "Stop Saying Everything Happens for a Reason."

BODY

Picture this.

The deal dies three days before closing. You've got four months in it. You've already told your wife, and you've already run the numbers on what that money was going to do for you.

Then it's gone. And somebody who cares about you says the thing everybody says.

Well, everything happens for a reason.

And you nodded. Because what else are you going to do to somebody who's just trying to help?

And then you said it to yourself a few times on the drive home, because honestly, it took some of the weight off.

We use that phrase to explain a whole lot of things.

Layoffs. Breakups. The hire you thought was going to move the needle that blew up ninety days in. The wreck on I sixty-five. The partner who left and took the clients with them. The year that got away from you and you still can't fully explain how.

Somebody says it every single time. Usually more than one somebody.

You and I have heard it so often that we don't stop to think about what it actually claims. It sounds like faith. It sounds like maturity. It gets printed on cards and repeated in small groups. And I would bet you've said it at least once in the last year without thinking about it at all.

So today I want to take it apart. Because I don't think it's true, and I think believing it costs you something you haven't considered.

Now before I go after the sentence, let me tell you what I am not arguing.

There are plenty of sincere people who believe God authors every single event, right down to which leaf falls off which tree and lands in which spot. I'm not here to debate that today, and none of this requires you to change your theology to agree with me. Maybe He does author all of it. That's a longer conversation for a different day.

My question is narrower than that. What does that sentence do to the person who hears it? And what does it do to you when you say it about your own life?

The instinct behind it comes from a good place, and I want to say that plainly.

When something falls apart, people go looking for the shape of it, because meaningless loss is a weight most of us just don't want to carry. And sometimes we say things like this because the silence is unbearable and we feel obligated to fill it with something.

Some friends of ours lost their son to a drunk driver. At the funeral, a woman got to the mother in the receiving line and told her that her own dog had died the week before, so she understood how she was feeling.

I don't think that woman is a monster. I think she was standing in front of something unbearable and her mouth moved before her brain could stop it.

That is the same reflex, just turned all the way up.

But we don't only say this to other people. We say it to ourselves, and that is a different thing entirely.

You hired the guy you knew in your gut was wrong. You didn't read the contract closely enough. You kept a client three years past the point where the numbers told you to let them go. You took your eye off the operation because the new thing was more interesting.

Then it falls apart. And a few months later you're telling somebody that everything happens for a reason.

That sentence takes your responsibility and hands it to God.

If it happened for a reason, it wasn't your call. It was the plan. You weren't a participant, you were a passenger. And that means you skip the most useful thing a failure has to offer, which is the honest accounting of what you actually did.

I have watched capable people run that play for years and never get better at anything, because they kept turning their own decisions into destiny.

And follow the logic all the way down for just a second.

If everything happens for a reason, then somebody had that reason. Somebody arranged it on purpose.

So picture a father who burns his own son, and then explains afterward that he did it so the boy would know how to handle being burned someday.

Nobody would call that man good. We'd call the police.

We'd never accept that from a human father. But the sentence assigns exactly that to God, and then hands Him a positive motive to make it easier to swallow.

When it's a lost deal, that's sloppy thinking. When it's somebody's child, it is cruel.

So if that phrase isn't true, is there any truth in it at all?

Here's what I believe instead. There's a reason to be found inside everything that happens.

That is a completely different claim, and the difference is much more than just a turn of a phrase.

It doesn't require anybody to have caused it. It doesn't put your bankruptcy on God's calendar. It says something can be built out of what happened, and it puts that job squarely on you.

I spent years in Napoleon Hill's material, and this is one of the places where he was exactly right. He wrote that every adversity, every failure, and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

Now notice the word doing the work in that sentence.

A seed.

A seed isn't a benefit. It's the possibility of one. It needs somebody to plant it, and it rots in the package if nobody does.

Nobody in the middle of a bankruptcy stands up and announces that they're currently in the middle of a reason. That's not how any of this works. You're in the middle of a bankruptcy. And three years later, if you did the work, there may be something in your hands that came out of it.

The seed grows slowly. And it grows in the dark.

I went through a terrible storm in my life as an entrepreneur several years ago, and when I was in the middle of it, it just plain sucked.

I didn't see a reason for it. And I certainly didn't believe God was up there manipulating events just to make me hurt.

But what I can tell you today is that going through it made me stronger, more resilient, smarter, more adaptable, and a whole lot more cautious about similar things. Which in turn made me a better man, a better husband, a better father, and a better entrepreneur.

None of that arrived on its own. And I could not have written a word of it while it was happening.

SPONSOR BRIDGE AND READ

Speaking of things that only pay off if you actually plant them.

Most people think of life insurance as something that pays off after you're gone. And that's one way to look at it. But there's another way that almost nobody gets taught.

Bank on Yourself is built around using a specially designed dividend-paying whole life policy as your own private financing system. Your cash value keeps growing whether you've borrowed against it or not. So when you buy the truck or fund the deal, you're paying yourself back instead of paying a bank interest you will never see again.

It's a seed you plant now that does the work quietly for decades, and most people never even hear about it.

Go take a look for yourself at therealjasonduncan.com/bankonyourself.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

So here's what I want you to do this week. Just two simple things.

First, pick one thing that fell apart in the last few years that you've never made anything out of.

You know the one.

Stop asking why it happened, and go do the accounting instead. What did you actually decide? What did you see and ignore? What would you do differently with the same information in front of you?

Then write down one thing you can build from it this week.

The second one is about other people.

The next time somebody's world comes apart, don't say everything happens for a reason. Not for the deal. Not for the divorce. And especially not at the funeral.

Say you're sorry. Say you love them. Or say nothing at all and just stay in the chair.

Job's friends got it right for exactly seven days, sitting on the ground with him without saying a word. And then they opened their mouths and spent the rest of the book making it worse.

If you run a company or belong to an association that puts on events, and you'd want this kind of talk on the stage, I'm booking keynotes for twenty twenty-seven. Go to therealjasonduncan.com/speaking. That's therealjasonduncan.com, slash, S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G. The link is in the show notes.

WORDS OF WISDOM

There's a proverb that lands right on this one. Proverbs twenty-five, verse twenty.

Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

Three thousand years ago Solomon noticed that cheerful words land on a hurting person like vinegar on an open cut.

Don't be that guy.

The heavy heart doesn't need a song. And most of the time, it doesn't need words at all.

So stop saying everything happens for a reason. Because sometimes bad things just happen, and there's no reason at all.

But if you look hard enough, you can find a seed in there that grows into a reason worth knowing after all.

Go read the full post at therealjasonduncan.com/articles.

And if somebody said that phrase to you at the worst possible moment and you still remember it, I want to know what you wish they'd said instead. Hit reply on the newsletter and tell me. I'll share a few of them.

As always, I am your host, The Real Jason Duncan, and Jesus is King.