WHEN DENNIS FINISHED the story, he stopped talking and looked around the room. Everyone was deep in thought. He waited.
“Wow,” said Alex.
Dennis turned to him and smiled. “Wow?”
“Good for Hem,” said Alex. “He did it. He made it out of the Maze.”
“Just like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption,” said Ben. The rest of the group laughed. By now Ben had a well-established reputation as the class entertainer.
“I had a boss once who wasn’t so lucky,” said Brooke.
“Really,” said Dennis. “What happened?”
“When I first got out of journalism school, I worked for a city newspaper. Nobody could convince the publisher we needed to get online. He believed print advertising would keep paying the bills, even when our biggest accounts switched over to advertising on the web. He insisted that paid circulation would pick up again soon, even as more and more readers left us to get their news online. A year after I arrived, the whole operation shut down.”
“Never found its way out of the Maze,” murmured Alex.
“Beliefs are powerful things,” said Dennis. “A single stubborn belief can take down an entire company. People believe that how things have always been is how they’ll always be. But it never is.”
“You know what Mark Twain said,” Ben commented. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
The class laughed again.
Dennis smiled, and said, “Twain had it right, as usual, and here’s an example: When the Titanic made its maiden voyage in 1912, people described the vessel with a single word.”
“Unsinkable!” said Brooke.
“Exactly. Unsinkable. That’s what everyone believed. And because they believed it, they didn’t bother loading on enough lifeboats.”
“And more than fifteen hundred people died,” said Brooke.
“All because of a thought people trusted was true,” added Mia.
“The ‘facts of the matter,’” murmured Alex.
The class was silent for a moment.
“Oh, man,” said Ben.
“I’m starting to get the sense that all beliefs are bad,” said Mia. “Narrow viewpoints that just get us in trouble. But that can’t be true. I mean, even Hem found some beliefs that served him, right?”
“Absolutely,” said Dennis. “All beliefs are worth examining. The key is to notice your beliefs, and test them—not necessarily discard them.
“Some just get in our way and stop us from being our best selves, or even drive wedges between us. But some beliefs are powerful truths, beacons that lift us up and help us keep moving forward, even in the toughest times.”
“Like the idea that all people are created equal,” suggested Ben. “Endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“Or like Hem’s belief that Hope was a good friend,” offered Brooke.
“Or believing in our kids,” added Mia.
“Or in yourself,” said Dennis. “Believing in the idea that you were put here for a reason, that you have unique value to offer the world. For example: Mia, why did you become a doctor?”
“To help ease people’s suffering,” said Mia without hesitation.
Dennis turned to the group. “You can see that’s not just a thought she thinks is true. That desire to heal? That’s the essence of Mia showing through. Like Brooke’s passion for truth and excellence in the printed word. These are core values, things that simply are true and never change.”
“But fer cryin’ out loud, everything else does!” put in Ben.
“Also true,” said Dennis, smiling. “And that’s where Hem got stuck. Circumstances change. The world turns. And things that may have been true yesterday suddenly are no longer true today.
“Blockbuster Video was positive we would all go on watching movies on videotape forever. Polaroid was absolutely sure people would always snap their photos on little paper squares. Just like bookstores in the early nineties knew for a fact that an online bookstore could never possibly amount to much.
“They all built their futures based on beliefs that turned out not to be true. And it sank them.”
“Just like the Titanic,” added Ben.
“Just like the Titanic,” Dennis agreed.
He glanced around the classroom and noticed the quiet young man in the last row, frowning.
“Tim?” he said. “Anything you wanted to share?”
All eyes turned to Tim, who’d gotten the whole ball rolling the week before by asking his question, What about Hem?
“Yeah, I guess,” said Tim. “Actually my work situation is okay. It’s more a personal thing.”
Dennis said quietly, “If you’re comfortable.”
“Sure. So, earlier this year, I found out that my parents are separating. Already separated, actually. Past tense.”
Everyone looked back at Dennis, who said, “And that’s been hard for you.”
“Hard? It’s impossible. All my life they were this constant, this bedrock. The one sure thing in my world. And they just gave up!”
“You sound angry about it,” said Dennis.
“I’m furious about it,” said Tim. “I mean, I still love them, but right now I kind of hate them, too. I just can’t accept what they’re doing. And what does it say about my whole childhood, is that all a lie now?”
“You know,” said Dennis, “people change.”
Tim shook his head. “Not like this.”
Dennis considered that. “How do you think they see the situation?” he said.
Tim seemed startled by that thought. “I have no idea.”
“What do they say?”
“They say they tried their best, and that this was the right decision for them, and that in time I’ll grow to accept it. Which I totally don’t believe.”
Dennis paused, then said, “What if you tried . . . believing differently?”
“It doesn’t work that way!” Tim blurted out. There was a silence in the room, and then he said, “Oh, wow.” He looked at Dennis again. “That’s exactly what Hem said, isn’t it?” He gave a thin smile.
Dennis shrugged and smiled back. “Pretty much.”
“So what are you saying?” said Tim. “That they made the right decision? And that it wouldn’t have been more right for them to stick together and work things out?”
Dennis shook his head. “That’s not for me to say. When looking at a belief, though, I like to use Hem’s question: Does it lift you up, or hold you down? Does it get you out of the Maze, or keep you running in circles?”
Tim looked down at the table, thinking hard.
“Just remember this, Tim,” said Dennis. “Changing what you think doesn’t change who you are.”
Tim looked up and met Dennis’s eyes, then nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. I’ll think about that.” He paused, then added, “Maybe I’ll take a crawl through Hem’s tunnel, see if there’s anything bright out there.”
Dennis broke into a grin. “That’s great, Tim.” He glanced up at the wall clock. The class was just about over.
“Last week,” he said, “we touched on how confusing it can be when there’s so much change happening all at once. And I’m paraphrasing here, but a few of you asked the same excellent question: Where do I start?”
He looked around the room. “Alex?”
The others realized that Alex, who had been so vocal the week before, had been nearly silent ever since Dennis finished telling this new story.
Alex paused for a long moment, thinking hard. He began speaking, slowly at first.
“Seems to me,” he said, “that it starts with me.”
Dennis nodded, as if to say, Go on.
“Well,” said Alex. “I’ve been so focused on the problems. On my changing industry, how confusing it is, how hard it is to keep up and know what to do next.”
“You said you’d move with the cheese if you could,” put in Brooke, reading from her notes, “but half the time you don’t even know where it went.”
“Right,” said Alex. “And that’s exactly what Hem was trying to do, right? Roaming all over the Maze, trying to find the solution. But where he needed to start wasn’t anywhere in the Maze. It was right in his own head.
“When you said, ‘Get out of the Maze,’ it hit me—the maze I’m stuck in isn’t my job, or my company, or even my industry. It’s my own approach. The Maze I need to get out of? I think it’s my own thinking.”
“Maybe it’s time to let go of some old beliefs,” said Brooke.
“No kidding,” replied Alex. “And choose some new ones!”
Ben grinned and added, “Don’t forget what Hem thought about that. There is something amazing outside the Maze!”
The group laughed again and broke into applause. Ben stood and took a bow.
“Well put,” said Dennis, with a thoughtful smile. “When you allow yourself to believe it, an entire world of new possibilities opens its doors to you. Which is quite an amazing thing indeed.
“And on that note, my friends, our seminar comes to a close. I want to thank you all for the great discussion and wish you the very best, in your careers and in your lives.
“And I’ll leave you with this thought: If you feel you got anything of value from this little story, then I hope you will . . .