Steve the Owl's Blog

Hi, everyone. It has been a busy time for me as of late, what with visiting my family in West Virginia, preaching a sermon nine days ago, tracking down paperwork to make sure that credentials are in order, and starting another semester at Temple University. However, one thing that I have been thinking about for several days now, after Martin Luther King Day, is about the nature of what it means in order to have lived a multi-faceted life with a challenging and complex message, only to be remembered as a two-dimensional character.

The Impetus for the Post

Eight years ago, while I was stationed in northern Iraq, I saw a drawing for some material commemorating Martin Luther King, and the winners would be announced on Martin Luther King Day. I went to the mess hall the next day, and I saw my name on the list of winners. To my surprise, I found out that there were more free books than there were people who entered the raffle, so I was allowed to get whatever book I wanted. When I picked my book, I saw one that compelled me more than the others: A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this book, there are several of Martin Luther King’s sermons, from the 1950′s into 1968, the year he was assassinated. A lot of people think of Martin Luther King as someone who gave a great speech on the Washington Mall with the refrain, “I have a dream…” Anyone who has ever written music or any oral form of communication knows the importance of repeating a key word or phrase in order to help the audience remember it, and anyone who has studied at a seminary can recognize the preacher’s rhythm of the words and tone of the I Have a Dream speech, and can probably sit down and diagram each of the major points of a well-crafted sermon. Here is the speech in its entirety:

Many of us in the United States hear of that speech, and we also hear of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1955 event spurred on by Rosa Parks’ refusal to get up from her seat on a bus, that eventually prompted an effort by black people in Montgomery to refuse to ride any bus that would not treat them equally, which eventually broke the back of the bus system in Montgomery, and after a year, it ended in victory.

However, this sanitized version of Martin Luther King is not the whole truth. Civil rights was and is an important part of King’s legacy, but it is not the only part of his message. He was a brilliant man who was taken from us far too soon, dying at the end of a gun at the age of 39. However, he began his national role at the age of 26 years old. He went across the country preaching a message of justice, and making sure that the message of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution applied to all, and not just a few.

A Broad Message

As I read the book, I found that this book covered one area more than any other: poverty. Over and over, he pointed out the unjust nature of an economic system that too often focused on greed and focused on the haves rather than everyone. In his lifetime, King advocated a national guaranteed income and he opposed the Vietnam War, both because he opposed violence, and because of what he saw happening to poor people in the region whose farmland was destroyed. As a matter of fact, when he died in 1968 in Memphis, he was not there for a civil rights march, he was there to stand in support of striking sanitation workers, as part of his Poor People’s Campaign. If you have never heard Martin Luther King on poverty, here is a powerful video juxtaposed with images of what poverty really means:

Martin Luther King was a great man with a great message, but I believe that we do him a disservice by ignoring the whole message of Martin Luther King.

How do you fight to make sure that someone’s entire legacy is remembered and not turned into a cartoon?

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A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.- Irving Blitzer, played by John Candy in Cool Runnings (1993)

Hi, everyone. This weekend, I was checking the listings on TV, and I saw that one of the local channels was rerunning Cool Runnings, the 1993 movie based somewhat loosely on the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team, the Caribbean country’s first entry in the Winter Olympics, this one in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. While it is true that some of the events are fictionalized (such as the tension between the Jamaicans and the other countries in the competition, having Olympic-caliber sprinters rather than members of the army track team, and the role of the coach as a single individual rather than a team), there is a lot that this movie can teach about determination and what it means to truly compete with honor.

Training for Winter without Snow?

One thing that the movie did get right is the fact that before they began to prepare for the Olympic bobsled, none of the members of the team had ever seen snow before, and they were getting ready to ride at 70 or 80 mph down a hill in a sport where, “Bones don’t break, they shatter.” (I’ve heard of luge participants who say that the real question of the sport isn’t if your bones will be broken, but how many will be broken.) Needless to say, it is very difficult to find people who are willing to go through this when they were in a warm climate. The movie solves this problem for the purposes of the story by having one of the future bobsledders trip and fall during the finals of the 100-meter Olympic trials and taking out two other runners, including the team captain and driver, the son of an Olympic gold medalist. In the movie, the lead character, Derice Bannick, refuses to give up on his Olympic dream, and knowing that four years is an eternity for a sprinter, he decides to focus his efforts on the Winter Olympics instead, and he seeks out his father’s friend, Irv Blitzer, who was disqualified from the 1972 Olympics and wants to get away from the sport.

In the movie, the four finally come together, battling the elements, each other (one of the bobsledders has not yet forgiven the one who tripped him), and the doubters, to finally qualify for the Olympics. Along the way, there are three very important lessons learned. One of the bobsledders, named Yul Brenner (remember, this is a fictionalized account; the character probably got his name from the shaved head of the actor as a reference and tribute to the actor) decries the attitude of people who seem content for a life of poverty where they are “going nowhere and you’re thrilled to death about it.” He then takes out a picture and says that this is where he wants to live, revealing a picture of Buckingham Palace. Here is the scene, which is one that moves me:

Another comes in the form of the actual races. At first, Derice sees the Swiss team, ranked #1 in the world, and decides to emulate them. However, this does not work for the team, and they struggle in the first run down the hill in the competition. For the next one, they decide to be livelier and find their own style. The result is that they become contenders in the race.

The most important lesson, and the one at the heart of the movie, is about what it truly means to be a great person. Even though the character is fictitious, in the movie, John Candy (in one of his final roles before dying of a heart attack at the age of 43) plays a down-and-out two-time gold medalist who decides to add excessive weight to his sled in an effort to get an edge over the competition. He was discovered and had to give up his gold medals. His young protege dreams of Olympic glory, but Blitzer had the hard-earned life lesson at the bottom of the quote at the top of this entry. The instant that you only start to think about winning, you lose all perspective in life. I have seen this with people in network marketing who get so obsessed with getting that close or getting that sale that all of their friends stop coming around for fear that they will be pitched. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t want success, but I am saying that if you end up alienating everyone along the way to trying to earn a fortune, you’ll probably end up with neither friends nor money.

To me, that is the heart of the movie. It is about the desire not only to be the best, but to be the best person as well, and the pride that comes with earning a place at the top of your field, no matter how you finish when you get there.

In what ways do you seek to become a better person, even when the rest of the world thinks you are crazy?

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Hi, everyone! I hope you are having a good day today and (if you find this around the time I wrote it) enjoying your weekend as well. Lately, I have been thinking about those who are critical of the idea that it takes money to make money in the world of business, as well as the issue of money in the world of politics. In a way, this came together as I stayed up late four nights ago trying to find out who would win the Iowa Republican caucuses, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney or Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

This blog post will not talk about the political views of either candidate (Readers of this blog know that, for the most part, I try to avoid discussion of issues on this blog, but I will talk about general lessons about politics that anyone can learn regardless of political ideology.) but about the approach that each candidate made. Mitt Romney was a one-term governor (2003-07) elected in one of the most liberal states in the country, and as such, his record was not something one would expect from those who come from more conservative hotbeds. He is also the son of the late George Romney, the former Michigan Governor and CEO of American Motors who ran for President in 1968, and he made his fortune as a venture capitalist. Romney decided not to run for re-election in 2006, and instead ran for President in 2008. Santorum was a two-term senator and congressman (House, 1991-95; Senate, 1995-2007) who was known as a lightning rod for his focus on social issues who lost to then-State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr. by 18 points in 2006, the worst loss by an incumbent US Senator in 26 years.

Polls and Peaks

Romney has been the establishment favorite for the nomination, and Santorum barely registered for months in national polls. Romney, as the race’s most proficient fundraiser, at first decided to largely ignore Iowa (In 2008, he focused a lot of his energies on Iowa, lost to Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee by 10 points, 35% to 25%, and his campaign never recovered.), only deciding relatively late to make a push in the Hawkeye State after seeing an opening in the polls, spending millions of dollars on advertising. Santorum raised far less money than any of the other major candidates, so he focused on an old-fashioned door-to-door and small event campaign in Iowa.

The System and the Results

Earlier, I wrote about the Democratic caucuses in Iowa, and the way that they work. The Republican caucuses are a little bit different. There are still people in each precinct who make a pitch for each candidate, but rather than the multi-tiered process Democrats use, Republicans simply have a straw poll instead. There is still convincing and cajoling that happens before people get their ballots, and they still have to stay in the room until all ballots are received. However, unlike the Democrats, there is no 15% threshold in the room, although I think there is a 10% threshold in order to receive delegates to the national convention.

The polls were very interesting last year, with Romney leading or second, and an “anyone but Romney” getting his or her day in the sun. The first was Former Alaska Governor (and current reality TV star) Sarah Palin, then Huckabee, then Reality TV star Donald Trump. None of them got in the race, which was not surprising. Then, after a positively-reviewed debate performance, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann received this status, but fizzled after winning the Ames Straw Poll in August but being seen as out of touch in a couple of events at the state fair. Then, it was Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose polls peaked on his first day in the race, and imploded after several bad debate performances. Then, it was former pizza magnate and motivational speaker Herman Cain, who really seemed to be on a quest to sell books rather than a serious campaign for President (as evidenced by the fact that he refused to alter his book tour which went to places like Alabama, which are very late in the process) whose campaign imploded in the face of several allegations of impropriety, and Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who bore the brunt of several candidates’ negative ads because of his leading status when the ad buys came through.

This left every candidate in Iowa except for Rick Santorum receiving a moment in the sun. However, he kept going to event after event, visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties, and holding a total of 381 town hall meetings. Iowans like this sort of attention, and eventually, he moved up to third in the polls behind Romney and Texas Congressman Ron Paul. The interesting thing about it was that, on the last two days of the poll, he improved to second.

The hard work paid off, as Santorum, despite being outspent by Romney by a ratio of 18:1 in Iowa, only lost by eight votes out of 122,000 cast. This was because he worked the state harder than anyone, and he received a huge boost in the polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina, especially the later, where he went from 4% to 19%.

I don’t think that Santorum will win the primary (in part because of the heavy scrutiny that comes with being a contender and also because of lingering questions about his ability to raise funds for states where he has days rather than months to get to know voters), but regardless of your political views, it is refreshing to see someone have success the old-fashioned way, campaigning with shoe leather rather than wallet leather. Yes, I think part of this was the hand that he was dealt, but he still went out and did it, probably emerging as one of the leading candidates (and one who I think may very well be Romney’s running mate in order to appease conservatives) and striking a blow for underdogs anywhere.

When have you exceeded expectations despite limited resources?

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Hi, everyone. I hope you are enjoying this Christmas Day. As I write this, I spent some time with my wife and our pets (we have a dog named RJ and a cat named Leopard) today and enjoying some downtime. For our Christmas tradition, we eat a roast chicken we cook in our slow cooker, and my wife is currently putting the finishing touches on it. This is definitely a time where, regardless of one’s religious or cultural heritage, that people can get together with loved ones.

However, as a veteran, I have been thinking about other things this holiday season. My war, the Iraq War, is finally over after nearly nine years. At this time, I always think about the differences in times between the wars of today and the wars of yesteryear. This is because of a documentary that I have seen several times on the History Channel called The Christmas Truce. This is a documentary that talks about the famous cease fire between British and German forces in the first year of World War I, in 1914. Nearly 100 years ago, the great powers of Europe were engaged in a conflict that everyone called “the war to end all wars,” because they thought that the advanced and brutal weaponry of modern warfare would make the powers that be that much more reluctant to send (at the time) their men into war. However, at that time, they found out that modern warfare ended up causing the bulk of the war to be fought in the trenches, as the war largely stalemated and they had to hunker down for what would ultimately be four and a half years.

In this environment, several junior enlisted soldiers in the German Army lifted the white flag of truce and lobbed cakes over no man’s land and into the British trenches. The British soldiers worried that it was a trick, but they realized that the Germans were acting in earnest when they came out of the trenches and into No-Man’s Land (so named because it was the area between the trenches, and there were very few attempts to cross into this territory, because it often meant certain death) and started singing Christmas carols.

Amazingly, several junior enlisted British soldiers began to enter No-Man’s land as well. British and Germans (as best as they could given the language difference) began singing and exchanging stories with each other and enjoying some time off. Perhaps what was even more amazing about this truce is the way that it humanized those who were across no man’s land and in the trenches. This is something that we don’t think of any longer, but there was a time when war was seen as something much different than it is today. While it is true that people still died in wars before the First World War (for example: the war that to this day has the most American casualties was the Civil War in the 19th century), the warriors still saw each other as opponents rather than enemies. This truce was something that was a threat to the higher ranking brass, who worried that it would be difficult to resume fighting, and it never happened again, but I am nevertheless touched by that glimpse of humanity in the middle of a terrible situation.

It has been said that no one wants peace more than those of us who have been to war. There is something that happens in that time that serves to shake humanity, and it puts such a strain on families. However, the story of the Christmas Truce gives us hope for another way. I first heard this story in 2004, nine months after I left Iraq for good. The year before, just as most of us suspected, our Christmas began shortly after midnight as we were up late watching movies and playing games, and we heard mortar fire in the distance as we knew that this would be a day that we could enjoy as best we could, with officers and everyone at the platoon level or above (I was a sergeant, which meant that I was an assistant squad leader, or team leader) took over guard shifts for the rest of us as our Christmas present from them.

Still, what is so powerful about the message of the Christmas Truce is that it is possible, even in the worst conditions, to preserve our humanity. However, this can be a threat for those who want aggression to continue. May we all keep the spirit of the ChristmasTruce all year round!

How have you found humanity where it was least likely?

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Lord, grant us the serenity to accept the things that we cannot change, the courage to change the things that we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.- Reinhold Niebuhr

Hi, everyone. I hope you are enjoying this holiday season. The last two posts I’ve written on have focused on the nature of some of the criticism of the world of personal development. However, as I said recently, I am going somewhere with this criticism. So, if part of the criticism is the idea that everything is absolutely limitless turns into self-centered behavior or disappointment when things don’t go exactly how we think they will go, what will we do instead?

Well, I decided to wait to write this series (which I had been think about for some time) because I had a book in my reading queue that seemed perfect to address this question: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change– and When to Let Go by Eileen Flanagan.

Smart Personal Development

What I think is so great about this book is the way that it focuses on a way that we make a mistake when we think that we are the center of our own universe, and that trying to say that every single thing is in our control will lead to experiences that will ultimately humble us.

One of the big themes in the book is how that life has a funny way of not really moving in a straight line. This is something I can sympathize with, as someone who went to high school wanting to go to West Point, deciding instead (in part because of an inability to do the eight pull-ups necessary to pass the physical fitness test, peaking at two no matter how hard I tried) to go to a maritime college. Then, I realized that the world of the sea was not a world for me, and I thought that my path through life would be as a military chaplain. Then, I ended up going to the one college I swore I would never go to when I was younger (West Virginia University) and ended up finding a place that I absolutely loved and felt at home. I then went to a small town in the Ohio River Valley in western West Virginia and made an attempt at running for public office. Realizing that life was sending me in a different direction, I then moved to the main campus in the Philadelphia suburbs, and eventually to Philadelphia itself.

I don’t think that all of these things were predestined for me in any way. However, I do think that my life experiences helped inform each of these decisions. Ultimately, I came to realize that I was basing my decisions on my best judgment based on the information and the knowledge and awareness that I had at the time. This fits in part of the lessons that Eileen Flanagan teaches. She points out that we are limited in our understanding at the time, and that we can develop to do something better once we have humility.

A Fuller Picture

The other thing that I found so fascinating about this book was the way that we should think about what things we can and cannot do. In something that mirrors teaching in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Wisdom to Know the Difference focuses on the way that taking a humble attitude and being open to life’s experience actually makes it possible for the things that we can change to expand rather than contract.

One example in my own life was when I decided to run for public office for the 2006 campaign. I knew that my efforts would be quixotic, but I thought that I could make a bid for Congress. Ultimately, talking to a friend of mine, I realized that this would be biting off way more than I could chew, s0 I should consider a smaller office instead. I realized that running for the state legislature meant that I could run in a geographically compact area and get a chance to talk to more people in my district.

I lost by a huge margin, but I did ultimately make an impact in policy. I made one of my key issues public transportation, which many thought was a waste of time for such a small state with no city having a population greater than 57,000 (the most recent census now says that West Virginia’s biggest city only has 51,000 people). However, there were others who were trying to make the same argument from bigger cities, and the fact that someone who lived halfway between the first- and third-largest city in the state wanted to see it happen made it a little more feasible. While people in my party thought it would never happen, and people in the other party thought it was ridiculous, ultimately, there was momentum behind the idea, and two years later, my opponent actually voted for a pilot program to bring public transportation back and forth to the two largest cities in the state as a pilot program. I’m not saying that this would’ve never happened without me, but there were definitely people who didn’t think about the idea before I ran, and those people eventually became believers.

How do you try to make an impact when you can make a difference?

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If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone! I hope today finds you well, and for you Seinfeld fans out there, I hope you are enjoying a Festivus for the rest of us. Yesterday, I started a series on answering some criticisms of the world of personal development, some of which I thought had a point. Many of the criticisms were against the efforts of those who preach a literal and hardcore version of the Law of Attraction, that in its strictest definition, argues that anyone can have anything in the world if they only want it badly enough. Part of the complaint about these works were the ways that they have a tendency to focus almost exclusively on personal things rather than societal things.

They Can’t Both Win

One of the questions that I have never seen answered in some of the works that focus more on this self-focused version of the Law of Attraction (which truly does seem to put the reader at the center of his/her Universe) is what happens if two people have equally valid and worthy things that they seek, and what happens if they seek something that is in conflict with each other.

Here is an example: for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is now winter. However, here in Philadelphia, it has actually been above 50 degrees (10 degrees Celsius) each of the last three days. Currently, as I write this (past midnight), the temperature is still up, and it is raining rather than snowing. Many people who work outside are very content with the fact that, barring a huge shift in the next two days, that we will not have a White Christmas this year. However, people who are farmers in the West Coast rely heavily on snow melt to water their crops. Neither is a selfish desire. The outdoor workers know that they can’t work or feed their family if there is inclement weather. The farmers know that they can’t have crops if there is not.

It either has to snow or not snow. Which one should we root for? Each one has a worthy cause. If the Law of Attraction in its most literal sense, if it is to be believed this way, would say that it is the one who wants it more. Well, what if both want it the same? Where does the tiebreaker go?

These are just some thoughts as I move forward. Come back soon for the conclusion of this series, and you will find the solution to the question of what kind of personal development we should seek if we acknowledge the limits of the Law of Attraction, and if it really is as all-or-nothing as its strictest proponents claim it is.

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone! I hope today finds you doing well. Recently, I read the book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The basic premise of her book (written after a bout with breast cancer when she described the way that she felt that her cancer was turned juvenile with the insistence on use of the color pink and that the instance on the survivor narrative removed all others) is that an emphasis on focusing purely on positive thinking and a literal understanding of the Law of Attraction means that people ignore the things that need to be fixed in society. With this in mind, I am beginning a three-part series examining the question of personal developments dark side.

A Note Before Beginning

I am not writing this note to say that I have completely given up on personal development. However, I think that it is very important that those of us who believe in personal development engage those who criticize the field and, when the critics have a point, refine our understanding of personal development. While personal development is not science per se, I feel that it should be capable of withstanding scrutiny.

Personal Development or Societal Development

One of the biggest criticisms that Ehrenreich offers (that I feel has merit) is that some works of personal development completely ignore the societal issues at stake. While I do believe in Jim Rohn’s belief that we focus on the set of our sails, I do think that we should also make a continued and persistent fight for justice. I have heard some personal development writers talk about how that we can become philanthropists when we become really wealthy (and I realize that sometimes they have a point that some things take a lot of money), but the simple truth is that people in the United States who make less than $50,000 a year give a much higher percentage of their money to charity (including religious organizations) than those who make more than $100,000 a year (4% vs. 2%). Some have said that efforts at improving the lot of others is futile, so why even bother?

Perhaps the absolute worst thing of all that I read excusing selfishness in the personal development world was in The Science of Getting Rich, where Wallace Wattles says that “true philanthropy” is building one’s own wealth so that there is one less person who is poor, and that donating to the poor should not be done because it not only makes things worse for the poor person, but it makes someone think about poverty, which makes it impossible to ever get rich in the first place. (This one paragraph alone was enough to tell me to keep looking this spring when deciding on the books for my eBook Giveaway.)

A Different Presentation

I am not defending the Wattles quote (because I feel that it is indefensible), but I think that there are some things that are written in the world of personal development that have good intentions, but are worded in a way that could be harmful for others. One of those is the idea that our outer world is the reflection of our inner world. With true atrocities like the Holocaust and, as someone who lives in Pennsylvania is painfully aware of with the scandals that have been revealed over the last two months, of people abusing their position of authority to harm children in a profound way, I think it is safe to say that these things are not their fault. Instead, I think that those works that talk about the response to events in the world around us have a much better message to convey to help those who have gone through some truly horrific things.

With the Law of Attraction being used by some as a way to turn the universe into a genie or a mail-order catalog, we should look to works of personal development that teach us to live a life of generosity, discipline, hard work, and thrift. I’m not saying that we should try to avoid success, or try to improve our situation in life (my businesses, my blog, and my investments clearly demonstrate that I do not believe that), but that we should continue to examine our reading in personal development and the kind of personal development that each presents. I am going somewhere with this, and I ask of you to continue to look back and join me on this effort.

How do you test your works of personal development?

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Hi, everyone. I thank those of you who’ve stopped by my blog while I was away for the last couple of weeks grading research papers, doing a research paper, and giving and grading finals for the semester. My first semester as a student teacher made me think a lot about the nature of effort, which was reinforced by a picture that my fourth grade teacher posted on Facebook a few months ago. It was a picture from our class play, Rampunzel (I grew up in Richwood, “The Ramp Capital of the World.” If you don’t know what ramps are, they are the onion’s wild, stinky cousin, and if you get too close to them, they will stain your hands a purplish black, almost like ink. I’ve never eaten ramps, because quite frankly, the smell alone made me sick to the point that I feel a little queasy thinking about them.), an adaptation of Rapunzel.

A Leading Man?

At the time of the play, I was 4’3, ten years old, and thanks to puberty, even most of the girls in my fourth grade class were taller than me. However, I’d developed a bit of a reputation from class sketches and Christmas plays in my hometown, mainly because I was really good at memorizing my lines. We were told that we could write down the three roles we wanted for the play, or if we didn’t want to act, we could opt to be a stage manager. I opted to audition for Spencer, the male lead; Sam, the second male lead; and one of the lumberjacks. The auditions for Spencer came first.

Our teacher, Ms. Barrett, gave us the script, and a one-day warning to read two pages of the script and learn our lines for one of the scenes. She read the lines off stage (there was no stage, per se, at this stage, so we stood in front of the class), and we were basically acting the scene out by ourselves. I was one of the last people to audition. However, when it came for my turn, I did something that absolutely no one else before me or after me did when it came time to audition, which I surely thought someone would would do.

I fell.

On purpose.

In a classroom with a very thin carpet and no padding.

Why would I do something like that? I did it because at the end of the scene, Spencer was supposed to climb a tree, but he fell trying to reach his lady love, the title character of the play. I pantomimed climbing, and when I got to the line, “If I could just get to the next step, the rest of the climb will be easy,” I fell like a rock. My best friend at the time, Eric, told me that he was amazed that I actually fell when the script said to. A lot of other people said the same thing. The next day, I found out that the part was mine.

I’m not saying that I necessarily won the part because I was the best actor, but because I was the one person completely committed to getting the lead role, to the point of falling flat when the script called for it. This audition taught me something that has served me very well over the last 21 1/2 years: you must always do your best. You might not be the best, or have the natural qualities that others do, but if you outwork someone, you will be surprised what you will accomplish.

How have you succeeded beyond expectations by giving your all?

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His problem is that he was born on third and thinks he hit a triple.- Molly Ivins

Hi, everyone. For my American readers, I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. This holiday made me think of the things that we have that others might not have. (I couldn’t pick one Jim Rohn quote to settle on to complement the Molly Ivins quote, so I would say that learning from the wisdom of Jim Rohn is another thing that I am thankful for.) However, I’ve also thought about how many times that we can be completely unaware of how we have been blessed, and how that this can lead to trivializing what others have to do in order to succeed.

The Myth of Being Self-Made

One of the things that we often hear is someone who has had a lot of material success insisting that it was all an act of will. Even those who had advantages from their parents tend not to notice those, and insist that it was something that they did. One of the biggest examples that I saw of this in action was a friend of my wife who insisted that those who hadn’t succeeded the way he did were just lazy and looking for excuses, while he was an example of someone who worked hard. I’m not saying that he didn’t work hard, or that he isn’t smart, and doesn’t deserve his success, but let’s look at this a little bit closer.

He is an electronics enthusiast, who has worked on electronics nearly his whole life. What he won’t tell you is that this is because his parents had the means to give him the electronics that would help him get better at his field. When he grew up, he won some scholarships on merit, at his first college received a scholarship because of his disability before transferring to a private university, and his parents paid the difference as he went to one of the most expensive colleges in the country, with tuition, room, and board coming in at over $50,000 per year. This meant that he got out of school debt free, which is a huge advantage that many students don’t have. His parents also gave him the money for a down payment for a house in a nice neighborhood in the Austin suburbs, thus guaranteeing that he wouldn’t have to save for several years while renting or make next-to-no down payment and have larger mortgage payments and mortgage insurance (which is mandatory for those who owe more than 80% of the value of the house). Despite all of this, he still insisted that he was a Horatio Alger story at work.

Acknowledging Others and Othering

Another thing that is so easy to miss is a concept known as “othering,” which derives its name for someone who is clearly aware that he/she is part of an out group and has several disadvantages because of that. The most commonly-known examples of this in the United States are race and gender. However, there are many ways that someone can be othered. For example, coming from West Virginia (a state that a lot of people still, no matter how many times I have told them, don’t realize is not Virginia, but its own state that stayed in the Union during the Civil War and became its own state in order to do so), I don’t know of any other state that actually had a sitting Vice President make incest jokes about it. (Dick Cheney did this when a family tree project pointed out that he had relatives with the name Cheney on both sides of his family tree.) This is because, let’s be honest, Appalachians get a bum rap in this country that few others get on a purely regional basis. This comes into play in academia, because the natural assumption a lot of people have when they hear me talk is that I am stupid. However, I have instead decided to work twice as hard to prove that I am worthy of the program for which I am seeking my doctorate.

I don’t write this to disparage any individual or to begrudge anyone making the most of their situation. (I know that my wife will inherit some farmland that was part of her parents’ divorce settlement, so I’m not saying that I have no advantages.) However, I bring this up to ask us to remember to be grateful for all of the ways that others have fought to give us advantages, and to remember to have a spirit of generosity no matter how you have succeeded, or are still working to succeed. Maybe we should think of this as whether or not we should work to help society rather than just individuals. Maybe it means that if you are making an effort to succeed, you shouldn’t look down on others. Maybe they haven’t had their moment of realization yet, and they will get there. Maybe they are happy with their life. Either way, I think that all of us will do better when we realize if we hit a triple, or if we were simply born on third.

What are some advantage you have had, and what do you do to help others get their triple?

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Hi, everyone! I hope you are doing good today. I’m writing today because I’ve been thinking about experimenting. Recently, I bought a new heart-rate monitor to replace my old one. It’s not that my old one was bad, it’s just that it’s made for people who are doing less continuous work, and in order to get a reading, you have to hold down on the monitor with one finger. Needless to say, this can be quite awkward when running and needing to hold it for several seconds to get a pulse.

The Heart at Work

However, one of the big things with any new heart rate monitor is finding out how well it works. So, out of curiosity, when I first bought the heart-rate monitor, I decided to use it not just on easy days, but to check my pulse on hard days as well. The first one was a fast day, and I found out that my maximum heart rate was 191, rather than the 188 that I originally thought it was. This changed my pulse, because easy days are based on the maximum heart rate.

Then, a couple of days later, I did sets of 2 1/2 miles at my tempo pace with four 200-meter runs at my mile pace. When I did this, I was surprised to find out that, for the most part, my mile pace wasn’t long enough to get my pulse close to the maximum, but actually stayed at the tempo pace.

I found this to be an interesting experience, because learning about the way my body recovers, as well as learning my limits, helps me know how hard I can push it. If you don’t know what the limits are, it is easy to perform well under your potential. This is why I think that it is important to occasionally find out just how much you can do.

What things do you do to know when you are really giving it your all, or test your limits?

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