Identity theft…

I remember once coming across one of Stephen Covey’s writings and being struck by how witty (but true) it was. He wrote the following:

We are warned more and more about the threat of identity theft. However, the greater identify theft is our cultural DNA; it’s not someone taking your wallet and using your credit cards—that’s very superficial. It’s about the profound identity threat that comes from people being raised in a comparison-based culture, so they focus more on secondary greatness, to become rich and famous, rather than primary greatness, which deals with character and contribution. This switch to secondary greatness is alluring and occurs throughout cultures of the world—secondary greatness has replaced primary greatness, and, as a result, trust has deteriorated, confidence has gone down, and we’re living with its consequences, as evidenced by the global financial crisis.

I rather like the reference to “cultural DNA” and to Covey’s reference to secondary greatness. He’s capturing how we so often sell our souls for “the world”, when money, and possessions, though important, are not to what we should aspire.

Covey asks us to live, rather than being lived, to live our own life, and to focus on primary greatness. How often do we focus on external or material things – how we look, how we are socially perceived – when instead we should be focusing on character, integrity, and contribution? After all, it’s not about what we get – it’s about what we give.

He goes further with this theme…

So it’s a healthy thing to be humbled by this or any other crisis, to realize that we have to take an inside-out approach in learning to be humble, to focus on integrity and character and on making a contribution, to serve other people, and serve worthwhile causes. How is the crisis affecting you? Are you focusing your efforts on strengthening your primary greatness—your character and ability for contribution? Set a goal to make a difference for someone else at work, at home, in your neighborhood, or community. The more you focus on serving others, the more authentic you will feel; your character strength will grow, you will be build trust, and you will build your worth based on principles versus on the need to gratify our cultural values, which often center on instant gratification and becoming an enviable figure in public. This will help to prevent your identify theft and help you resist your negative cultural DNA.

Discovering your dream job involves asking yourself these basic questions over time :
(1) What do you really love to do?
(2) What do you do well?
(3) What should you do so that you tap into your true voice?
(4) What does the world need?

It is so important that people take time to reflect on their potential. Most people do not do this. They get swallowed up in other people’s definitions of them and others’ agendas. And those external agendas, tend to drive their behavior. This is the “true identity theft.” It is like a cultural DNA that lies on top of your true DNA—your true capacities and nature—and robs you of your identity.

You get so immersed in it, so absorbed by it, so habituated to it, so socially reinforced by it that you lose the sense of who you are and what you could do in life. This identity theft is very real and is going on all of the time simply because people are not reflective enough to distinguish the difference between their true DNA and the social DNA. As one person put it:

“When man found the mirror, he began to lose his soul.”

The point is, he became more concerned with his image than with his “self.” To be successful, focus on that which taps into your talent and fuels your passion—that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet. That is how you will discover your calling. This might not give you society’s definition of success (money, status, material things) but you will feel a deeper success that completes who you are.

“Where talents and the needs of the world cross, therein lies your vocation.”
Aristotle

Cast Away: The clock versus the compass

In 2000, the movie Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks, hit the theaters. A critical and commercial success, the movie portrays the life and death struggles FedEx systems engineer Chuck Noland must overcome after a business trip suddenly ends with his flight crashing in the South Pacific. Spared in the crash, Noland washes up on a deserted tropical island.

There are several themes in the movie, but none is more evident than that of time. As a driven systems engineer, Chuck Noland is seen putting his profession and the matter of saving time first and foremost in his life. Noland puts efficiency ahead of effectiveness – the clock ahead of the compass, in Covey terms. Though deeply in love and engaged to be married, he answers the call of the company over Christmas with his fiance and ends up on a life-changing flight to Malaysia. Before leaving, he tells his fiance, Kelly, that he will “be right back.” Instead, he spends some 4 years as a castaway and as a result, loses the love of his life.

One important scene in the movie illustrates Noland’s devotion to the clock more than any other. As he is setting up a FedEx office in Moscow, Noland preaches to his new crew: “Time rules over us without mercy. Not caring if we’re healthy or ill. Hungry or drunk. Russian, American, beings from Mars. It’s like a fire, it could either destroy us or it could keep us warm. That’s why every FedEx office has a clock, because we live or we die by the clock. We never turn our back on it and we never ever allow ourselves the sin of losing track of time.”

And so the systems engineer with time on his mind ends up, ironically, on a deserted island, a castaway, with plenty of time on his hands and nothing to do but survive.

Early on, Noland’s abilities are challenged at every turn as he struggles to find drinkable water and food and make fire and shelter. Time means relatively nothing to him, yet he clings to a pocket watch Kelly gave him just before he left. In it is her picture, the only thing he fears he’ll have left of her.

The movie fast forwards to him years later, now a long-bearded castaway, clothed in a loin cloth, tan and slim from living a life of exertion.

But after years of loneliness, the monotony of surviving on a deserted island, and the thought of dying on the island, Noland decides to commit suicide, which fails. He despairs that he has control over nothing, not even the ability to kill himself.

One day, while patrolling the beach for flotsam, Noland finds a large piece of plastic siding that washes ashore. It is more wreckage from the plane. He conceives a plan for a raft, one that can take him beyond the island’s formidable barrier reef. Over the years he had studied the weather, wind, and tides and knew when conditions would be optimum for escaping the island on his raft. When the time came he was ready, and successfully set out to sea.

Escaping the island was one thing, but surviving the sea quite another. Once again, time amounts to nothing for Noland as he lay adrift dehydrated, hallucinating, and hoping that he would be seen by a passing freighter or tanker. At last he is.

Coming home proves more of a challenge in some ways than escaping the island. Noland returns home to a world where time has slipped by him. And most sad of all, he learns his fiance has married and raised a family, fearing he would never return.

We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and… knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had… lost her. ‘cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So… I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I – , I couldn’t even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that’s when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that’s what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I’m back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass… And I’ve lost her all over again. I’m so sad that I don’t have Kelly. But I’m so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?

The movie ends ironically with Noland literally at a crossroads in Texas. After having delivered the one package with angel wings on it that he never opened on the island to its address in Texas, Noland comes to an intersection and is not sure where to go next. As he looks at a map, a truck stops by and the young lady driver asks Noland if he needs directions. The young lady gives some basic destinations for each direction and wishes Noland good luck. But as she drives away, Noland notices the same angel wings painted on the truck that had been on the package he just delivered.

The movie ends as Noland looks around at the paths before him and appears to settle on heading in the direction that the young lady took. And so the compass is now Noland’s priority, not the clock. The movie certainly leaves one to wonder how differently Noland’s life would have been if he first looked at the compass and not the clock.

Write your obituary…

On December 18, 2017, I lost the most positive force in my life. My mother, Janet Theresa (Slattery) Bruns passed away peacefully after battling dementia, a stroke, and finally, a broken hip incurred by a fall. She was 88.

In his writings, Stephen Covey talks extensively about the importance of determining one’s legacy. He urges us to think deeply about how want to be seen in life, how we want to be remembered, and even encourages us to write our own obituary. This process may seem a little morbid, but it is a worthwhile exercise. It allows us to “begin with the end in mind”.

“There are certain things that are fundamental to human fulfillment. The essence of these needs is captured in the phrase; to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy. The need to live is our physical need for such things as food, clothing, shelter, economical well-being, health. The need to love is our social need to relate to other people, to belong, to love and be loved. The need to learn is our mental need to develop and grow. And the need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution.”

Stephen Covey

When my mother passed, I had the opportunity to write my mother’s obituary and her eulogy, along with my brother and sister. While writing it, I tried to create a picture of what my mother’s legacy was and how she wanted to be remembered. I didn’t need to look far to find it – her legacy was very simple – she was to our world an infinite source of positiveness, embodied in her enduring smile.

Interestingly, I read notes left in sympathy cards, comments on Facebook, listened to people speak of her, and noted the officiating priest’s own eulogy during her Mass, and all, without exception, mentioned the light she brought to life through her smile. Quite frankly, the conformity to this one word – smile – in everything that was said or written about her, blew me away.

We are all unique in our creation – no two of us are exactly alike. We come into the world with this gift of uniqueness and when we depart, in death, that uniqueness will never return to this earth. So we all have a unique contribution, one that we have a duty to recognize and then deliver to the world. My mother may not have known it, but her smile – her enduring sense that anything had a positive angle to it – was her gift to the world.

If we are to be judged at the end of our lives, will it be purely on the basis of what we did, or more importantly, will it be about who we were and how we were?

Take time now to dig deep and discover the legacy you were born to bear. And if you discover it, test it by asking others, by reading letters, comments in yearbooks, notes passed, stories told. I will tell you, the true test will be just what I saw at my mother’s passing. People, universally, will repeat the very thing you were meant to do.

My mother’s eulogy follows…

We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of our mother, Janet, and to reflect on the legacy she left to all of us. Our mother came into this world from humble beginnings. She was born in 1929 in the Bronx to a working-class family amidst the Great Depression. Life was hard and certainly if anyone had a choice on when to be born, 1929 would rate among the worst of times. Yet, as is said in the Bible, in fire gold is tested. And so she was raised during tough times but with the love and guidance of her parents, Elsa and Edward. She was taught the value of hard work, integrity, and perseverance from a strict but loving German mother and kind, compassionate Irish father and was raised in the Catholic faith.

Our mother grew up a very compliant and disciplined child. She excelled in school, studying, among many subjects, Latin. She was a member of the Arista (Honor Society) and managing editor of the school newspaper – where our father was editor-in-chief. She graduated valedictorian of her high school class in 1947. She initially went to school to be a nurse but found the emotional toll of tending to the sick and dying too great to bear. Instead, she became a secretary and worked for Newsweek magazine in Manhattan. She met our father in high school and after his return from the Korean War, they resumed dating and married in 1954.

Our parents started a family in 1959 and Mom carried the values she learned as a child into the home. She was a gifted mother and home-maker. Everything was done to perfection – from sewing to cleaning to cooking and baking. She derived great joy from these activities because she knew they brought joy to her family. Growing up in the home she made was a wonderful, almost magical experience – one of unconditional love, warmth, happiness, and support.

Outside the home, mom was generous, kind, and enterprising. She was extremely well organized, had great business savvy, and particularly loved investing in real estate and stocks, something she passed on to her children. Later in life with her children grown and on their own, she returned to the world of business and was office manager for SCM/Glidden.

Mom lived a life of service and compassion, always focusing on the good in people, including strangers, and seizing any opportunity to share a kind word or lend a hand. She was active as a volunteer in girl scouts, high school band, and in her later years at St. Mary’s rectory and Ken’s Kitchen. This service and compassion extended to animals as well. She spent countless hours rescuing and raising feral cats.

Mom’s most memorable traits were her ever-present, enduring smile and the sparkle in her eye. Hers was a world where anything – bad news, misfortune, loss, or even misery – could be turned into a positive. A favorite saying of hers was “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” And so it was as the horrible disease of dementia ravaged her mind, late in her life. Her speech had been compromised after suffering a stroke, though there were moments towards the end where snippets of clarity would still come out. One such comment was made on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The late afternoon sun was shining through her bedside window and out of the blue, she raised her head off her pillow, turned to the window and said, “isn’t life good.”

Our Mom’s mother, Oma, believed that no one truly dies if they are kept alive in the memories of those left behind. So let us end this eulogy with a question for all of you who have come today to honor her life. Will you remember our mother in the way she lived? Will you pay forward her legacy by loving life, living with gratitude, acting selflessly, and reflecting on all God has given us by saying, “isn’t life good”?

 

 

 

 

Call me Trim Tab…

Stephen Covey writes often about how difficult change can be. He espouses starting small when trying to make changes in order to ensure progress and prevent early failure; in essence taking baby steps. Covey also uses the metaphor of the “trim tab” to illustrate his point that small incremental adjustments can lead to big changes.

The trim tab on a ship’s rudder is used to provide the leverage necessary to move a much larger turning or “change” surface. By moving the trim tab to one side, a low pressure zone is created (the water must travel faster on the turned side) causing the rudder to move slowly in that direction. This, in turn, makes it easier to turn the entire rudder and ultimately change the direction of a huge ship. The trim tab concept proves that small changes can have a huge impact.

Researching this concept led me to discover that this idea is borrowed by Covey from the great thinker, futurist, architect, and inventor, Buckminster Fuller. Descended from a long line of New England nonconformists, Fuller was twice expelled from Harvard and never completed his formal education. He saw service in the U.S. Navy during WWI as commander of a crash-boat flotilla. In 1917 he married Anne Hewlett, daughter of James Monroe Hewlett, a well-known architect and muralist. Hewlett had invented a modular construction system using a compressed fiber block, and after the war Fuller and Hewlett formed a construction company that used this material (later known as Soundex, a Celotex product) in modules for home construction. In this operation Fuller himself supervised the erection of several hundred houses.

The construction company encountered financial difficulties in 1927, and Fuller, a minority stockholder, was forced out. He found himself stranded in Chicago, without income, alienated, dismayed, confused. He considered that year as a pivotal one in his life. His daughter, Alexandra, had died in 1922 of complications from polio and spinal meningitis just prior to her fourth birthday and Fuller dwelled on her death, suspecting that it was somehow connected with the damp and drafty living conditions of his home.

The Fuller family had no savings, and the birth of their daughter Allegra in 1927 added to the financial challenges. Fuller drank heavily and reflected upon the solution to his family’s struggles on long walks around Chicago. During the autumn of 1927, Fuller contemplated suicide, so that his family could benefit from a life insurance payment.

Fuller stated that this experience led to a profound re-examination of his life. He ultimately chose to embark on “an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity.” This experiment, in turn, led to his philosophical concept of the trim tab, seen in this quote from an interview in 1972:

“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trim Tab.”

 

Fuller kept true to his new philosophy and became a trim tab during his life with an array of inventions, concepts, philosophies, and writings during his relatively long life. And while Buckminster Fuller was an intelligent and highly gifted man, perhaps his greatest contribution was this notion that a small change, however seemingly insignificant, can greatly impact the lives of others for the better.

Persistence…

Want an example of persistence – tenacious persistence? The life and career of Weather Channel meteorologist Dave Schwartz, well known to weather geeks and Weather Channel watchers alike, smacks of it. Schwartz loved weather at an early age. As a child, he built a weather forecasting kit from Radio Shack that his father had bought him and watched the tornado scene from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ with delight.

Schwartz’s rich history with The Weather Channel began in 1985 when he worked as a “gofer” in the newsroom. He landed the job after making a spectacle of himself by offering to clean the bathrooms for free! Schwartz wanted to learn from the best  –  no matter the cost. He worked at the network on Saturdays while working at the Fulton County Health Department Monday through Friday. On his only day off, Schwartz would come into the unoccupied studio and practice delivering forecasts in front of the camera. He eventually made it into the on-camera apprentice program, where he would be on-air from 2-3 a.m. once a week alongside an experienced on-camera meteorologist. When an on-camera position would open up, Dave would apply. After many failed attempts, in 1991 his persistence paid off - with the help of an application letter entitled, ’10 reasons why Dave Schwartz should be the next on-camera meteorologist for The Weather Channel.’

Schwartz died on July 31st at age 63 following a long and public battle with cancer. After fending off pancreatic cancer, and a subsequent remission, the longtime weatherman was diagnosed again in 2015, this time with stomach cancer. Known for his friendly on-air demeanor, he often referred to viewers as “my friend” before giving forecasts.

In March, his co-worker Bailey Rogers wrote a heartfelt tribute to Schwartz’s tenacity on the story platform Medium. He detailed the weather man’s persistence in rising up the ranks, and his enduring dedication even in the face of cancer:”Whereas many people would probably take time off, Dave prefers working at his dream job.”

It’s amazing everywhere. In today’s world, many of us live fast-paced lives. It’s easy to miss how amazing the world in which we live is. Insects, moss and lichens on rocks and telephone poles, sunrises and sunsets, the clouds…on and on. Slow yourself down this weekend. Take a yoga class, attend services, take a hike, take a nap. Do something that slows you down, so you can more easily see how amazing it is out there.

Dave Schwartz

Dave Schwartz’s dealings first showed up in an odd way. Ten years ago while applying his on-camera make-up, Dave noticed a yellow tint to his skin and the whites of his eyes that prompted him to make a doctor’s appointment. To his shock, the diagnosis was stage 2 pancreatic cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined, the one-year relative survival rate is 20%, and the five-year rate is 6%.

In attempt to remove the cancerous tumor, Dave underwent a procedure called the Whipple in a local hospital, but unfortunately, due to a complication, the surgery was unsuccessful. He was given just a year to live.

Instead of throwing in the towel, Dave persevered and sought treatment from the surgeon who wrote the book on the Whipple procedure — literally. This mission steered him to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where his doctor suggested chemotherapy and radiation to shrink and isolate the tumor, followed by surgery to remove what was left. The treatment was a success.

The victory, however, was short lived. Less than a year later, during routine check-ups, spots on his lungs appeared — pancreatic cancer again.

Knowing that Dave is a descendant of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, his surgeon suggested he undergo genetic testing to check for a particular gene mutation that appears more frequently in that population. His bloodwork came back positive for the BRCA2 mutation — a good thing in this scenario. A combination of new and old generation drugs had recently been discovered as an effective treatment option for pancreatic cancer patients with that genetic mutation. Dave was no exception. He was cancer free again.

“None of us is guaranteed tomorrow – we all know that. As far as I’m concerned whether you have cancer or not, we are all in the same boat. None of us really know that we have more time than what we have right now. So I’m no different than anyone else. I have my struggle. I have my cross to bear – other people have their crosses to bear, and let’s hope that we wake up alive tomorrow.”

Dave Schwartz

Another philosophy Schwartz lived by is no “what ifs.” “It is what my wife and I decided early on — 10 years ago — when I was first diagnosed. Period. Let’s go with what we know, and that’s all there is. You can worry that 95% of people don’t live beyond a year with pancreatic cancer…what if…no…more like, what are we having for dinner?” It’s one step at a time and a “no kvetching” (yiddish for complaining) mentality in the Schwartz household.

These perspectives, coupled with his passion for weather, fueled his decision to maintain a normal work schedule at the network. “I enjoy sitting in front of a computer and digging up interesting things to pass on to viewers. I love creating stories. There are so many reasons why I enjoy coming to work. I’m going to come to work as long as I can come to work. The people are great. I love the weather. What could be bad?”

When offering his advice to people diagnosed with cancer, Dave’s advice was to “gather a support group that will rally about you and don’t be afraid to tell everyone you know because everyone knows someone who has or had cancer. There is great information out there through people you know.”

Schwartz demonstrated some of the best qualities of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People throughout his life, particularly in the way he dealt with cancer.

 

 

 

Breaking the chains of habits…

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens said it best. Habits, bad and good alike, have a way of controlling us. Over time they grow from a gossamer thread to a yarn to a rope to a hawser. They serve their master well, for better or for worse. And ultimately it is our choice to put them on.

Covey contends that habits lie at the common intersection of three factors: what to do (knowledge), how to do (skill), and want to do (desire).

Fundamentally, we create our habits or character (a composite of our habits) and then our habits (or character) create our world. But what is character? Our character is basically a composite of our habits.

Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny as the maxim goes…

Habits are driving forces that consciously and sometimes unconsciously express our character. They can increase or decrease effectiveness. They can be developed, broken, learned and unlearned, but to learn or unlearn takes tremendous commitment and effort.

It is said that a space rocket takes far more energy to lift-off and break the bonds of gravity than it does for the rest of its travel through space. This is basic physics – Newton’s First Law of Motion says a body stays at rest or remains in motion unless acted upon. And so habits are the same way. Breaking a habit requires a force to act upon it – maintaining a habit also requires force to sustain it.

Covey’s answer to form a habit or destroy a bad one? Make little promises and keep them. Then make bigger promises and keep them. Covey contends that over time, your honor will become bigger than your emotions. The urge to revert to a bad habit will be subdued. And as a result, you will succeed!

 

 

 

 

 

Carrying your own weather with you…

The day was not going well. At every turn, starting with small things in the morning, my day was going wrong. The internet was not working, spoiling my plans to write early after waking. I forgot to get more coffee, prompting an unscheduled drive to the supermarket. After breakfast, I went out to start my lawn tractor and realized I needed to get gas – another trip. Then I tried to start my lawn tractor and it was dead – another trip for a new battery. But even after installing a brand new battery (the old one was confirmed dead), the tractor still wouldn’t start…

In my own situation described above, I’ll admit to initially heading down the “reactive” trail. But I stopped before going too far, remembering Dr. Covey’s teachings. I reversed course and began to think of the problems I was facing as opportunities. I learned more about my tractor, replacing the battery successfully, but then ceased doing more troubleshooting since the need to cut my ever-growing lawn loomed large before me.

So, I got out the push mower, started it, and began the laborious task of cutting 1.5 acres of high grass. And I turned the whole situation around on the point that this would be excellent exercise, something I needed after a long winter. And indeed it was! I huffed and puffed but at the end of the day I had exercised for 4 hours. My legs and upper arms were sore – a good thing.

Being proactive means you carry your own weather with you. Your circumstances do NOT define your response. When our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us. In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance.

Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the “social weather.” When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them. They are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values — carefully thought about, selected and internalized values. Dr. Covey teaches that we all have a space between stimulus and response and it is in that very space that our greatest gift – the freedom to choose – can be found. So the next time the weather looks bad – the physical weather or the social weather – will you curse it and allow it to ruin your day, or will you choose a good response to it? Or as my mother used to say, will you make lemonade from lemons?

 

 

Jim Herman – Journeyman becomes Master

In the working world, a journeyman is an individual who has completed an apprenticeship and is fully educated in a trade or craft but not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman has to submit a master work piece to a guild for evaluation and be admitted to the guild as a master. But in the sports world, the definition isn’t quite so clear and varies to some degree by sport…

In any sport, a “journeyman” is someone who routinely plays just well enough to remain in whatever league or circuit he/she belongs to. This is not an individual who is ever expected to win a championship or become a star. In baseball, it’s the backup catcher who hits .240 and floats from team to team. In ice hockey, it’s the third line checking winger who is too good for the minor leagues, but will never score more than ten goals in a season. In golf, it’s a player who is annually ranked below the top fifty players in the world, but who is good enough to keep his tour card. Journeyman players are necessary for professional sports. These are the folks who the stars rise above. If there were no journeymen, the elite players wouldn’t look so good comparatively speaking. The term “journeyman” probably gets its name from the notion that these players do a lot of travelling to earn a not-so-lucrative living. They go wherever the jobs are. It’s use in golf is a bit strained because everybody on tour (even the stars) travel extensively. But “journeymen” will not always follow their “own” tour from venue to venue. A journeyman might depart from (say) the PGA Tour for a month to play competitions with the European Tour if the journeyman expects to make more money.

(The above definition is from Leaderboard.com)

So being labeled a journeyman in golf is both a compliment and, well, an acknowledgment that one isn’t quite top notch in their career. Unless you’re Jim Herman…

Jim Herman, PGA pro, was born in 1977 and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. Herman attended St Xavier High School, a private prep school, where he played golf. He continued with golf, attending the university of Cincinnati, and then turned pro in 2000.

Turning pro is one thing – making it as a pro is entirely another…

“Becoming a tour player requires a lot more time time and effort than most ambitious golfers are willing to put in. Think about it this way; to consider a life as a tour player ask yourself whether you are willing to devote the next 10 to 20 years of your life pursuing this career choice, with at least 5 hours of practice 6 days out of 7, and playing 54 to 72 holes each week.”

It’s now common knowledge in the media that Jim Herman recorded his first PGA Tour victory, in his 106th start, at the Shell Houston Open on April 3rd, 2016. He shot a final round of 68 for a 15-under-par total to complete a one shot win over Henrik Stenson. After Stenson missed a putt to tie Herman, he successfully two putted the final green for the win and earned an invitation to the following week’s Masters Tournament, an event he played for the first time. He also earned his first invitation to the PGA Championship.

But Herman’s journey to Augusta National for his first Masters Tournament didn’t begin with an early Monday morning flight from Houston. It didn’t begin one day earlier, when he clinched his spot in this week’s field by finally becoming a PGA Tour champion. It didn’t even begin five years ago, when he initially reached the world’s most elite level as a full-time member. Jim Herman’s journey began in 2006, when he took an assistant professional job at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Not long after being hired, Herman was placed in a match alongside Donald Trump, the club’s famous owner. And Jim Herman was on his game that day.

Fortunately, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. It wasn’t long until he offered the club’s new assistant pro a chance to chase his dream, giving him the financial stability necessary to pursue a career as a touring professional, with the caveat that he could always return if it didn’t work out. So Herman took Trump up on the offer. He played the mini-tours for a while and then played the developmental Web.com circuit. He graduated to the big leagues, flunked out, then got promoted again. Herman surpassed the million dollar mark in season earnings last year but never forgot where he got the jump-start. Herman credits Trump for his support and for confidence.

Herman’s week at the Master’s included playing alongside Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III in the Par-3 Contest. He also had many fellow pros congratulating him for his life-changing victory at the Shell Houston Open.“It was a wonderful, wonderful day,’’ he said. “I can’t tell you the ovations that I’ve been getting all week. It’s just unreal. It’s an honor to be playing out here.’’

Jim Herman celebrates winning the Shell Houston Open

“I don’t know if it was true or not, but at the Par-3, Phil got a great ovation and Davis got a great ovation and it seemed like I got one that was louder,’’ Herman said. “That’s impossible. Phil is a three-time champion here and Davis is a major champion and Ryder Cup captain. I just won the Shell Houston Open and I’m getting a bigger applause.’’

But Herman showed the impossible can be turned possible with “sticktoitiveness”, hard work, determination, pure grit, an eye on the goal, and a little hope and luck. And as a result, he crossed the line from journeyman to master…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Context of the Week

A significant challenge in life is the gap between the close up view of life (urgent things, immediate needs and tasks) and the long term view (fundamental needs, long term direction). People tend to respond to urgent, pressing matters even when importance stares them right in the face. Observe anyone in deep, meaningful conversation and see what happens when their phone rings. Yet we all know, down deep, that the key to a life well lived is to emphasize importance over urgency – the compass over the clock. And so it should be with planning. Highly effective people ensure that the close up view never overshadows the long term view of life. And the key to doing this with balance is being able to look at things in the intermediate term – in the context of the week.

Covey argues that weekly planning provides much greater balance and context than organizing daily or monthly. For one, the week is culturally respected as a single complete unit of time. Business, education, and many other facets of society operate within the framework of the week. And from a religious point of view, the week is also recognized as a time standard, the Sabbath – one day out of every seven – being designated as a day of rest and spiritual reflection.

But the week also gives the perfect balance between perspective and focus to our planning. Covey likens this to walking down the street looking through a camera lens. Imagine, first, seeing the street before you with a zoom lens. One’s view would indeed be very fine and detailed. While this would afford tremendous focus on say, the pavement, all else, including the traffic perspective in the road and the walk-way would be cut out from view, a dangerous situation indeed. On the other side of the spectrum, imagine the view with a wide-angle lens. Here one’s view would be broad, big picture, and perspective rich but detail-poor. With a wide-angle view, the focus needed to turn down the correct street or watch for a trip hazard would be lost. Both focus and perspective have their place in life, but an intermediate view is most needed to get the proper balance of each. This is where weekly planning is the best way to approach life planning.

So cherish the week and make planning on a weekly basis a habit. Set a day and time, preferably on the weekend, and make it Q2 time – a space in the hectic pace of life to look back, look forward, and plan that critical, bite-sized chunk of life called the week.

The P/PC Balance

“To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.”

Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey is known to use old literature for reference in much of his writing. One such reference is Aesop’s fable of “The Goose with the Golden Eggs”. The fable is about a poor farmer who one day observes a large golden egg next to his favorite goose. The farmer believes it is a trick and has the egg tested but much to his disbelief, the egg is solid gold. The farmer checks every day and collects a golden egg – his wealth explodes. Finally, the farmer gets the idea that he should kill the goose and extract all of the golden eggs at once, but when he does, he finds the goose barren.

The moral of the fable is that ‘greed loses all by striving all to gain’, but Covey uses the fable to illustrate a different moral or principle. Covey relates the fable to ‘effectiveness’ which he says is defined by what he refers to as the P/PC Balance. The “P” stands for production – the “PC” stands for production capability. Both are necessary for effectiveness. Covey tells the story of the manager who takes over a work area and makes huge productivity gains almost immediately. This manager has taken over a previously well-run operation, but decides to neglect maintenance, personnel care, training, and other PC functions in the name of production. In the short term, the manager is lauded for setting new production records, but over time, with production capability neglected, problems start cropping up. Personnel are burned out from excessive overtime, work instructions are not revised, causing quality problems, and machinery begins to fail, causing excessive downtime and stops in the production line. Production eventually goes down.

But too much focus on production capability is just as bad as the manager’s obsession with production. Excessive maintenance in the name of pride, training on topics that don’t directly impact production, a focus on quality perfection as opposed to fitness for use – all these things are ills just the same as neglecting production capability.

So effectiveness is achieved when there is a balance between our ability to produce and our capability to produce. Habit 7, “Sharpen the Saw” is the very essence of production capability. In our personal lives, for example, how many of us can run, run, run through a busy and hectic week without taking some time to recharge our batteries. And yet, we could put so much focus on exercise that we find we have spent a life running and not living.

So take time to think through every aspect of your life and examine how effective you are balancing P/PC. This applies as much to work or your profession as it does to relationships, finance, your spiritual life, your physical being, your mind, and your recreational activities. Remember that effectiveness has its roots in balance and moderation…