What Are We Doing Anyway?

I haven’t written anything in some time – got too busy, had other priorities, along with a multitude of excuses but this week, it finally came to a head. The negativity that exists today in America is more than I have ever seen in my lifetime.

I never cease to be amazed at our tenuous co-existence with our fellow citizens in the U.S. On the one hand, we all are clamoring for change because we see how our infrastructure, our financial futures, our jobs, our educational system, our interstate transportation system, and yes, our Government and leaders are receiving failing grades.

Still, civility and common good of our great country seems to take a backseat to political rhetoric and government flubs that seem to be ever-increasing – you can’t pick up a paper without reading about 9.2% unemployment, our debt at over $14 trillion dollars, our anemic job growth of just 18,000 jobs last month and I could go on and on and on…

We also see that our children aren’t doing as well in science and math – we dropped out of the top 10 countries according to a briefing by original shuttle astronaut, Bob Crippen just before the final lift-off of Atlantis on July 8, 2011.

The Crux of the Matter

And that brings me to my real purpose for writing today. Which is: we somehow lost our way over the years since JFK made the famous speech that thrust us into the space race by declaring we would have man on the moon within the “decade”.

http://history.nasa.gov/moondec.html

We (we elect our Senators and Representatives) have devalued it’s importance, it’s value to our national psyche because we seem to have no goals that capture the imagination of a nation anymore. No one has stepped forward with a vision so compelling that we all can buy into. Have you thought about that? You may not have even been born during those times but you have certainly reaped the benefits of those great leaders.

Forget all of the wonderful side benefits of the space race like, rechargeable batteries used in everything from electric razors, cameras and every type of portable device known to man along with computer chips, innovations in material science, etc. but that is subject for another time.

As a budding young marketing rep for IBM back in the heady days of our space journey’s beginnings, I was assigned to Huntsville, Alabama straight out of college in 1965. Our offices were in the Brown Engineering Building in Research Park which was right next to FSD’s campus (Federal Systems Division) another IBM division busy building the IU (Instrumentation Unit) that was to sit on top of the second stage of the Saturn V Moon Rocket and yet another group was building the on-board computers including the lunar landing module computer which was primitive by today’s standards (another topic which I will skip over for now).

Looking back on those early days as a spectator and a side participant (I called on NASA, the Army Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, and the Safeguard System Command and many of the subcontractors supporting them). I was in awe at the intellect and creativity of Wernher von Braun and other scientists who were to succeed in that heady challenge. I was also in awe of the tremendous power of man’s most powerful rocket (even to this day) the Saturn V – our sales office was over 25 miles from the test stand and yet when just one of the five engines was test-fired the windows shook as if we were having an earth-quake! Wow!

And, yes I was glued to the tube the day we landed on the moon in July 1969 with Apollo 11 and Huntsville was awash in pride and exhilaration.  Even though Mission Control was now at Houston due to Lyndon Johnson, we still had all of the scientists and a duplicate of the mission control room as a backup to any disaster. I remember well the angst while Apollo 13 was in jeopardy back in 1970. And, I remember the scientists  there working feverishly to continue innovation – already I was seeing designs and acrylic renderings on the walls of many ideas for what would later become the follow-on to the Moon mission – The Shuttle and eventually the International Space Station!

So yesterday was pretty nostalgic for me especially since I heard that the President cancelled the Constellation Program a few months ago and that NASA would lose several thousand jobs and that the subcontractors on the Florida Space Coast have already laid off 7,000 with more to come. We “think” private industry will come up with an answer in 5-10 years but in the meantime we may experience a brain drain once again to other nations who are still working on their programs (China and Russia with more to come) and we have to pay Russia by the seat on their craft to get to the International Space-station in the meantime.

How did we lose our imagination, our passion, our drive? It’s quite simple according to Dr. Charles Garfield who is currently a Clinical Professor at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco:”We have no national goal.”

When I first heard him speak at a meeting in San Francisco back in the early 80′s and shortly after his first of three books on human performance – “Peak Performers” had been published, I had an epiphany. He was right! The mission to the moon was the last great goal the United States had – once we landed on the moon the first time, it was all downhill – we had not replaced it with anything else so grandiose, so wonderful!

When you have no goal, you lose steam whether it is personal or one of a nation – the shuttle, while very ambitious at the time, never lived up to it’s billing – not like the Moon Mission did – we let the bureaucrats take over not the visionaries. Werhner von Braun said it best when he said: “We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”

Yesterday, one of the 36 assembled astronauts at the Cape spoke, answered questions, and critiqued what we need to do. Story Musgrave spoke at length and ruffled some feathers:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/09/ex-astronaut-story-musgrave-blasts-nasa_n_893596.html he certainly got my attention!

Can we Reinstate That Feeling?

Back to Garfield’s speech – he spent 18 years studying high achievers and he posed the question “How do we get ourselves and others to commit, to make that internal decision to excel, and to develop ourselves in the process? He talks about “sweet spots in time” that make a difference in the individual and the organization.

Which leaves me to think about what goals and internal decisions should I be making, is it time for me to reassess and determine where I personally I want to go? You bet – it is a continual process. How about you?

And while I have no national goal to proclaim, should we be doing the same thing as a nation? Would that unite us once again? Is there a leader who can pull it off? Have we yet to identify him or her? Is there a possibility that we can have that passion and enthusiasm again?

One possibility could be that we could certainly find a clean, green, alternative energy source to catapult us into future. Can we do that, though, without all of the interest groups jumping in to block it i.e. the fossil fuel industries? Could they still be a part of the distribution channel? What part could the emerging but anemic research by the automobile industry play? Certainly there are more questions than answers today, but until we rework the vision, we will forever remain fragmented, unhappy, and unfulfilled and that’s no place to be. We all deserve better but it really starts with us first, then the nation, how about it? Are you game? I know I am, and I plan to be positive, proactive, and determined to move forward – we can make a difference!

Weight-Loss Update

Today I weighed in at my normal time and found that I have lost 79.4 lbs to date and that I am 5.2 lbs away from my initial goal of 170. At the normal rate of weight-loss, I should be there in two weeks and then I can assess and decide whether I want to lose another 10 lbs.

Once we have developed a habit, it isn’t hard to keep going – I lost 1.2 lbs during Christmas with all of the visiting and gatherings while my son, Jason, and I were out of town and I really didn’t feel that I was missing anything.

Funny how your mind works – last week I lost 3.2 lbs. and I wasn’t even sure I had lost a pound!

My wardrobe has taken a major hit – I am down to a couple of sport coats; two suits (from a few years back); and had to buy some dress slacks to go to some meetings since I am into 32 waist pants – a drop of 10 inches. I delivered the equivalent of two closets full of clothes to Goodwill and I’m just waiting to hit my final numbers before investing too heavily in my new wardrobe!

I have learned that 80% of all dieters gain their weight back within two years if they don’t alter their habits and that men should not allow more than 10 lbs in weight gain before going back on their “Boot camp” diet which should take care of the gain in about 3 weeks or less. But, I am determined not to let it go that long ever!

I have found out that you have to become obsessive about your goal and dig deep into your “WHY” and continue to refine and find outside examples for moral support. My vision board includes pictures from the Front of “Men’s Health” – you know – the ones with the six-pack abs and models from “GQ” too. When I reach my goal, I will be where I was at 35 and when my Birthday rolls around in March that will be exactly 35 years ago! Is that obsessive enough? As an aside, I eat out regularly with several friends and each week they now ask me “how much this week”? They marvel at my will power and that just makes me stronger in resolve as I bask in the glory of their compliments.

I jokingly tell people that I have lost a 4th grader (avg. weight of a 4th grader is 60-80 lbs).

Anyway, the reason for the update is to reaffirm my decision; get extra strength and resolve from writing this; and to offer encouragement to anyone who is “teetering on the edge” about taking the plunge since weight-loss is one of the common “New Year’s Resolutions” that don’t make it past February. As Zig Ziglar put it: “If you wait until all the lights are ‘green’ before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.” Go for it!

Rewiring Our Neuro-Net

Reconfiguring your neuro-net is one of the topics we have been discussing in the MKMMA program this week. The phrase “Thoughts that fire together wire together” is certainly intriguing to say the least. And I know that I will watch the videos on the MKMMA site several times to absorb it all.

The videos were certainly enlightening and the message was pretty clear on how a chemical cascade  through our frontal brain lobe can change our lives and alter our associative memory.

Mental rehearsal  helps us do that. Exercises that we do helps us rewire our brain and breaks through the log-jam that affects our day-to-day activity. (I am certain this is true since the brain doesn’t know the difference in an activity vividly rehearsed than one that actually happens) and the studies that have shown the same brain activity occurs. The concept of “visualization” with Olympic Athletes has worked very well.

One idea that I have always found very interesting is when our Reticular Activating System starts working overtime – we see evidence everywhere we look but weren’t paying attention to previously. Stimuli is everywhere!  Remember when you bought your last car and drove it off the dealer’s lot? Suddenly that exact model and exact color shows up everywhere and we thought it was pretty unique when we bought it. Our RAS was engaged once our attention was shifted. It enables moms to wake up in the middle of the night to attend to their babies or to pick their cry out of a room full of babies – our brain is amazing.

Yesterday I received an email from a company I used to train for a few years ago and they said that Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 Ad messages a day compared with up to 5,000 today. Shades of “Future Shock” the 1960′s classic by Alvin Toffler, the futurist. (Didn’t we just learn that the brain’s attention changes every 6-10 seconds?) Same thing, eh?

The next thing that jumped out was a story on the front page of the “Independent Florida Alligator” the newspaper at the University of Florida; it centered around a speech given on campus by former Gator and Olympic Bobsled Gold Medalist – Steve Mesler who talked about the moment that changed his life. He had just graduated from the College of Health and Human Performance at UF and was looking back at his athletic career that had gone nowhere due to injuries – just ten years later he was on the podium at the Winter Olympics accepting a Gold Medal with his fellow bobsledding teammates.

What changed? He did! The jist of his talk centered around his new approach and was titled “The Science of Success“. With his co-author, he detailed how he translated that moment at graduation when he had an intense feeling of failure and that fueled his success. We often hear the phrase “For Things to Change You Have to Change” and it was certainly true for Steve.

Without getting into total detail and, no, I am not selling his program, but it has some interesting parallels into what we are doing right now in the Master Key Program. His program has three steps: First, how to push oneself to the limit and recover from failure; second, how to acquire skills in one’s chosen field through practice and repetition (hmm sounds like rewiring our brain doesn’t it?); and third, how to believe one can continue to change for the better (isn’t that one of the reasons we decided to get into the program?)

Wow, an epiphany for the students and guess who attended the lecture – not athletes (although some were there) the majority of attendees were business students. Steve believes that anyone can take their personal and professional success through the stages of failure, rebuilding, practicing and believing. That excites my peptides! Our cells do need a fix and we have to practice to develop new pathways or we remain stagnant.

These are just two of the things I observed on the first day of the week and I now wonder what will unfold the rest of the week – I have a four-day meeting to attend! At least my brain is open and on-notice. Is yours?

Sports r us!

Recently I received an email from one of the Sports websites
I frequent – “BleacherReport.com” on which Matt King a Senior Analyst classified
the top 100 Sports Movies of All Time. While there are tons of great movies out
there these were the “Top Ten” picked:

10. Slap Shot

09. Hoop Dreams

08. Caddy Shack (funny movie but top 10?)

07. The Natural

06. Rocky

05. Bull Durham

04. Rudy

03. Raging Bull

02. Field of Dreams

01. Hoosiers

I was surprised that I had seen all ten and while there were
some others that I might have picked in front of Caddy Shack it got me thinking
about why we are so enamored with sports in our culture and then I received an
email from one of my good friends, John Spence, discussing the “2010 World Business
Forum” and the parallels were easy to come by.

The details of the World Business Forum is better read in John’s
blog, not this one – in fact, I would encourage you to subscribe since he
shares some great thoughts about a variety of topics in his work with top
executives all over the world: http://blog.johnspence.com/2010/10/world-business-forum/.  John and I frequent the same restaurant for breakfast when we are in town and often bounce books and ideas off of each other. I really value his opinion.

The main topics of the forum seemed to dovetail with my “Athletics”
thinking – see if you agree:

1. Talent (the whole first day was spent on finding the best Talent and is not unlike an
athletic team trying to recruit the best talent in their sport).

2. Experiment -building a culture and inspiring people to experiment (In athletics, we remember the Coaches who innovate and they are usually at the top of the win column too).
Who can forget the “Fosbury Flop” perfected and introduced in the 1968 Olympics
by high jumper Dick Fosbury who won the Gold Medal in the event and changed the
technique of high jumping forever – it is still the dominant technique in use
today some 42 years later – that’s just one example – the forward pass in
football, the goal post at the back of the end zone; curved hockey sticks; the
three point line in Basketball; instant replay; there are enough to fill a
book. Hmmm.

3. Storytelling
(2 days on this subject) which is really appropriate to the films we like the
best and not unlike a successful network marketer who tells stories – we even
have an adage about that – “Facts tell, Stories sell!”

In my 30 year career at IBM, we often talked about the culture of
the company and how important it is to have employees around who can share
stories about the early days of the company to bridge the divide between new
employees and the pride and ownership the senior employees felt (we referred to
ourselves as IBM’ers ). Storytellers are essential to the folklore of any business.

4. Aspiration – The last speaker of the World Business Forum 2010, James Cameron said, “The biggest risk is not to be bold.” (John has a slightly different wording which he
shares on his blog).

Often at IBM Meetings I got to hear and see the top
achievers from different walks of life – One particular athlete I heard in Maui,
Hawaii at the IBM “Golden Circle” in ’85 was Mary Lou Retton and her
coach, Béla Károlyi. They told their story  just after she had won the “Best All Around”
Gold Medal in the ’84 Olympics (she won 5 medals in all). Mary Lou was the
first female gymnast from outside Eastern Europe to win the Olympic all-around
title. Less than six weeks before the Olympics she underwent surgery on one of
her knees and had back issues too but she rehabbed herself and competed and won!
What a heart of a champion! (I guess that’s why she was the first female to be
on a box of Wheaties!) LOL

This is getting too long, so I will cut to the chase –
Athletics is a metaphor for life in general, we have ups and downs, struggles
with personal and business issues and we either choose to come out of it a
winner or we choose to be a victim.

Back to the greatest sports movie of all time – here is the analysis of their thinking in choosing “Hoosiers”:

It’s got everything you want from a sports movie standpoint:

The new coach who bucks the system and does things his way,
despite not seeing eye to eye with everyone around him.

The reluctant star who is eventually convinced to play.

The group of misfits that nobody believes in, but far
surpasses everyone’s expectations.

The alcoholic father that puts too much pressure on his son
to succeed.

The big pregame speech

The big game, the big shot, and an iconic moment (Coach…
I’ll make it)

The wet blanket love interest.

The list goes on with Matt saying “Thank you, Coach Normal
Dale, for reminding us that no matter where we go or what the circumstances
are, the rim will always be just 10 feet off the floor.”

I guess the closing message is that no matter what we want to do it really is a competition and often it’s against our own goals and aspirations. Mental toughness, dedication and tenacity is essential in our case since with have no mythical foe like the movies.

The Law of the Garbage Truck

Recently I received an email from Doris Wood, one of the
original “Movers and Shakers” who helped found the MLMIA (Multi-Level Marketing
International Association) who I had the pleasure of meeting back in 1997. Doris
has always been one to put her Positive Mental Attitude forward and the note
struck a chord with me.

The theme centered on a cab ride she took to the airport and
the message was delivered by the cab driver – Doris was just a part of the conversation
and I loved it!

Here’s the story in her words:

“One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport.
We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a
parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes,
skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car
whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled
and waved at the guy. And, I mean, he was really friendly.

So I asked, “Why did you just do that?” This guy almost
ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!!” This is when the taxi driver
taught me what I now call, “The Law of the Garbage Truck.”

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run
around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of
disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and
sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave,
wish them well and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other
people at work, at home, or on the streets.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage
trucks take over their day. Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with
regrets, So…Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don’t.

Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how
you take it!

Have a blessed, garbage-free day!

Isn’t that a great way to look at things?

BHAG

I was in a meeting in California in January 2010 and one of the speakers had purchased a real stainless steel cylindrical “Time Capsule” and urged all of the attendees to develop a set of personal goals and write them on a piece of stationery and place them in a self-addressed envelope and deposit in the cylinder.
One by one, we took them to the front of the room and deposited them with the feeling that the commitment was not only real but that they had to be “BHAG” which stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal(s). Hilarious at the moment, it was a way of saying “Dream Big” and I decided to just go for it putting all of my effort within the short time limit. The thoughts just flowed and I quietly smiled and pictured what my life would be like if I was able to achieve all of them.
The rules were that they were our personal goals and only we would ever see them – 18 months from that date, the “Time Capsule” would be opened and the envelopes mailed back to us to see how we had progressed.
I’m not telling you what all of them are – I still have 12 months to achieve them. And that is for another blog but I will tell you the first goal though, because I am well on the way to achieving it in less than a year! Actually I have already achieved it and still going for more. What is this mysterious goal? The 2nd highest ranked goal most people make in January but give up on quickly – “Lose Weight”.
Without getting into all of the details, I will tell you that I was a slim teenager, college student and young adult. I stayed that way until I hit the half-century mark and then the waist expanded to a 42 and I gradually ballooned to 254.6 lbs. – wow I didn’t see it coming! Each day I looked in the mirror wasn’t much different than the day before and my personal self-image was still the same.
Having devoured “Psycho Cybernetics” back in the 60’s when Maxwell Maltz wrote it, I understand what he wrote about and how I fit this mold. You see when he did plastic surgery on patients he observed that many changed dramatically in their personality with very little surgery while others that he had altered dramatically saw no change at all. He reasoned that it was their inner “self-image” that ruled them and not the physical one in the mirror – the mind is very powerful.
He became the father of “self-image Psychology” and developed mental approaches to aid patients in developing positive inner goals to influence a positive outer self. Using visualization and self-affirmation techniques to do this, he influenced many of our modern gurus in self-help and I have used many of his thoughts in speeches I have given over the years. But this was different, it was me! Wow!
Didn’t I know that I had continued to buy bigger clothes each time a suit got tight? Didn’t I realize that over a 12-13 year period I had dramatically changed? No. I’m the one who is the photographer, there weren’t that many pictures of me to compare with the image in the mirror I saw when I shaved each morning.
I didn’t know how I was going to reach the goal; only that I had put it on paper and thus into motion. The rest of January, February, March, April went by and I was still mulling it over – other things got in the way and then one day I spied an Ad from a local physician I knew of and the lady in the picture had lost 110 lbs. in six months. I quickly called another physician friend who knew him and asked him to take a look and let me know his thoughts – after spending some time asking questions, he gave me the go-ahead saying “it sounds OK and it just might work”.
My thoughts were now in motion and I decided to go “All-In”! That was 21 weeks ago when I dropped by in person to make an appointment. While talking with the receptionist, Hope, the lady who works on this project, came walking up and I was introduced to her – it turned out that she had just had a cancellation and was free right then to do a work-up and get me started (think it was a coincidence that I went in person instead of phoning? – I don’t think so!).
In 21 weeks, I have lost a total of 54.8 lbs. and am just under 200! My goal is 170 – I actually got some size 36 pants on the other day – a little snug but wearable although I am mostly in 38’s. Every other Sunday I go through my closet and weed out the sizes that are too big.
Statistics say that 85% of the people gain it back within 2 years because they don’t alter their lifestyle permanently but Maxwell Maltz is on my side and I know what to do! By the way, my BHAG was to lose 50 lbs. and that happened at week 19.
My reward in the end (besides a new image and outlook )is a new wardrobe! Nothing will be left in the closet from my old self and I am never going back!!

Master Key Progam