LESSONS LEARNED -- AN EXCHANGE!

LESSONS LEARNED – AN EXCHANGE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 29, 2009

“Who can tell whether learning may not even weaken invention in a man that has great advantages from nature and birth; whether the weight and number of so many men’s thoughts and notions may not suppress his own or hinder the motion and agitation of them, from which all invention arises; as heaping on wood or too many sticks, or too close together suppresses, and sometimes extinguishes a little spark, that would otherwise have grown up to a noble flame.”

Sir William Temple (1628 – 1699), English statesman

* * * * * *

A WRITER WRITES:

Jim,

The irony of this message is profound for me! You are talking about a publisher who published something of yours without permission. Well, I’m cooling my heels for a week because I had a run in with my company's management. I am devastated and feel wrongly accused. I can appeal my suspension, but have little trust in that process now. Unfortunately, I love my job, my direct boss, but am forced to look for work elsewhere.

As I write this, I am upgrading my resume', job searching via the Internet, a wonderful tool, but it was the title of your piece, LESSONS LEARNED that caught my eye, and this quote in it perked my thoughts:

“There are three things that have dominated my life: honesty, trust and loyalty. I have been told as true as these things are of me that I fail to recognize dishonesty, distrust and disloyalty in others. Not true.”

Perhaps that shoe fits me as well. Are we fools, I ask?

I am. So I take deep breaths, work diligently to refine my skills and put them on paper with a less than joyful knowledge that this is the end of a fine work experience, one that has sadly been corrupted by persons who are less than trustworthy, persons with hidden agendas. I leave with a heavy heart, as I was certain this is where I was meant to be.

My boss is my mentor and he soon will be retiring. I trust him and have confided in him about my anxiety once he leaves. He is like a lame duck president, and can do little as the company shuts the door on me. Am I being railroaded? What do you think? What can I do? What should I do?

I am not naïve. My mind tells me if it didn’t come now, then it would come later. My mind tells me it is time to move on. Thank you for your words. They have come at a very needing time for me. And thank you for listening.

Robert

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

In a curious way, I had immediate empathy for you, Robert, in your disclosure.

My mentor, friend and boss was Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth at Honeywell Avionics, Clearwater, Florida. Dr. Pesuth was a brilliant organization/industrial psychologist, and a man who was not uncomfortable with, or intimidated by others of minds of their own. He didn’t compare himself to them or compete against them, but gave them ample room to display their talents and to establish their credibility.

When he hired me, he knew I had had an executive career, written books, and traveled a good part of the world consulting and giving seminars. Unimpressed, he said this in our initial conference: “If you fail to establish rapport with the troops here in the next six weeks, you will be gone.”

It was an “in-your-face reality” check that I must establish my own credentials by doing and by developing my own territorial imperative.

All did not love Dr. Pesuth, but he was loved and respected by me. He was candid, fair, consistent, honest, loyal and trustworthy, something like I would imagine your own direct boss to be.

Yet, when Dr. Pesuth was about to retire, he had me come into his office, and he laid down another piece of reality. “I’ve been running interference for you all these years," he said, "and soon I’ll be gone. The troops love you, but the brass hate and fear you. It appears the vultures are just waiting for my exit to get to you.”

The good doctor was right, but not before I was able to complete a full anatomical appraisal of the complex organization for future analysis and writing. I share this with you, Robert, because LESSONS LEARNED is a lifetime process. We happen to touch common incidental ground in this case. There is however far more to it, as I hope to explain briefly here.

* * * * * *

I am sorry to hear about your situation. Consider it another bump in the road on this journey through life. We cannot change the hearts of those who see us one way and we see ourselves another. If there is one thing life should teach us, and that is that it is not fair nor should we expect it to be.

We have three choices when we run into walls: (1) We can learn from our experience about our situations and about ourselves in these situations; (2) We can break our situations down in terms of our "real self" (as we actually are), or our "ideal self" (as we are expected to be); and then (3) We can take from these insights, and prepare to eat crow, or move on more self-knowing than ever before.

There is another dual battle going on, at the same time, all our lives. It is between our "essence" and our "personality." Our essence is the potential with which we are born or the "true self." Personality is the mask we wear, or our "acquired self." Personality molds us into the person we become.

This is not new as you can see from the seventeenth century quote above from Sir William Temple. We are self-hinderers and that is mainly at the expense of our essence.

Personality is largely influenced by early life experiences, what I call in my writing, "programming."

Our parents, teachers, preachers, peers, and other authority figures contribute to this molding, including the music we listen to, the films we watch, the magazines and newspapers and books we read, the kinds of people we are attracted to, and the early culture that envelopes us.

A hamlet, village, town or city has a culture with a rigid value, belief, and bias code that is intrinsic to the way it conducts day-to-day business, although seldom articulated boldly but experienced subliminally. It is no idle claim that you can take the boy out of the country but not the country out of the boy. None of us sees life as it is. Because of this, we all wear tinted glasses when it comes to reality.

More frequently than not, we are attracted to people and situations that are not good for us, for our self-image or for our growth and development as persons. A corollary to this is that we may be attracted to the right people for us, but they change and move away from our ego ideal.

If so, it is time to leave them as fast as our bodies will allow. This can happen in a job when the culture changes due to new ownership or new management. It can happen when a community changes. And it can happen when a partner changes and is no longer honest, loyal or trustworthy. The point is, if we know ourselves, and know what leavens our spirit to enrichment, and know where we are, doing what we are doing, and realize it is no longer working, scram!

Typically, in our culture, we allow social, economic, political and emotional pressures to keep us in the prison of our ways when our minds tell us otherwise. The most unhappy and bitter people I have on occasion to know are the ones who stayed, claiming that they had no choice.

Our essence, or what we inherit or are born with, is supple and malleable and always available, but our personality can become rigid and brittle and inflexible.

Because of our essence we can keep growing all our lives, doing whatever our essence tells us we would like to do. There is no limit to growth. We often retreat from our essence to fit in, to belong, and to win recognition and appreciation. When we do this, we are increasing our entropy, which is another way of saying, our dying while still alive.

If we are sensible and discerning, we don't stay in jobs that are not reinforcing. We don't stay in relationships that are not self-enhancing. And we don't choose friends that do not increase our sense of self-respect, dignity, self-trust, self-reliance, and self-love.

We cannot love or trust or respect anyone else until we are totally self-accepting of ourselves as we are. Self-love is not self-indulgence. It is liking and respecting ourselves as we are. We are all imperfect human beings but perfectible. If we are self-negating, no matter how optimistic a mask we wear, we are self-imploding. There is no higher forgiveness than forgiving oneself for not being perfect or forgiving oneself when we stumble and take false steps.

Kant once said man is a crooked timber, and I think that pretty well describes us.

Finally, we are programmed from the outside in, but we grow from the inside out.

If you have read me over the years, you know that I have often had to do battle for these things, often taken ten steps back before realizing one step forward. And here is the irony, each time I encountered such a wall I became more self-knowing and able to be a better friend to myself. The most important friend you will ever have in life is yourself. All friendship emanates from that bonding. I hope this helps.

Be always well,

Jim