THINK AND GROW UP!

THINK AND GROW UP!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 11, 2009

One of the many reasons we’re in an economic downturn is because of excess. We’ve operated for more than a generation as if there were no limits to our expectations or no consequences to our actions.

No matter what we did there was always a safe landing. Executives had their golden parachutes, autoworkers, their union, and others could withdraw from their 401-K’s with penalty, of course, but not to worry for the stock market would continue to rise. There is no downside to an affluent society.

That myth was pricked in 2008 with all the air let out of our inflated egos and the hubris that drove it. We believed we could do anything without consequences.

In my long life I’ve encountered few grown ups because they didn’t have to be. People like me born in the 1930s in the era of the Great Depression had no choice but to grow up. Here is what has worked for me:

1. DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND THE MONEY WILL FOLLOW. I started out as a chemist because I was trained as a chemist. My professors in college said I had a talent for writing and didn’t belong in science, but I stayed in science because I feared I couldn’t make a living otherwise.

As an industrial chemist, I lacked the mechanical aptitude required for experiments, but liked chemical theory. I applied for and won a fellowship to pursue theoretical chemistry, only to realize the stipend would not be enough for my wife and two babies.

So, in the short term, I became a chemical sales engineer discovering I had a talent for selling. This found me rapidly advancing in the company with graduate school permanently on hold.

Only in my early thirties, I was traveling the world as an international executive landing in South Africa, where I facilitated the formation of a new company. It was the era of Afrikaner apartheid, which caused me to take a hard look at my life. I resigned and retired for the first time at age thirty-five.

After a two-year sabbatical in which I read books in psychology and philosophy, religion and anthropology, and wrote CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall 1970), I went back to school for six years, year around, consulting on the side to earn a Ph.D. in organization and industrial psychology.

Entering the corporate world again, I joined a high tech company as an organizational development (OD) psychologist, rising again to a senior executive landing in Brussels, Belgium. There I worked with national subsidiaries as the European Economic Community was taking hold.

At the end of that assignment, I retired again, now in my fifties, and wrote WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (The Delta Group 1990).

Today, now in my seventies, I still write books, conduct seminars, and give keynote addresses having taken a rather circuitous route to doing what I love. This is true of most people who do what they love and the reason I share it with you here.

2. BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND. To have a friend you must be a friend starting with yourself. We are programmed to this simple equation:

Belief + Belonging = Behavior

The problem with belief and belonging is that it is often in support of second hand beliefs and other people's criteria and not our own. Behavior is predicated on what others think of us rather than what we think of ourselves, and not necessarily on what is in our own best interests or based on our experience.

If we are our own best friend, we are in relationships and work that esteems us. We are guided by self-interests in a culture, climate and company that nourish our maturity and growth. Too often we stay in life situations that diminish us because we are afraid of what others might think, failing to listen to our own hearts.

Another equation is this:

Risk + Pain = Consequences

Consequences may be positive or negative, but they are equally important as learning experiences. As long as we are our own best friend, we will do what is in our best interest.

3. KEEP HOLD OF YOUR MONITOR AND MORAL COMPASS. With a moral compass, you are in control, a happy camper with the confidence of self-direction.

We are often programmed to meet the needs of the organization at the expense of our own. An organization attempts to keep peace, harmony and stability by controlling human variables. If this is congruent with our values, beliefs, interests and expectations, it is one thing. It is quite another matter if it is not. Being in the wrong place can be stultifying, delimiting, frustrating and cause unnecessary anxiety. A working moral compass alerts us to this fact.

There is also implicit pressure to keep people in place in the pecking order. Today everyone is said to need a college education when many college graduates are without aptitude or attitude to do anything. Professionalism dominates whereas amateurs have made the greatest breakthroughs through time because they are apt to take the greatest risks.

Life is about making choices and taking risks. With a healthy moral compass, those choices and risks will be in our best interest, and by extension in society’s as well.

Choices are driven by expectations. Notice people of influence find their children moving into positions of influence. It is even evident in sport. Currently, the Molina brothers (Bengie, Jose and Yader) are all Major League catchers in baseball. The chances of a boy making it in this sport are less than one in 100,000, yet these three brothers have made it to the big leagues and have stayed where the average salary is $2.5 million a year. Some 350 brothers have been MLB players.

Achievement is predicated on expectations, belief, discipline, sacrifice and dedication, all aspects of a functioning moral compass and directional monitor.

With an internal monitor, the emphasis is on the process not the outcome. The outcome takes care of itself if we dig deep into ourselves, and show the patience and fortitude to complete the task one-step-at-a-time. This is how dreams are realized.

Should we compare and compete being obsessed with the success of others, we could get lost in imitation and lose our way. The moral compass and direction finder keeps us on course.

I come from lower middle class Irish American Roman Catholic people with only one uncle slipping through the crack to attain a Ph.D. in economics and psychology, and then successfully pursuing an academic career. He became my model and mentor and gave me permission through his achievements to elevate my expectations for myself. A reference model breathes encouragement into our soul.

Imagine how African American children must feel today seeing Barak Obama President of the United States. He is a man who rose from a broken home and mix race parents to develop his mind showing the tenacity of spirit to realize his vision.

4. PLEASE YOURSELF FIRST AND YOU WILL BE USEFUL TO OTHERS. I’ve never been a sacrificial lamb that would exploit myself to the advantage of others. To do for others what they best do for themselves only weakens their resolve and diminishes them as persons, but it also weakens us in the process.

You cannot be strong, resolute and confident if you do not have a sense of your own worth and authentic self.

The inclination is to be all things to all people ending up being nothing to everyone, including ourselves. Without self-respect, it is impossible to genuinely respect others; without self-acceptance it is impossible to see the flaws and foibles in others, or to see and accept them in ourselves. Tolerance is a function of self-acceptance.

5. DON’T OWN OTHER PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS. We all have problems and we all have a need to share them with an empathic ear to get them out of our head so we can see them for what they are.

The moment we give advice, money, or help in any form, however, we are placing ourselves in jeopardy. We are working our way into making other people's problems our own, and creating a counterdependent relationship. This can become extremely toxic and debilitating for both parties.

More than a year ago, a young family I know with recently born twin boys let a high school classmate stay with them "for a week" until he got back on his feet. He has never left. He has disrupted the family, turned the husband against the wife and blanketed the children in constant tension. This "guest" spends his leisure time drinking and wallowing in reminiscent with his obliging host.

Now, they don’t know how to get rid of him, and it is doubtful if the marriage will survive. Tens of thousands of people reading this can relate to variations of this theme.

In the most intimate of relationships, when a person shames himself, and asks for forgiveness, does nothing to change behavior, but expects us to share his burden of guilt, and then to carry the consequences of his transgressions, we are owning his problem, a problem we cannot solve, and a problem that will likely exacerbate and be repeated ad infinitum.

6. NEVER BE AFRAID TO SAY “NO!” As my children can attest, I’ve never been afraid to say “no” nor have I been afraid to say “no” when colleagues have used it as an implicit threat, implying if I didn’t say “yes” it would be career limiting.

If you have a healthy moral compass and self-monitor, you will not get caught in this no escape situation where only a “yes” suffices to keep the peace.

Implicit in the need to say “yes” is the need to be seen as a hearty fellow well met, a good parent, good person, an obliging colleague, and a team player. That is all right providing it is not at the expense of our self-respect and self-preservation.

Should a person show contempt for you once you say “no,” then that person never had genuine regard for you in the first place. He intended to use you for his purposes irrespective of your own.

When I was a young chemical sales engineer, and accounted for 80 percent of the new business in a district sales force of eight, the most veteran salesman called me, and said, “You can buy my window air conditioner.” I said, “I don’t want it.” He countered, “Why not, you’re making all the money?” In other words, I was obliged to buy his used air conditioner because I could afford it. I didn’t buy it, and he seldom spoke to me again, which was to be expected.

7. BE A STUDENT OF WHAT YOU DO. This means doing the duty and the diligence to learn as much as your faculties will allow. I’ve done this and taken pride in acquiring knowledge but have learned a powerful lesson:

Never punish others with what you know but use it to teach, guide, coach and mentor them to lift them off their bottom and on to their own two feet.

You should never carry others, or do the heavy lifting of their work. That is their burden and not yours. You role is to get them vertical so they can move off the dime under their own power.

When I was in high school where I was a student-athlete, and would sit in the gym while my teammates roam the campus at lunchtime, and help students with word problems in algebra and trigonometry, I discovered that it made me a better student so it was a self-interested strategy. Often, in my university days, students helped me in the same way with me marveling at what good teachers they were.

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This is how I see thinking and growing up, but with a caveat. My children were born in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. They have not had it easy. They are all still struggling. They have not grown up.

They have been more influenced by their peers than by me. Their peers have come from homes in which the parents, as a rule, came from money and never had to grow up. These parents smoked and drank and partied, whereas I have never been similarly inclined. My children got into a crowd that took it as their right to do as they please and to behave as if there were no tomorrow.

These parents that played hard and worked hard and burned the candle at both ends are not with us anymore, whereas I am in my seventies and in good health. I walk four miles four or five times a week, eat healthily, maintain a stable weight, and live the life I have chosen, reading, writing, and consulting with a happy relationship with my wife of twenty-three years.

I have had an easy life with many careers: professional, academic, consulting, executive, and publishing. It has been an easy life because I have been guided by my moral compass and have lived consistent with its demands.

My parents installed this monitor in me when I was quite young. It has guided me to know where I was, and where I was going. It has given me an understanding of my options and the lay of the land.

It hasn’t been a journey without bumps in the road, or unanticipated potholes. I have taken false steps, but have never lost my focus of effectively utilizing my inherent ability, recognizing I was the son of an Irish Roman Catholic brakeman on the railroad with a seventh grade education. He once said, “The day you deny that, Jimmy, you won’t know who you are, and everyone will own you.” I’ve worked hard to avoid that possibility.

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