Now a Word from our Sponsor: Dare to Dream

Something happened when I was a child. I stopped dreaming.

There was something about the way I was brought up, and the way I reacted to my upbringing, that created a hapless young man with no idea what he wanted out of life. When asked as a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’d respond “A doctor or a scientist,” quickly checking my mom’s reaction to make sure that I had answered properly. She liked these two professions, so that was my story and I stuck to it for many years.

I had music as an avocation throughout my youth. I started in a church choir in early childhood, picked up the guitar at about 12, and continued singing, playing and composing music well into my college years. Then I took it too far.

I got an offer to travel with an “Up With People”-style gospel singing group when I got out of high school. After a significant fight with my parents, at the age of 18 I decided to go. My mom pursed her lips at me for years over that decision. What happened to being a doctor or a scientist?

Worse, when I returned from that enlightening year, I dared to dream of embarking on a music ministry. I had been encouraged by the music director of that group – he said I had a natural affinity for music. That was all the encouragement I needed – impressionable youth that I was. So after a couple of semesters of generic calculus and science curricula, I announced to my family that I was changing my major to, of all things, Music. My mom’s lips pursed audibly, they snapped shut so fast. She was not happy.

I did pretty well in music. I was a vocalist with a specialization in composition, and my compositions were featured in a couple of recitals. But the horror of stage fright (which somehow did not abate even after a year-long national tour with a fairly renowned singing group) made it clear that I didn’t want to pursue that career any further.

In the meantime, depression had begun to sink in. In an attempt to find relief from the gnawing disease that was robbing my satisfaction with life, I started seeing a therapist. He suggested that I might be good at being a therapist. That, it turns out again, was all the encouragement I needed. I promptly and enthusiastically changed my major to Psychology.

My mom blew a gasket. She had finally resigned herself to my life of obscurity as a poor musician (and had finally been impressed by my meager success in that arena), but the thought of my deteriorating further into a career of psychology somehow broke the camel’s back. Whatever will become of your music? she whined.

In the meantime, I had begun working as a bookkeeper in a mail order company to put myself through school. It was fun work for me – I had always enjoyed the statistical part of psychological experimentation better than the nether world of psychoanalysis anyway. And my boss said I was a natural as an accountant. That, it turns out yet again, was all the encouragement I needed – I was off again, this time to school in accounting.

Well, at least this was business, my mom apparently reasoned, so she didn’t kvetch with such vehemence any more. And in the meantime, my good grades and diverse coursework in college had earned me a Phi Beta Kappa key, and a Summa Cum Laude degree. My mom, mollified, began to see me progress as a financial analyst and accountant. Soon I was Assistant to the Controller – then Marketing Manager! Then Inventory Planning Director! I was on the go!

Then I quit my job at the mail order company because it was too stressful. I began a six-year nearly fruitless search for a nonprofit that would hire me, deciding I wanted to do something more meaningful than hawking men’s clothing via catalog. I worked at a couple of nonprofits, including a church for eight years. But I never made enough to save any money.

Then I got a job as an Accounting Manager at an engineering services company. In two years I was the Controller! My mom, finally impressed with my success, passed away while I was at that job. At least she died happy (although she never was fully convinced that I was eating enough vegetables, and frequently stated as much).

The final blow to my career, though, was my last job, as a Controller for a defense contractor. As I’ve said, that job left me physically depleted and sick. Thank god my sainted mom died before I quit THAT job. Her head would have imploded!

Have you sensed a theme? Well, now with no mother to disapprove of my decisions (except for the nagging echo of her voice in my mind) I was suddenly thrust into being the captain of my own fate, with no one to suggest any affinities for me to follow. Whatever shall I do? All I know now is accounting and financial analysis.

Here’s the point: Even though I was clearly making my own decisions all along, they were not based on my dreams. They were based on the preferences, suggestions, and observations of other people. I was clearly a man with a lot of promise, but absolutely no internal compass whatsoever.

I mourn at the thought of myself as a child, manipulated by my situation and naïve childish decisions to forego any semblance of real, self-directed dreams. And now, at the ripe age of 53, I have tasked myself to put a “WHAT” with my “WHY.” So I have to learn a whole new skill-set – I have to learn how to dream.

Fortunately, there are resources. Did you know that there are actually certified “dream coaches”? I didn’t. Now I do. One I am following with interest is Marcia Wieder. Check out that link to her free e-book offer. These are some amazing resources.

I will share more about my process of learning to dream in future posts. Stay tuned!

Mission Improbable Part 9: My WHY

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, and I’ll be honest: I ran into a brick wall. I started writing this entry in my blog, entitled “My WHY.” The brick wall: I didn’t KNOW why.

Let me explain. All of the personal development literature I have studied points to the central importance of having a “Burning Desire.” In the life-changing book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says:

“Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining the state of mind know as a BURNING DESIRE TO WIN, essential to success.”

We must know what we’re working for, and why we’re working for it. And we must have a burning desire for this goal that is sufficient to keep us moving toward it.

Here’s the problem: Becoming wealthy, growing as a person, becoming large enough to master wealth – these things are difficult and take a LOT of patience and effort. Furthermore, the path to wealth and self-mastery is uneven and rocky. Some days it all seems to come together – the path is smooth and the walking is easy. But on other days the path is difficult and covered with obstructions. On these days, effort and patience are taxed to the limit, and discouragement and despair are tempting companions.

It is on these dark days that the driving power of one’s “WHY” comes into play. Unless I have a burning desire to achieve my “WHY,” I won’t find within myself the motivation to stay the course. This is why so many people fail to achieve their goals: They have not brought to their goals a burning desire sufficient to persist through all obstacles, and end up quitting in discouragement before their goals are achieved.

The word “courage” is derived from the Latin word for “heart.” Unless our heart (our passion) is deeply wedded to our desires, we will by definition be “discouraged,” and will not be sufficiently compelled to keep going when the going gets rough.

I recently heard a talk by Darin Kidd, an incredibly successful network marketer. He spoke of his “WHY.” He tells a moving story about a time when his daughter was young, and they had been saving change in a piggy bank toward a trip to Disney World for her. One day, he and his wife were so strapped financially that they had to break open the piggy bank to find quarters to buy milk. While they were doing this, his daughter entered the room, saw what they were doing, and burst into tears.

This demoralizing image haunted him during the early years of his network marketing career. He resolved with deep passion that he would never have to disappoint his daughter that way again. Whenever a prospect said “No,” he’d remember his daughter’s tears, and it would propel him to the next prospect. Whenever a business deal fell through, he’d remember how he felt rooting around on the floor looking for quarters in the shattered remains of that piggy bank, and this profound memory would take him to the next prospect. Now THAT’S a “WHY” with some POWER.

My dilemma: I didn’t have a “WHY” with that much power. I’m not a family man. My tabby cat, April, might enjoy living in the lap of luxury, but her needs are simple. She wouldn’t mind at all if I broke her piggy bank to raid it for quarters to buy cat food, as long as she got the cat food.

So what’s a confirmed bachelor to do? What drives ME? Some people would find such a question easy, but I assure you, this was not easy for me to articulate – certainly not in a way that would provide the necessary courage and motivation to endure the rocky road ahead.

I thought about the things I want in life. Actually, my needs are almost as simple as my cat’s. What captures my passion? Not possessions, beyond simple creature comforts.

I looked at the circumstances of my life. I am a 50-something guy with health problems that could turn south at any moment. For better or worse, this is a fact of life I have dealt with since I was a young man. Honestly, I can’t even believe I’m still alive. My situation is such that I’d NEVER have believed I’d hit 50 years of age. So how much longer do I have? I just don’t know. To build for some distant dream of “retirement” has NEVER been a driving force for me (even though perhaps it should have been).

I looked at my career. I had been a Controller, an accountant, a cracker-jack financial guy. I worked doggedly to build a career that was successful, with little more than native intelligence and a paltry bachelor’s degree. And I was there! But when growing health problems made it clear that this career path was just too stressful for my body to endure, I was forced at the unlovely age of 53 to quit that lucrative job and find another way to make a living. Lordy! What can I do besides accounting and financial analysis? Could a different career provide satisfaction sufficient to create that necessary burning desire? I had no idea.

Then I thought about COBRA, my 18-month stay-of-execution with respect to my health insurance. When that elapses, what will I do? Even with Obama at the helm, the United States is far from unanimous about the need for universal health care, and my situation amounts to a preexisting condition that would deny me coverage almost anywhere, certainly affordable coverage.

And I thought about people in similar circumstances – and I know of many. Some of them have been on SSA disability for years. Unable to work full time, and unable to continue disability if they make even a paltry $800 a month extra, they have watched their nest eggs dwindle to the point that they are in an eternal disability-check-to-disability-check lifestyle that precludes anything but bare essentials, and even these are difficult. One friend struggles to keep his CATS fed. Believe me, this specter haunts me.

I’ve listened to their pain as they describe the demoralization they face being in that disability/entitlement trap. This is a demoralization that I want with all of my heart to avoid, at all costs. I’ve seen what it has done to people I love, and I want to avoid that demoralization with a burning desire.

Not only that, but I’ve thought for a number of years about how people might be helped to escape this trap. It is agonizing to watch people you love trapped in despair by a system that does not allow them to escape its clutches, for fear of homelessness and even deeper ruin.

If there were some way I could avoid that trap and learn how to help others emerge from it, that could be my burning desire. So many of the programs in our country address the needs of children, but few truly address the concerns of needy adults, particularly those broken by chronic physical ailments.

I do not want to watch my body and finances deteriorate to a point that I, too, am forced to worry about having cat food for April (and maybe for myself). This vision, too common for people in my situation, I will not abide.

Darin Kidd said that whatever “WHY” we choose must empower us to say “I WILL UNTIL.” Napoleon Hill said “DESIRE BACKED BY FAITH knows no such word as impossible.” And I say that the degradation of systematically-induced poverty for those already suffering from chronic illnesses cannot be allowed to continue. I will do anything I can to avoid that eventuality for myself, and to help others consigned to such a fate. THAT, my friends, is a “WHY” I can wrap my heart around.

And I will endure any amount of disappointment, fatigue, and discouragement to avoid it. That, folks, is my “WHY.” Next: my “WHAT.”

Mission Improbable Part 8: I Am Who I'm Becoming

Having taken a look at where I came from and where it’s brought me, it is now time to shift my gaze. I certainly have been the person my parents raised, absorbing their values, habits, and experience of the world, almost by default, mostly unconsciously. It is time to release the Unconsciousness – if I’m going to have a value, habit, or experience of the world today, I want it to be shaped by my own choices, not theirs. With intentional Awareness and a Willingness to Change, the truth is that I am less the person that I have been than the person I am becoming.

A dear friend and Unitarian Universalist minister, Tom Owen-Towle, states it as follows: “[We] live more by our aspirations than by our accomplishments.” This is a profound truth, a statement of faith and courage. In fact, I fully believe that who we truly are is revealed in our aspirations, rather than in our accomplishments.

We all have the capacity to change, if we choose to. These words are revolutionary, coming from the pen of someone (me) who was once deeply mired in self-loathing, self-pity, self-absorption, and self-destructiveness. I once considered myself a hopeless case, no matter how “successful” and “effective” I appeared to others. I felt doomed to a life of being unable to accept who I was, let alone find a way to become something bigger.

But I did change, perhaps in spite of myself. And it happened through an “earthquake” in my thinking.

I have a spiritual guide whose contrarian personality naturally upsets me. He has a strong personality, and when I first met him I had qualms about him. But I was desperate for help at the time, so I surrendered to him – I decided to let someone else be right for a change.

This was a key: My way had produced nothing but utter self-destruction wrapped in an apparently successful skin. If you nicked the skin, a dark, fetid world of shame and bondage would be revealed. I spent almost all of my energy trying to preserve this fragile skin – it was exhausting. Finally, at 48 years of age, I succumbed to the obvious fact that my way was not working, and humbly asked my new spiritual guide for help.

His “help” took the form of constant mental challenges, challenges to my existing thought patterns and mental habits. He told me to write endless lists of things I was grateful for (not easy for someone with my negative attitude), and he told me to place (what were in my dark mind) patently false affirmations up on my mirror and recite them to myself: “I am lovable.” “I am worthy.” I did it grudgingly, haltingly, and completely without feeling. But I did it.

He had a peculiar habit of disagreeing with every single thing I said to him. This was at times irritating, frustrating, aggravating, and clearly unfair; most of all it was disturbing and extraordinarily uncomfortable. This was the “earthquake.” And here’s the remarkable thing: In spite of my discomfort, in spite of my fear and aggravation, I sat with him anyway, rather than leaving in a huff. I lived with the discomfort of having my world view challenged deeply and thoroughly, and the resulting mental earthquake eventually had the effect of interrupting those dark habits of thought.

Here’s how it first became apparent to me what was happening: One day I was rehearsing my litany of woes to him, simmering in a comforting, delicious soup of self-pity and shame. He said: “You are doing this to yourself. It is unnecessary to resort to shame every time you have a thought. STOP IT! Just STOP IT!”

I said to him “How can I stop it? It’s the way I think! I just think this way, and there’s no way around it.”

He pointed to a couple of bad habits I’d dropped, and said: “You dropped those; now drop Shame. STOP IT!”

It seemed impossible, but the earthquake of his words shook me up enough that his words came to mind the next time I began descending into a “shame spiral.” And here’s the remarkable part: Just that tiny bit of Awareness cast on the mental habit of shame and self-loathing revealed that Shame was a process, not an event. In other words, there was a window of time that revealed itself, during which I moved from Not-Shame to Shame. It was a rabbit hole that I myself jumped into, rather than just an event that occurred to me, unbidden.

Simply by noticing, I was able to see that there was a short period of time during which, with practice, I was able to interrupt my own decision to jump into the rabbit hole, and side-step it instead.

This was huge. It was the beginning of my understanding that I AM RESPONSIBLE for my experience of reality, the dawning realization that my decision to jump into the rabbit hole of Shame created my experience of Shame. By learning tools that shook up my own thinking (in the same way my spiritual guide shook up my thinking) I could avoid the rabbit hole altogether.

This was simple. The tools were given to me. Their application was straightforward. But I’ll be damned if it was easy. It took all of the Willingness and Awareness I could summon to interrupt my own thinking and avoid the cozy, comfortable mental habit of Shame.

What, you might ask, was the “payoff” of being so ashamed that it became my “go-to” emotion? It took me awhile to figure that out, but it wasn’t very complicated. By resorting to Shame, I allowed myself to slip into the comforting role of Victim, endlessly beleaguered by my surroundings, and – here’s the clincher – not responsible for my own situation.

It did not matter that it was a false comfort. It was simply an ancient mental process that established itself in my distant childhood, one that made it safer to exist in my dysfunctional family of origin. That it no longer really served me was irrelevant. It was a habit, and felt known. To experience anything besides Shame had become uncomfortable, and I resisted discomfort with every fiber of my being.

It was not until my set of automatic thoughts and beliefs in this area were shaken to their core that I could begin to observe the dysfunction, and learn ways to intervene. The process has taken much time and effort – it was not easy – but I can say with all my heart that the time and effort spent surrendering to my discomfort and trying something else made all the difference.

I share this entire story to say this: I thought I was irredeemable. I was wrong. I can change. It’s uncomfortable, but – stick with me now – discomfort, once my sworn enemy, has now become a dear friend.

When I am uncomfortable, it’s because I’m stepping into the unknown. Change is by definition unknown. Change is uncomfortable. But growth and maturity cannot happen without Change, and discomfort (pain) is the proof of progress. When I am uncomfortable because a mental habit has been challenged, I now know that this is the harbinger of Growth, one of my highest Values. Discomfort is to be embraced rather than avoided, and learning this simple fact has changed my way of being in the world.

And I shared this story to say this: When I bring Awareness and Willingness to Change to my situation, bright, shimmering worlds of exciting potential reveal themselves to me. The Change of personal development is never comfortable, but Oh. My. God! It is worth every bit of the time, effort, and discomfort!

So do you think you know who I am by knowing my history or my present circumstances? You’d be wrong. My history is unchangeable. My circumstances are my circumstances. But my future is limitless and defined only by the outer regions of my imagination. I Am Who I'm Becoming!

Mission Improbable Part 7: Who Am I Really? Part 2

I alluded to my mother in the last post. I’d like to elaborate a bit on our relationship in this one.

You might ask: “Why are you spending so much time in the ‘Mission Statement’ portion of your blog talking about your relationship with your parents?” The answer, for me, is in the title of this post: To create a mission statement that is wholly in line with who I am, I must know who I am. Although I am evolving and changing (sometimes haltingly, sometimes by quantum leap), I will never completely escape the upbringing that shaped my earliest experiences of life. I may decide that the values instilled do not serve me any longer (and in fact I have, in some cases), but the process of moving in another direction will always start from a clear awareness of where I began.

My mom was born in 1926, putting her at the tender age of 3 when the Great Depression hit. That Depression did not subside until her “formative” years were near an end. I believe strongly that this event colored her reality for the remainder of her days, yielding a “scarcity mentality” that suffused her existence. My dad, born in 1917, was a little bit older when the Depression hit, and his early life and formative years were relatively spared.

As I mentioned, she pushed strenuously to keep my dad at a job that was sapping his will to live so that she would have the security of his pension in her old age. But this was the point: Her scarcity mentality affected and infected her family, in ways that haunt us even today – years after her death. There is nothing overtly wrong about her penurious approach to life; of course, wastefulness is no virtue. But the constant reminder of lack served to reinforce a world view that was pessimistic, beleaguered, and subtly victimizing.

“Mommie Doris” (as I have called her in later years – think: Joan Crawford) was a strong, determined woman. She was sweet as could be, with a coquettish giggle that never failed to charm (except for me – I’ll likely share about that later). She worked for my school during my elementary education, serving as a “chaperone” on the campus, assisting the staff in maintaining order and discipline. She was a tireless volunteer for our Parent-Teachers Association. She was very involved. This was very good, of course, but it came at a price.

Of course the kids teased me. Of course they resented me when she disciplined them. This was not terrible or life-shattering though, honestly. It was simply a nuisance, as I recall.

As I said in that last post, in private my mom had an edge to her. Saving much of her sweetness to confer generously on neighbors and colleagues at the school, she reserved her deep, blue ocean of criticism and judgment for her family. This complicated my relationship with her, even as a young child before I started attending school. To my tender, sensitive mind, I came to feel that there was nothing I could do that would really please her.

That conclusion was not entirely fair. She frequently praised me for academic achievements, and for the (admittedly few) times I contributed around the house. But something about the praise seemed wrong to me, and it would be long, sad decades before I pieced it all together. I came to understand that because I was constantly focused on winning her conditional approval, I never learned how to be satisfied with myself.

My dad told my mom before they were married: “You better accept me as I am. You will never change me.” This was largely true. So she let my dad be who he was (although she had her ways of punishing him for it), and set her sights on shaping me. Let me say here as an aside: she would have vehemently disagreed with much of what follows (and, probably, much of what precedes).

Deriding his feckless machismo, and subtly shaming me when I exhibited it myself, my mom pampered me to be the soft, loving man she really wished my dad would be. She taught me to be thoughtful of others, loving and kind; and not to react violently, but to back down from every confrontation peacefully.

Compared to my dad, who was completely unapproachable, overtly derogatory, and utterly unavailable emotionally, my mom’s carefully meted love and approval taught me very quickly whose opinion in the household really mattered. My dad was a lost cause; I learned to look for love where I could get it, even if it came at a price.

Obviously, this severely complicated my relationship with my mother. I recall watching an episode of “The Simpsons” that captured it all for me: Bart discovered his school principal sitting in the waiting room of a psychologist’s office where Bart had been sent for acting up. Bart asked, “What are YOU doing here, Mr. Skinner?” to which he replied, “Well, I have some issues to work through with respect to my Smother – I mean, Mother.” Yesiree, Mr. Skinner, complicated.

The combined action of her conditional love and subtle manipulation made it much more difficult to work through her legacy than that of my father, whose complete unavailability made him less “relevant.” My mom’s love felt smothering, emotionally incestuous, expectation-driven, absolutely necessary, and always like a carrot dangling at the end of a stick, slightly out of my reach.

It was not until well into my adulthood that I was able to even BEGIN understanding how I felt about her, and I still have lingering “issues.” To this day, the sound of a woman giggling coquettishly cuts through me like a knife (perhaps this is one of the many reasons why the idea of a Sarah Palin vice presidency is so abhorrent to me). All of the ghosts are not cleared out of this closet.

And I have NOT received a “postcard” from my mom since her death. However, the clear good in her legacy remains with me: My dad had only anger as a tool; through my mom’s teaching, however, I learned the tools of love, kindness, and thoughtfulness of others. And I strongly believe that her persistent push for excellence has fueled my growth process over the last six years in particular. She may even be smiling on me now in a way that she didn’t have access to when she was living. Being in a much larger territory since her death, perhaps now she has healed from the scarcity consciousness that crippled her in this life.

I am grateful for the lessons I learned from BOTH of my parents. From my dad I learned (in a roundabout way) a zest for adventurous life and a profound and essential sense of humor; from my mom I learned that I did not have to wield a hammer every time I make a point. While I frequently have abused the good tools both of them put at my feet (and picked up a few of their tools that didn’t suit me), at least I learned that tools exist. And now that I have intentionally collected a whole arsenal of tools with which to negotiate life, their good tools fit my new toolkit nicely. As long as I don’t feel compelled to use a hammer when a screwdriver is called for (I recall here my dad’s story about initially using nails for his sawhorses instead of screws), I find I can handle most of the challenges that face me today with reasonable equanimity.

I am who I am largely because of the upbringing I received from my mom and my dad. This is a fact of life. However, I am not limited by their legacy, as long as I keep an open heart and mind.

Next: I am who I am becoming.

Mission Improbable Part 6: Who Am I, Really?

As I trolled the Internet looking for opportunities, I was like a “catch and release” fisherman: I ordered “opportunity” packages, and after a quick look frequently tossed them back like fish that were too small. Sadly, I was less selective than the average fisherman – I kept a few of the “stingrays.” That’s why I don’t advocate doing what I did, except that it opened my mind to opportunities, and I began picturing myself being successful at them.

I started life in a lower middle class home, with what I thought was a pretty typical family. My mom was very loving (although let’s just say that she had an edge to her in private), and my dad fancied himself a rugged individualist, pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. I know now that he felt hindered by his family, and wished he could strike out on his own adventurously. But the day-to-day reality of bills to pay and mouths to feed wore heavily upon him.

My mom was very security-oriented, and when my dad talked about leaving his stable job to find better work elsewhere, she rebelled – her lips pursed and her brow knitted furiously. She wanted that pension, which my dad could only earn if he stayed in one job forever. So, unfortunately for my dad, he stayed in the same job his entire career, working year after year in a job that disgusted him, gazing longingly at the want ads, and wishing he could do something else. I didn’t have much sympathy for him at the time, but I certainly do now.

My mom eventually got that pension she wanted so badly, so she was “happy” – but the cost was dear: She had to live with an angry, bitter, resentful husk of man for nearly fifty years to get it.

Of course, the world has changed dramatically since then. Now, life-long jobs with pensions are almost unheard of, and “job shopping” (as he called it) is the norm. The variety he longed for is a basic fact of life now, and the security my mom longed for is long gone.

So that’s the primal “soup” I emerged from. I used to think I was more like my mom than my dad, and grateful for that. I didn’t want to be like the angry, bitter man who raised me. But now I understand things a little bit better, and have come to see that somehow life has arranged to bring the best qualities of each of these frustrated, broken people to life within me: I have the softness of heart and ability to love that my mom possessed, as well as the strength and humor that my dad embodied.

I recently saw an essay that my dad (who died back in 1989) wrote back in the late 1980s. In his retirement, it turns out he had been “blogging” (or at least the late 1980s equivalent of blogging) about his life, perhaps with a goal of publishing. His essays were about being a handyman by necessity, driven by the requirement of upkeep on a home for his family. As I read that essay, I was struck by how similar our “voices” are. He has the same sense of humor that I have!

Following is a quote from that “blog” entry. He was talking about the first time he constructed sawhorses, using two-by-fours and metal braces he bought at a hardware store:

“I tried nails first, but the horses were shaky, ergo the screws. I still have the brackets. I recently replaced the bargain two-by-fours. After twenty-odd years, they were growing splinters like hair. Mean hair, that is.”

I laughed when I read this, and it hit me: The sense of humor that is native to me, that has brought me safely through all sorts of crises over the years, was an inheritance from my dad! A man I barely knew, whom I resented fiercely, and who possessed no qualities I thought I wanted, was the source of one of my finest character traits! This was a major eye-opener.

As I thought about it, I realized something even more powerful: I am now living the life of HIS dreams! I am single and unattached (for better or worse), have no children, and am striking out on an adventure of self-realization and personal fulfillment that is Quixotic and courageous! I am blogging about it, and “published” (if only on the web), and I bring to it the same zest for life and love of the unknown that propelled my dad. The difference: I am getting to live this life, while he only got to dream about it.

Interestingly, a week before I read the essay my dad wrote, I received a postcard in the mail. It was addressed to someone else (at my address), a name I’ve never seen before. It was a picture of Hawaii and had the single word “Aloha!” on the face. The first word that jumped into my mind, unbidden, was “Paradise” – I even said it aloud. I turned the card over, and it said simply, “COURAGE!” and was signed “Dad.”

I don’t know who the addressee was, but I know who the message was intended for. The seething anger and resentment I had nursed for someone who demeaned me as long as I knew him melted into a warm affection for the source of some of my finest qualities.

My heart aches for the pain my dad endured, working a job he loathed for thirty-five years because he felt trapped by a family that treated him only with disdain (and vice versa). Perhaps in living his legacy I am giving shape to his dreams in a way that is extremely satisfying to him now.

Here’s to you, dad, wherever you are!

Mission Improbable Part 5: Education, Schmeducation

Robert Kiyosaki defines an Asset as something that is a “source” of Cash. He distinguishes it from Liabilities, which are a source of Expenses (and thus a “use” of Cash). So a rental property that produces rent income every month is an Asset, but a family home, which requires upkeep but produces no Cash is a Liability. Yes, your family home, often considered the bedrock of one’s financial future, is a Liability!

One needs to look no further than the current real estate crisis to understand why. It is true that if the value of one’s family home is appreciating, it can be sold for a profit and generates Cash. This would appear to make it an Asset. But across the country the “equity” value of this perceived Asset has been mortgaged and re-mortgaged to a fair-thee-well in the last few years, and the resulting glut of new mortgages, often granted to households that were unable even to make the first payment, is what triggered the downfall of the financial giants you are reading about in the news. If the family home were an Asset, it would have been reliably generating Cash rather than requiring Cash to sustain it. The “bedrock” of many people’s financial future turned out to be sandstone.

Rental property is only one kind of Asset, one that’s easy to wrap the brain around – it’s easy to understand how rental properties generate Cash. A business is another such Asset - a service or product sold for a profit provides Cash, and the business is as such an Asset.

But Kiyosaki states that the most valuable asset one can obtain is financial education. Education an Asset? But doesn’t Education cost money, making it a Liability? Yes, at first glance. But a sound financial education can position a person to recognize financial opportunities. Taking advantage of such opportunities can generate income for decades, far exceeding the initial Cash outlay for the education that made it possible. Education is an Asset, if it is geared to recognizing financial opportunities.

As an accountant, you’d think that I’d had more than enough financial education to be a success. I can read a Balance Sheet and an Income Statement. I understand the Accounting Equation: Assets minus Liabilities equals Owner's Equity! I know how to spot financial problems and figure out the sources of those problems so that they can be corrected before profit is impacted.

But my Accounting education taught me how to monitor and evaluate Wealth – NOT how to attain it. This is a key quality that distinguishes an Entrepreneur from his or her financial Controller – the ability to spot financial opportunities and boldly seize them. And it was a key ingredient missing from my education and career.

So I left my job back in February, and was soon aware that I’d never be able to return to the grueling, stressful career that I had tended and nurtured for nearly thirty years. And where had it gotten me? I had some cash in the bank, but no real understanding of investments, no way to use that cash in ways that would build wealth and allow me to escape the career that had been destroying my health. So I decided to embark on a program of real, financial education.

Most schools teach people how to be employees. Think about it: An MBA – that cherished prize of people who want to embark on a profitable career in business, often prepares its recipient for nothing more than a cubicle farm.

Even doctors in our age, once considered the epitome of financial success, have succumbed to employee mentality, often working for hospitals and HMOs in overworked, underpaid, and horrendously stressful conditions. Combine that with a right-out-of-college debt well in excess of $100,000, and it makes for a pretty miserable career choice for all but a few select specialties.

There is nothing wrong with being an employee. But I’ve decided the whole financial paradigm of employment is wrong, and will not provide sustainable income in the current global economy.

The trouble with employment? You work once and get paid once. It is LINEAR income. Reasonable pay for an honest day’s work. What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, linear income will pay the bills, but only the highest linear income (think CEOs) can provide a truly secure financial framework. Look at the news: CEOs get paid generous, contractual bonuses for destroying companies these days! When was the last time an employee besides a top manager got such a parachute?

But here’s what’s even more alarming about my situation right now: What’s a guy with training in Accounting and a successful twenty-five year background as a financial analyst and Controller, with not even a CPA or MBA, supposed to do in an environment where CPAs and MBAs are now a dime a dozen? In my city, that would mean preparing myself for an extended period of unemployment, likely followed by an extended period of underemployment.

What’s a guy to do? In my case, I began educating myself about opportunities. I had to turn off the risk-aversive accountant inside of me, ignore the advice of my CPA and the tsk-tsking of my attorney, and start looking at new earning paradigms.

I’ve heard it said: Profits are better than Wages. The meaning: Owning your own business is preferable to employment. That’s great. But I’m no Entrepreneur – I’ve only been trained to keep an eye on other people’s money. What kind of business would work for me?

I started desperately trolling the Internet for investment and business opportunities. This was the period of terror I described in an earlier post. Fueled by the image of that child in Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad who observed his environment and spotted opportunities to earn money, I began watching – god help me – infomercials and ordering materials about possible Internet businesses. I took advantage of coaching opportunities offered by some of these programs. I learned a great deal about the kinds of businesses and investments that are available out there.

Let me be blunt: I do not recommend that ANYONE do what I have done here. My fear-based foray into “financial education” was scattered and random - like a shotgun - and pretty expensive. I am ashamed to say that I fell prey on occasion to the unholy Nemesis of Reason: Advertising Copywriters! Curious about any and all wealth-building programs that purported to “work,” I invested in a few dogs. And not cute, fluffy ones – mean, snarling dogs that would have chewed my throat out if I’d let go of the leash for a second.

But it gave me an eye to the opportunities that are everywhere. And I began to affirm that I deserved to benefit from one of the good ones. Practicing this affirmation, I just kept looking and learning until I found some things that fit. In retrospect, I don’t think I would have done anything differently (except for picking the "dogs" a little more carefully!), and I’m positioned now for an entirely different life. More about that in the next post!

Now a Word from Our Sponsor: Murders and Acquisitions 101

As I admitted in a previous post, my education over the last six months has been a bit scattered. The reason: Pretty quickly after I left my last soul-draining job, I knew with a certainty that I could never return to that business. I found myself, at the age of 52, trying desperately to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up, only to realize that I’m already too old not to already be grown up! That, I’m afraid, threw me for a short while into a bit of a terror, and caused me to look in lots of directions simultaneously.

I’ll discuss some upsides to this educational approach as well as what I’m sure are the pretty obvious downsides, in a future post.

Previously, I was a controller for a mid-size company that had been purchased by a large company. This is not the first time I have had such a job, in fact the job before this one was almost identical in situation, activity, and scope. And I had actually made a sort of specialty out of taking mid-size businesses through acquisitions, helping them adapt to the new operating environment, modifying their accounting systems and reporting to make them compliant, and implementing new policies and procedures. Having gone through this a number of times, I have noticed a very persistent pattern, and it goes like this:

A mid-sized company has through dedication and hard work created for itself a track record of success and a bright future. It is very profitable. It has a wonderful corporate culture, is actually like a large, extended family. They have parties, share their personal lives, and see each other through dating crises, marriages, pregnancies, divorces, and family deaths. Home away from home.

Then, the mid-sized company is purchased by a large company, usually in an effort for the large company to “diversify.” The mid-sized company, because of its success and bright future, is purchased for top dollar by the acquiring company.The former owners are very happy, and sometimes go away, or are worked into the new top management team for the acquired company.

The new parent company’s financial people descend on the mid-sized company, auditing, evaluating, and changing everything. They force the smaller company to wrangle their accounting and program reports to fit into the scheme of the larger company. Because the smaller company is an attempt to “diversify,” their business is by definition different from the parent’s core business. This requires the smaller company to chop its numbers into odd, meaningless pieces simply to get them to fit into the new required format. Simultaneously, they struggle to maintain their previous, meaningful accounting and program reports because these actually help the management understand the business properly. This requires the financial staff to produce double the reporting, including a set that is demonstrably meaningless. Honestly, this is not my own bitterness speaking – I’ve watched this play out time after time.

Then, because the large company wants to reduce their own expenses and improve their rates, they begin allocating a portion of those expenses to the smaller company as “corporate allocations.” Because the smaller company has shown a history of inordinately large profits, the larger company applies these allocations with an increasingly heavy hand. In short order, the allocations require the smaller company to raise their prices to the customer in order to cover the additional layer of expenses. This makes them considerably less competitive on new business, and the struggle to maintain growth and retain customer base begins.

The last company I worked for was a defense contractor, and the smaller business had benefited from government-instituted “small business set-asides” prior to their acquisition, a boost given by the government to promote the development of small domestic suppliers. Being acquired by a large company, however, the smaller company no longer qualified for these set-asides, and they lost an important competitive edge. This, too, affected their success in the marketplace.

In the meantime, the larger company is seen by the employees of the smaller company as a bit of a nuisance, but nothing more (except for the accounting and human resource departments, which struggle to keep up with considerable changes without impacting the employees any more than necessary). However, the new corporate culture begins to seep into the smaller company: Rising costs make it increasingly difficult to maintain the regular parties and fun events that maintained esprit de corps. Employee benefits change, impacting the employees and their families in ways both large and small, almost always at least troubling. Bonuses begin a steady downward trend, until they are based in large part on Corporate performance standards rather than those of the smaller company – in other words, unless the parent has a good year, nobody gets a meaningful bonus. And further, they are often skewed toward top management in spite of management's best efforts in the interest of the employees,. Even tiny holiday bonuses, which the employees had come to rely on, begin to disappear in the struggle to maintain price competitiveness.

The result is a growing dark cloud over the offices of the smaller company. Bitterness increases, and the management of the smaller company struggles to maintain even paltry incentives for its employees. At this point, usually the most talented employees begin resigning, often lured away by competitors and customers. The business base eventually deteriorates, raising the concerns of the parent company, and further stressing pricing. That’s when the hideous specter of “reorganization” begins.

The parent company, compelled to rework this marginal business into their incompatible business structure (and motivated by the high price they paid for the smaller business in the first place), begins moving the smaller company into various positions within the larger framework. They move from business line to business line, each time adding new layers of allocations and often requiring that their accounting information be presented in new and even less meaningful ways to fit the new division they have been placed in. Besides the disarray this causes the accounting department, often the human resources department finds itself in the hapless position of changing employee benefits again and again to fit the new organizations.

I’ve seen the “end game” play out in three different ways: Either the parent company puts the smaller company on the block to sell it for whatever they can salvage; or they chop it into sometimes minuscule and meaningless pieces, fitting these arbitrary chunks into existing businesses that are as close as possible to their trade; or they are consumed by the Borg and lose any semblance of their former identity. Sometimes, if it is sold to a suitable buyer, this can result in a return to some semblance of normalcy. If it is assimilated entirely, that, too, can be okay – although it has by this point lost all of its “charm.” But the endless rounds of reorganization rarely go well for either the business, the customers, or for the remaining employees.

In the meantime, the halls of the smaller company are dark and joyless due to attrition and discouragement. Empty offices scold the remaining employees, making them feel like failures for not have left the sinking ship early in the game. Often the smaller company’s management team is removed or changed, eliminating what was once a central focus of employee motivation and loyalty. This is a dreary, thankless, demoralizing process, and I have sat through this “end game” twice to completion – and that’s why I simply can’t go back.

Please note: Every bit of the above analysis is my humble opinion. I am sure that viewed from another perspective the process looked very different, and perceived (or assumed) motivations may not been the real motivations for what transpired. Nevertheless, it is cathartic to put this process as I have observed it into writing. Honestly, it’s not that the large company is an “evil empire” – they’re just trying to do the best they can to assure long-term stockholder value and a firm foundation for the future. The problem is that they often do this while instituting short-sighted, bottom-line policies that quickly undermine what they’ve acquired. They’re somewhat like a child who captures a bug in a bottle, and “loves” it to death.

In the next post, I’ll discuss the range of my recent education, and why I believe my “shotgun” approach was helpful for me (and the price I’m paying for it).