Try Something Different

Writer Douglas Adams said, "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." I sometimes wonder about my own disinclination to learn from experience. If you’re like me, you may repeat an unpleasant experience a few times before figuring out that something needs to change.

Maybe you can relate to a couple of men who were avid moose hunters. Every year they chartered a plane to take them to the Canadian backcountry. This year hunting was especially good and in a few days they each bagged a moose. They radioed for their pilot to come pick them up.

When the plane arrived, the pilot took one look at the animals and told the hunters they could not take such a heavy load along. 

“But we spent all week hunting,” they protested. “And besides, the pilot we hired last year wasn’t worried about the moose’s weight.”

After much argument, the pilot finally relented and allowed them to load the animals. The heavy plane was only airborne for a few minutes when it lost altitude and crashed into the side of a mountain. As the men struggled out of the wreckage, one hunter asked, “Where are we?” 

His friend answered, “About a mile farther than we got last year.” 

You’ve heard it said: Keep doing the same thing and you will keep getting the same results. Or repeating the same experiences.

What is not working well for you? A habit you are trying to break? A relationship with a parent or spouse or child or friend? 

What is a source of on-going frustration? Getting around to that project you keep promising to complete? Running up against the same old walls at work? 

And the big question: What needs to change?

If you don’t like the way things are turning out, what are you willing to try differently? And what if you tried it today?

-- Steve Goodier

Image: clip-library.com

We Can Get Bigger

I’ve never followed boxing closely, but I chuckle at the attitude of a high school boxing coach. Some of the new athletes were, let’s say, better suited for other activities. One of his boys worked furiously for a couple of rounds, but never connected with anything that might be construed as a punch. Nevertheless, he asked, “What do you think, Coach? Have I done him any damage?”
 
“No,” said a bewildered coach. “But keep on swinging. The draft might give him a cold.”
 
Slim as it is, that might be his only chance to win. And we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Slim to none are sometimes the best odds we can hold out for. Those were about the odds one may have given to early mountaineers who attempted Mt. Everest.
 
It took 32 years of failures for dedicated climbers to reach the top of Mt. Everest, a peak scaled so often now it hardly makes the newspaper. At over 29,000 feet of altitude, snow never melts atop the peak. Sometimes winds at the summit reach 200 miles per hour.
 
George Leigh-Mallory is first recorded as attempting the climb in 1921. On his third try, in June of 1924, he disappeared into the mist and was never seen alive again. The mountain had won. But friends of Mallory one day gazed upon a large picture of the mountain and declared, “Mt. Everest, you defeated us once. You defeated us twice. You defeated us three times. But, Mt. Everest, we shall someday defeat you because you can’t get any bigger – and we can.”
 
Eight more attempts were made on the mountain resulting in eight more failures. But finally, along came Edmund Hillary in 1953 who, along with his guide, Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit for the first time.
 
For years one attempt after another ended in discouragement. But they knew they could get bigger. It’s true, we can always get bigger. Bigger in ability, bigger in experience, bigger in wisdom, bigger in faith. We can always get bigger.
 
And besides, failure is rarely fatal. Every time we fail, we experience a unique opportunity to grow, to get bigger.
 
I am not a fan of failure. But because of it, I am bigger now than I have ever been. I’m big enough today to handle most anything that comes my way. And what’s better, I’m not done growing.
 
What I know is this: when I need to, I can always get bigger.
 
-- Steve Goodier

The Gifts of Age

I love young people. I feel the same way as Archbishop Desmond Tutu who once said, "I have the highest regard for young people… Young people are idealistic. They dream dreams about a better world."

They not only dream dreams, they have the audacity to believe in those dreams and often enough enthusiasm to nurture them into something close to real life.

I love young people. What fun I could have "back in the day" – ridiculous fun. And what hope. I was changing so quickly and it seemed I could be limited only by my dreams. If I believed it might be possible, I felt I could make it so.

There are tremendous gifts that come with youth. Like optimism and the ability to change. When anything seems possible, more than a little of it becomes possible if one only believes enough and adapts quickly.

And then we age. Please don’t hear a note of discouragement – it’s just that aging is something I am only slowly coming to embrace. It creeps up on a person like silent fog in the night; we awaken one morning in the midst of it and wonder how it got there.

We age, whether we choose to or not. And some people dread it. Singer Doris Day once said, "The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you'll grow out of it." That fear can be all too real.

Some people dread aging. And some people deny it. They try to avoid the fact that they are growing older and their bodies are in decline. One woman who had ignored her failing eyesight for too long was asked, "How long have you worn glasses?"

"Since yesterday," she replied. "As I was baking some tollhouse cookies I picked up the fly swatter and killed four chocolate chips." Some people deny aging and live as if nothing has changed.

And some people avoid it – or try to. They idealize youth and never become comfortable in their older, looser-fitting skin. One man quipped: "A few years ago my wife started to wear tight jeans. I went out and bought a convertible. Then she bleached her hair. I took a lot of multiple vitamin shots. Just a few months ago, she had a face lift and a "tummy tuck." I got an implant. And that's the way it’s been for the two of us: side by side -- growing young together."

Since age can’t really be avoided, there are those, also, who learn to laugh at it. Humor won’t chase old age away, but laughter certainly makes it more bearable.

A parody of the musical hit "My Favorite Things" is making the rounds among oldsters. The song, inaccurately attributed to Julie Andrews, reminds us that it helps to laugh at what we can’t change.

"Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string;
These are a few of my favorite things…"

You get the idea.

We may try to deny it or avoid it. We may dread it or learn to laugh at it. But unless an accident or illness robs us of the chance to grow old, we’ll all experience it.

Which is okay. For if youth has its gifts, I believe age does, too. When aged well, the idealism of youth is tempered now with solid experience. Youth’s enthusiasm is made more valuable when combined in old age with good judgment. And youth’s ability to become anything they can imagine, in old age takes the form of character; trustworthy and reliable – character so rich only decades of living could ever grow and refine it.

These are the gifts of age. They are gifts found in those who live their lives intentionally and well. They take a lifetime to acquire and they are precious beyond belief. 

-- Steve Goodier

Hard Won Wisdom

Theodore Levitt, of the Harvard Business School, said, "Experience comes from what we have done. Wisdom comes from what we have done badly." Theodore Levitt sounds like a wise person. I wonder what he’s done badly.

Based on his reasoning, I must be bursting with wisdom. Over the years, I’ve racked up an impressive number of things that haven’t gone too well.

But put another way, wisdom is what the school of life gives us with every poor report card. Wisdom is hard won, and it is often birthed in the ashes of failure.

One man tells of meeting one of the truly “wise” ones among us on a flight to Florida. He was preparing his notes for a parent-education seminar he was to conduct there. Bessie, an older woman sitting next to him, explained that she was returning home after having spent two weeks visiting her six children, 18 grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

Then she asked him what he did for a living. The man explained that he was a psychologist specializing in children. He dreaded telling her this, as he fully expected her to probe him for free professional advice during the three-hour flight. But not this wise woman. Instead, she sat back, picked up a magazine and said, “So doctor, if there’s anything you want to know, just ask me.”

Bessie’s years of parenting and grand-parenting gave her what no professional degrees could – it gave her hard won wisdom. Much of what she knew about children could only be learned through experience, including experiences of failure.

I really don’t worry about the things I’ve done badly. If I paid attention to what went wrong and why, then even my most spectacular failures gave something priceless back – they taught valuable lessons. Sometimes wisdom can’t be gotten any other way.

-- Steve Goodier


Image by flickr.com/Edith Maracle