Journal Notes from the Summer of '93

In early 1993, I pitched a book idea to Thomas Nelson Publishing and a movie concept to a producer on the set of Iron Will, and within a month both offered me opportunities to move forward.

While working full-time, I created a tight eight-month plan with two critical deadlines: August 1 for the book and October 1 the screenplay. But then my wife Susie threw me a curveball. She'd had enough of living in town and wanted us to go house-hunting so we could move to the country that year. To do all three felt like more than I could handle. I countered with this: she could go house hunting with a friend and after August 1 I would go see what they found. 

Sure enough, she brought me to look at a house on August 2, and by the end of the week we were owners of 8+ acres, a house and two garages--his and hers. By October we moved in and the screenplay was completed as well. 

Here are a few select entries from my journal that summer.

Seeds / Journal Notes

Proverbs 17:3

The crucible is for silver,

the furnace for gold.

The Lord tries hearts.

 

D.H. writes of our tendency as grapes to complain about the instruments God chooses when crushing us to produce holy wine.

June 23, 1993

 

Monday Ralph had a dream that I brought him two Bibles. Afterwards he said, “Who gave me this dream?”  I suggested that when he reads the Bibles, he’ll find out.

June 30, 1993

 

We remember our dreams to our own peril.    
June 30, 1993

 

At root I am depressed by the thought that I am not going to “make it” as a writer. That is, that I do not have the drive, the “neurotic passion” that is sufficient to make it.  That is, I allow other things to distract me, diffuse my energy, divert me from my course. I am not writing every day, every night.  And even though I am far more productive than my peers, it seems that I create illusions that give the impression that I am much more than I am. Do I have what it takes? Or am I just a small peeper making big noises that carry with the wind?

July 2, 1993

 

Our lives are written in time like words upon a scroll, with none of it to be erased.

July 3, 1993

 

I have labored these many years to produce a body of work. Today it seems so small… with so many stories yet to tell.  
July 5, 1993

  

There were four of us, brothers… till the four winds scattered us ‘cross the wild unwatered plains while the seeds of future dreams are nourished by private wells.

July 17, 1997

Living with Intentionality

Suppose we are interested in learning a new language. My son took an interest in Russian after we had gone to the Spy Museum in Washington one summer. Because of my interest in French literature, I took an interest in learning French. One thing you quickly learn with languages like French or Russian—and I suspect Chinese or Navajo—is that you do not just “pick it up.” One must make a deliberate decision and make a commitment to the task. You decide, Yes, I will take whatever steps are necessary to achieve this goal.

There is vocabulary to acquire, grammar to wrestle with, awkward mistakes to endure, and long stretches where progress feels painfully slow. There are moments when you wonder why you ever started. Fluency comes, if it comes at all, through patience, repetition, correction, and persistence. No shortcut replaces the work.

In its essence, achieving a goal like this requires (a) the decision to do so, (b) finding a mentor who can help us move from square one toward real facility, and (c) following through on each step along the way—even when enthusiasm fades.

Dallas Willard, in his book Renovation of the Heart, uses this process of learning a language as a metaphor for character development. It requires intentionality first. Do we actually want to become better people? Growth of this sort does not “just happen.” Habits, virtues, patience, courage—these are learned disciplines, not accidents.

Life is an ocean. If you are a ship in London and want to reach New York, it will be a very long time before you arrive if you simply drift—if you arrive at all. Currents may carry you somewhere, but not necessarily where you hoped to go. Tragically, many people live precisely this way: reacting, drifting, adapting, but rarely choosing.

Low aims produce small lives. No aim at all produces fragmentation.

Where are you going with your life? What kind of goals do you have for your own personal development—not just professionally, but morally and spiritually? As Ralph D. Winter once said, “Risks are not to be evaluated in terms of the probability of success, but in terms of the value of the goal.”

Some goals are worth pursuing even if they take years, even if they cost us comfort, even if progress is uneven. Character is one of those goals.

Keep pressing on. Purposefully.

Sidetracked? Don't Worry, It Happens To All Of Us

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." --popular proverb

Yesterday late afternoon I stopped by the library after work to drop off some DVDs and books, and to look for a couple other items on my reading list. One of these was a book called Brainwashed, which was on an upstairs shelf near some marketing books about persuasion and influence, one of the these being the famous work by Dr. Robert Cialdini.

What caught my eye, though, was another book there titled Sidetracked, by Francesca Gina, which I began reading late in the evening instead of going to bed like a good boy. Subtitled "Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan," I found myself immediately drawn in. For the record, it is a publication of the Harvard Business Review Press.

Whether you are in a business with objectives, or an individual with a self-directed career plan, or just someone with personal dreams you wish to pursue, the book appears to have application to any and all of these kinds of reads.

The introduction explains what the heavily researched book will cover. There are three forces at work in us whenever we set out to accomplish anything, Gino says. First, we have our internal distractions. As the saying goes, sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We frequently fail to see our own limitations, or have a mistaken sense of our own capabilities. Or, it may be we just don't know ourselves well enough to know what we want.

Next, the author shows, are forces from our relationships that impinge upon us. These come in a variety of forms, from parental expectations to compromises we make on behalf of our spouses.

Finally there are inevitably myriad external sources at work to distract us. Our intentions may be good, but because we are not resolute we allow other people or events to divert and thwart us.

What I like about the title is the railroad metaphor. Trains are sometimes intentionally diverted to a side rail to keep the lines clear for other traffic. If our intention is to be in St. Louis by midnight, and we're parked on a side-rail, one must begin to wonder, "How did this happen?" and "What can I do to keep it from happening again?"

When I was eight years old my grandparents took be out of school to travel from Cleveland to Reno on a train to go visit my aunt, uncle and cousins out west. The three-week adventure was a truly formative event in my life. The train went day and night for three days, with stops in Chicago, St. Louis and Salt Lake City. On the return east at some point during the night I was awake and looking out the window when I noticed a strange phenomenon. There were two glowing red lines on the ground next to our train. It was very strange because it just went on and on. I woke my grandmother to ask what it was. She didn't know, and we both studied it with wonder. Then the train slowed and stopped, the lights went on, and a voice announced that we were picking up passengers. We learned that a train on the adjacent railroad track had jumped the rails. We would have to all squeeze together till we reached the next stop.

Wow. There was an explanation to those glowing lines. That was heat generated by friction. Ultimately the train, having derailed, was stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Francesca Gino's book is has as its aim to help individuals and businesses avoid that kind of fate. It's a book for goal-setters and dreamers. And maybe a book for you.

Throwback Thursday: Quitters Never Win, Winners Never Quit

"Quitters never win, and winners never quit."

That's the way it is. Without persistence, we are guaranteed to fail. The reverse, however, isn't necessarily true. Sometimes we persist, we finish the race, and yet we don't get the prize. This can be a hard nut to swallow.

I love the verse in Ecclesiastes that says, "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong... but time and chance happen to them all." (Eccles. 9:11) Why do I love this saying? Because it gives us a much needed reminder that things don't always work out. That's reality.

For example, there are no guarantees that if I say all the right things I will "close the deal" in business. Or get the job. Nor am I guaranteed to win the big race at the track meet if I prepare better this year than last. Nor am I guaranteed to become a famous novelist by writing lots of books. In all of these examples there are many factors outside of our control. Illness, strong competition, a car accident, even death - the list of things outside our control is limitless. As we all know, none of us is God. We are finite creatures with limited capabilities.

Nevertheless, there is one thing that is in our control. We can choose to give up, to quit, or we can choose to keep going. Those who quit pursuing their goals or dreams are certain never to reach them. Those who keep going, who persist, will find that the dream inspires and strengthens them.

Whether we reach our dreams or whether we don't, we can be an inspiration to others to pursue their own dreams. This is why we continue to the end. In this way we can finish the race with our heads held high.

Are You Ready for the New Year? Do the Best You Can

It's finally here... 2014. Hard to believe since we all thought the world was going to end in 2012. (You can check out some of the humorous Tweets from the Mayan calendar drama.) You may have seen some of the spectacle that went into celebrating this passage of time yesterday. Astonishing.

I have no resolutions per se, but do have some goals for the upcoming year. When I was in high school I resolved one year not to eat chocolate. I had been eating chocolate cake every day at the school cafeteria, and seemed taken with the idea that chocolate was contributing to my acne problem. Adolescence is challenging enough even without pimples. By sheer will power I lasted till Halloween. I'm not sure it made any difference with regard to my complexion, but it felt like an achievement.

What are you hoping to achieve this year? Do you have a list of books you want to read? Places you want to see? People you want to meet? Goals you want to accomplish?

Here's something I've learned:

The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.  ~Ecclesiastes 9:11

It's a rough and tumble world in many ways. The weather isn't the only thing that's unkind sometimes. As we march into the new year with our list of resolutions and pockets stuffed with dreams, let's also remember those who have been less fortunate. Maybe there's more we can do to help than we realize.

What do you think?

Failures of 2012

Many if not most periodicals do some kind of year-end review of the most significant events, or of people who passed away in the course of the year. It's much like a family's Christmas letter which summarizes what everyone has been doing since the last letter. Some folks dislike these letters because they see them as brag letters, but I find them helpful as a method for staying in touch with what is going on in others' lives. For some strange reason I woke up thinking it might be more interesting this morning to write about my 2012 failures instead of a blog about my achievements.

Throughout the year I kept a log of my daily blog posts from Jan 1 through today. This log/list began informally with the following entries...

Jan 1 best of 2011 interviews part 2
Jan 2 11/22/63 part 1
Jan 3 Fellini Quote as lead in to Dali Museum story

Preceding this list of dates and entries I had a short "to do" list of projects and goals for the year. It's a surprising list because when I reviewed it a couple days ago, I realized that I had accomplished not a single one of these projects or goals.

I received an email from another writer who said her goal for 2013 was to "Fail more, care less." For me, 2012 was my year of failures in some regards, and I don't mind so much because of all the great moments in between the stints of pushing my boulder up the hill only to watch it roll down again. (cf. the myth of Sisyphus)

2012 has been all the more interesting because it followed a 2011 in which I achieved something that surprised even me, I found a young partner to form a publishing company by means of which I published a novel and three books of fiction. (Feel free to follow N&L Publishing on Facebook.)

My expectation was for a continuation of that trend, so I was surprised to end the year with a list in which I accomplished not a lick. To be honest, this list was not written in its entirety on Jan 1. It was expanded during the first months of the year as I slid forward through time.

2012 PROJECTS/GOALS/OBJECTIVES 
1. Promote books
2. Book on How to Teach Writing
3. Find agent for The Red Scorpion as film
4. Ralph Kand story as book
5. Paint Kennedy/Oswald Series
     Six pictures on illustraton board
6. Create a Dylan exhibit for Dylan Days
7. September Red Mug Show
8. Book of Interviews
9. Book on arts with Ann K
10. Write a Steampunk Short Story. Begin with Whisk Biscuit.
11. Intergalactica book

Fail.... Fail... Fail... 

Number five on the list was influenced by visiting Dallas in 2011 and then reading Stephen King's book over New Years. The Red Mug show was offered at one point in late 2011 but good heavens, I was tired just thinking about it. I still think my novel The Red Scorpion would make a great film, with a strong potential for a sequel, but someone else will have to champion that. These things aren't easy to do when you also have a full-time career that pays all your bills and puts food on the table. Short stories are easier to finish, and for now I have two really very interesting ones going that are getting me jazzed.

There were other failures as well, more personal and laden with lessons.

And so, on the threshold of 2013 I look ahead uncertain as to what will unfold, but knowing that it will be an interesting year. I'm guessing that some of the writing projects will move forward as some of the art goals fall by the wayside. For now, my painting will remain something therapeutic on an as need basis. Or at least, that's how it appears from today's vantage point.

I'd like to sing more, too. But you can't do everything. Or so they say.

Here's a poem that I published at ennyman.com several years ago that perhaps touches on this theme tangentially. It's called Falliing Too Far.

Falling Too Far

Like Icarus
I have flown too high
to heights that I
cannot sustain
propelled by love
to touch the sun
and burn my wings
again.

Have a great weekend. Reflect on your year, and embrace the possibilities of Tomorrow. 

Ten Power Questions

For seven years I belonged to a small group of business professionals called the M5. We would meet to challenge one another, to be a portable, personal board of directors for our careers, and to hold one another accountable to the goals we set for ourselves.

Many invaluable lessons were learned. Many additional tools added to my life toolkit.

The following ten power questions were shared at one of these meetings. Unfortunately I did not see an attiribution in my notes, and when I Googled "Ten Power Questions" I came up with many other sets of questions, but not these. So, if you know the source, please add a comment so we can give attribution.

If inclined, these are each worth further reflection. Perhaps you will find them as meaningful as I.

Ten Power Questions

1) When am I most myself? What people, places, and activities allow me to feel most fully myself?

2) What is one thing I could stop doing, or start doing, or do differently, starting today that would most improve the quality of my life?

3) What is my greatest talent?

4) How can I get paid for doing what I love?

5) Who are my most inspiring role models?

6) How can I best be of service to others?

7) What is my heart's deepest desire?

8) How am I perceived by: my closest friend, my worst enemy, my boss, my children, my co-workers, etc.

9) What are the blessings of my life?

10) What legacy would I like to leave?

Intentionality

Suppose we are interested in learning a new language. My son took an interest in Russian a few years back. Because of my interest in French literature I took an interest in learning French. One thing you quickly learn with languages like French or Russian, and I suspect Chinese or Navaho, is that you do not just "pick it up." One must make a deliberate decision and make a commitment to the task. You decide, "Yes, I will take whatever steps are necessary to achieve this goal."

In its essence, achieving a goal like this requires (a) the decision to do so, (b) finding a mentor who can help us move out of square one into complete facility, and (c) following through on each step along the way.

Dallas Willard, in his book Renovation of the Heart, uses this process of learning a language as a metaphor for character development. It requires intentionality first. Do we want to become better people? It does not "just happen."

Life is an ocean. If you are a ship in London and want to reach New York, it will be a very long time before you reach this destination if you set about to just drift there, if you reach it at all. Tragically, too many people live their lives with no aim whatsoever. Or with very low aims.

Where are you going with your life? What kind of goals do you have for your own personal development? As Ralph Winter once said, "Risks are not to be evaluated in terms of the probability of success, but in terms of the value of the goal." Keep pressing on. Purposefully.

Adjustments

While home with my family over Christmas a few years ago we went bowling one day. It proved to be an interesting experience at the lanes. My brother bowled the best game I've ever seen him bowl (220's) and I surprised myself by barely getting over a one hundred in my first ten frames. I wondered if anyone would believe I bowled in the 180's my last time out. Fortunately, I found my mark and got the swing of things with a 191 and a 183 in the second and third games.

During the second game my brother -- who happens to be a psychologist -- had turned and, smiling, said, "Adjustments," as he lifted the ball up to his chest. He layed it down smooth and bowled another strike. I agreed with him, that it was a matter of making adjustments, finding your mark, laying the ball on the spot on the lane, observing the results and adjusting accordingly.

In the third game, he again smiled and made the same remark. I realized then that he was not speaking of bowling, but offering a piece of wisdom, as if to say, "This is what life is, the making of adjustments." He only spoke the one word, but I heard with clarity his admonition. When life isn't working, we need to evaluate and adjust accordingly.

From time to time most of us bring our cars to a mechanic to have adjustments made so they will run better. A tune-up or "carburetor adjustment" helps the engine to run the way it was intended. In the same way, our lives need periodic tune-ups or adjustments, to help us accomplish the purposes for which we were created.

The word adjustment is an interesting one. It means "to bring into agreement." On many levels we need to apply this word to the various compartments of our lives, whether relationships, careers, parenting or our quests for personal meaning.

Ultimately, growth is a process, the process of making adjustments.

For more insights on living and excerpts from my book Nightfall: A Time to Reflect at the End of the Day, visit my website at http://www.enewman.biz/reflect.html

Holiday Ups and Downs

COPING WITH HOLIDAY STRESS

by Dr. Ron Newman

When you think of the Christmas Holiday season, what comes to your mind? Some people get excited about the decorations, music, presents, or the real "reason for the season." Others, however, get anxious about potential family conflicts, frantic busyness, crowds and long lines at the shopping mall. It is not unusual for people to have mixed emotions, including loneliness, depression, and grief over lost loved ones who will no longer be physically present to share in the holiday spirit.

What follows are some principles that may help you have a more enjoyable Christmas season.

A) Strengthen Relationships.

The holiday offers a unique opportunity to rebuild relationships. Recognize the value of those relationships, and focus on those relationships that you want to strengthen -- perhaps for the other person's benefit as well as your own. Even if you are experiencing your own sense of loneliness, resist the temptation to isolate yourself. Reach out to others who may have a similar need. The most meaningful experiences in life are in the context of our relationships with others.

B) Learn to say "No."

We often become overwhelmed at the holidays because of our difficulty in saying no to people. We sometimes allow others to determine how we use our time. Being assertive regarding those situations is necessary for our own sanity. This guideline is meant to help balance the goal of building relationships, but is not intended as a rationale for unhealthy isolation of oneself.

C) Practice Forgiveness.

Holidays can remind us of the unresolved conflicts we have with others. In the spirit of Christmas, we can sometimes face those relationships in a new light as we seek tounderstand, accept, and let go of past hurts. Or perhaps it is a good time for us to approach someone we have hurt to offer our own apology and seek reconciliation. This may not always be possible or advisable, if the other person is not "safe," but in most relationships there is room for more mercy.

D) Maintain a Sense of Humor.

If we take ourselves or others too seriously, we risk losing our own positive attitude about the holidays. A merry heart is good medicine. Learn to laugh at the long lines,forgotten presents and last minute shopping, etc. A negative attitude will only bring you down, but will not change the circumstances you are in.

E) Maintain Good Health Habits.

As with any stress management program, you want to get sufficient exercise, adequate sleep, and a balanced nutritional intake (beware of the excesses). Holidays are fraught with temptations of all sorts that can throw you body off balance and make the holidays less satisfying.

F) Sing and Enjoy the Music.

Music is good for the soul, and singing has many psychological as well as physical benefits. For one thing, it cleans out the stale air in your lungs! It has the ability to stir up every type of emotion, but during the holiday season it's good to be reminded of a more optimistic outlook on life.

G) Thoughtful Planning.

Goal setting and making plans to achieve those goals are necessary elements to success in life. The same is true regarding our success in navigating the pitfalls of the holiday season.

1. List your goals. Brainstorming all that you want to accomplish can be a helpful first step in this regard. This should include relationships as well as tasks.

2. Prioritize your goals. You want to be clear what is most important to you, otherwise you may end up doing what is easiest first, and not have time for what is really your highest value.

3. Remind yourself repeatedly of your goals. Put them on the refrigerator, on the calendar, in your daytimer, or whatever works for you. Just donít forget them, which is our tendency if we don't have a system to remind us.

4. Delegate when possible. If time management is particularly difficult for you, delegation of responsibilities becomes very important. Perhaps you do not have to buy all of the presents for everybody, or you do not have to cook the entire meal by yourself!

The above principles can help you enjoy your holiday to the fullest extent and avoid those inherent pitfalls.

Merry Christmas!

Ronald S. Newman, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist in New Jersey withover 20 years of experience in the mental health field. He has been a popular speaker both in New Jersey and in South America where he makes annual trips for the purposes of teaching and training. This article originally appeared in Ecobyte.