Achievement Rule #1 - Ignore the Naysayers

When I was 25 and serving my combat tour in Vietnam, I got two important letters.

One was from the head of the Department of Psychology at West Point.

The other was from the head of the Department of English at West Point.

Psychology and English were my favorite subjects when I was a cadet.

My professors had loved me because I was passionately interested in my studies and worked hard.

Both letters invited me to teach in their department at West Point.

I was thrilled.

I replied to both that I would love to teach there, and what would be my next step?

I figured I would go with the one that responded first.

That turned out to be the Department of English.

I never heard back from the Department of Psychology.

I later learned that the Department of Psychology mysteriously never got my letter.

So it goes.

So I pursued a graduate degree in English at Duke University.

Duke accepted me even though I hadn't majored in English.

The Army told me I had two years to earn a masters degree.

I studied the catalog and determined a masters degree could be earned in one year.

All my Army colleagues at Duke had to take a semester of undergraduate make-up courses first.

To complete a masters in one year, I would need to take graduate courses right away.

I typed and signed my course request card for masters-level courses and gave it to the department head.

He said, "No one has ever completed a card without counseling before. You already know what you want to do."

He seemed impressed and approved my request.

So I didn't have to take any undergraduate make-up courses.

When I shared my ambitious plan with some of my fellow students, they said it was ridiculous. Everyone takes six or seven years to get a Ph.D.

Some of the graduate students who started with me already had a masters in English, but they were required to take the full course load anyway.

Truthfully, I was in over my head.

In class, my professors talked about novels I hadn't read.

At night I would go home and read one of the novels.

That meant reading a novel almost every night.

My classmates used fancy words I didn't understand.

That night I would look up the words and add them to my vocabulary.

By the end of the first term, I felt confident enough to speak up in class.

By the end of the second term, I knew what I was talking about.

I took the exam for the masters degree and passed it.

By the end of the second summer and the third term, I had finished all 60 credit hours.

I had met all the requirements to take the Ph.D. candidate exam.

I took it and passed it.

After starting behind the eight ball, I had achieved "all but dissertation" status in 18 months.

My classmates who entered the program with masters degrees were still taking courses.

I decided to write my dissertation about the celebrated American novelist John Cheever.

I met him, and we became friends.

When my two years were up, I had completed my academic research and had written three chapters.

I joined the Department of English at West Point and maintained my friendship with John Cheever.

He lived an hour's drive from West Point, so I visited him once a month.

He told me everything about his life and work.

I earned my Ph.D. in 1977.

All this hard work changed my life.

This isn't a story about "fake it till you make it."

It's about following your passion, believing in yourself, being bold, working hard and never quitting.

I wouldn't be where I am today, who I am today, if I hadn't tried to do things that had never been done before.

It's amazing what you can do when you ignore people who say you can't do it and just get to work.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Words Matter - Speak with a Kind Heart

An article in the paper caused me to remember Leo Ragsdale (not his real name), one of my buddies on the high school golf team a long time ago. The article was "Words Shape Your World," by Mike Fitsko. The author explains the anxiety he felt when told he had to update his photo for the newspaper column. He relates an incident that happened to him while being photographed for his high school senior portrait. After much fussing with the lights and camera, the photographer said, "I'm afraid you have a problem, Mr. Fitsko. You don't have a natural smile."

For the rest of his life, he recalled this criticism - with some pain - every time someone wanted to take his picture.

When I was in high school, Leo and I would play golf together a couple times a week. I no longer play golf. It's a difficult game, and years ago my military career made it impossible to maintain my skills. When golf stopped being fun for me, I gave it up. But as a teenager, it was a huge passion.

One of my most vivid memories of Leo involved his older brother. Leo and I were walking back from the golf course one day when a loud, mocking voice shouted from across the street, "Hey Loser! Where do you think you're going?" At first, I thought the put-down was aimed at me, and I felt a sting in my gut. Then Leo explained that "Loser" was a nickname given to him by his older brother.

I don't think Leo ever considered it a term of endearment. As often happens with high school friends, I lost touch with him. But a few years ago, I heard from another friend that Leo had suffered a series of setbacks. He had become an alcoholic, which led to his being fired. Soon afterward, his wife divorced him. A few years later, he died of a drug overdose.

I'm sure Leo craved the love and approval of his older brother, but the contempt he received instead must have caused unbearable, lasting pain.

In the early 1970s I made friends with novelist John Cheever while researching my dissertation about him. During one of my visits to his home in Ossining, New York, he told me about his relationship with his mother, who is depicted in the award-winning novel, The Wapshot Chronicle. "One day when I was a small boy, my mother felt it necessary to tell me that I was 'an accident.' The message that settled in my heart was that I was unwanted."

The more I got to know Cheever, the more I realized that the feeling that he was unloved and perhaps unworthy of love shaped his fiction. Many of the main characters in his stories are men who suffer from loveless relationships. Even though his fame slowly grew, Cheever's personal life was like a downward spiral. His unfulfilled need for love kept him from maintaining healthy relationships. It also drove him to abuse alcohol all his life. All of this made it harder for people to love him.

I think Mike Fitsko is right. Words do matter. Thoughtless remarks can have a profound emotional impact, especially on young people who haven't yet formed a strong sense of identity and self-worth. Criticism, even if spoken without malice, can wound a person's self-esteem. The feeling that "I'm not worthy" can lead someone to pass on opportunities and healthy relationships, which in turn can cause problems that lead to aggravated low self-esteem. It's the most damaging kind of self-reinforcing cycle I can think of.

Who do you care about? Eventually they'll do something to make you angry. Do you love them enough to watch what you say?

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

The Personal Strength of Excellence - My Friendship with John Cheever

In 1972, while in graduate school at Duke University. I decided to write my dissertation on John Cheever, who in his own lifetime was considered America’s most celebrated storyteller. The author agreed to an interview, and we became friends. After I moved to West Point to teach English, it was easy to visit him once a month at his home in Ossining, New York. During our talks, he revealed far more to me than I could use in my dissertation.

One day, he came down the stairs with a manuscript in his hand. He had a broad smile. “I have written a story,” he said. This surprised me, because he was near the end of his career and he hadn’t published a story in quite a while. “Would you like to hear it?”

We sat at his dining room table while he put his hand on mine and read the story. It was “The Leaves, The Lion-fish and the Bear,” which was published in Esquire in 1974. It was a wonderful story, and I was the first person to enjoy it. What a gift!

Afterwards, John wanted to go for a walk. It was a cold, blustery day, and when we reached the top of the hill above his property, he said, “I’m freezing. Will you hold me?” Cheever was like a surrogate father to me, so I quickly agreed. To my surprise, he also wanted sex. I dealt with that uncomfortable situation as tactfully as I could, and we returned to his house. But my mind was connecting the dots. His bisexuality was evident in most of his fiction, and I hadn’t noticed it. When I pointed this out, he agreed and said it would be fine with him if I treated the theme in my dissertation.

To do the topic justice, I decided to rewrite my entire dissertation. And something else—in the rewriting I would discard the academic tone and adopt a more straightforward storytelling style. The story was important, and I wanted people to know about it.

It was hard to rewrite my dissertation, but my decision to reach for something better paid off. My committee thought it was the most readable dissertation they had ever seen, and I got my Ph.D. More significantly, the facts surrounding Cheever’s sexual orientation became more widely known. After he died in 1982, all three of his biographers treated his sexuality as the central theme of his life, and they described my relationship with him as the catalyst for his “coming out of the closet.” My comprehensive bibliography was published and remains a standard reference for Cheever scholars to this day. So I became a minor footnote to literary history, which is a more satisfying result than what usually issues from a dissertation.

But achieving high quality makes a difference in ordinary life, too. In those days I often felt overwhelmed by my work. I’d come home to my family exhausted, and sometimes when my sons wanted me to read a story, I’d go through the motions just to get through it. And when friends gathered, I half-stepped my way through conversations. I had a full plate, and sometimes I handled other obligations by phoning them in.

So when I remember what my life was like then, I feel a mixture of pride and regret. From the perspective of 40 years of experience, I wish I had tried harder to do even the small, everyday things so well that something wonderful happened—even when I was tired. It was a hard lesson to learn, and the lesson was about excellence.

A Fortune Cookie...

Do ordinary things in an extraordinary way, and people will wonder how you did it.

More Fortune Cookies...

The story behind the Fortune Cookies...

[Photo courtesy of Wkimedia Commons. Used with permision.]

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength . Photo of John Cheever from Wikipedia Commons. Used with permission.

The Personal Strength of Thoroughness - The Devil Is in the Details

Every now and then, while reading a book, I’ll come across a typo. It’s a rare thing, so I suppose I should give the publishers credit for attention to detail. Also, typos are relatively trivial compared to the content of the book. And I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest proofreader. Far from it. Still, it’s a big turn-off whenever I see a grammatical error or a misspelled word. It makes me wonder if there are other mistakes in the book.

So whenever my company publishes anything, we proofread it repeatedly. Does that mean we’re obsessive about details, or just thorough?

Back in 1972, when I was doing research for my dissertation on American fiction-writer John Cheever, I felt that I needed to read every story and every novel he had ever written—plus all the books and articles written about him. It wasn’t an overt requirement, but I felt that it would be a mistake to overlook any of his works. Fortunately, the Duke University library had a massive fiction collection; but they didn’t have Cheever’s first book of short stories, The Way Some People Live, published by Random House in 1943. So I ordered it from a rare book store.

When the book arrived, I was delighted that the dust jacket was still intact. I was surprised to see that the inside blurb referred to a story published in a magazine I hadn’t heard of before.  The magazine had published that one issue and then was discontinued. The Duke library didn’t have a copy, but they located one in the Harvard University library. Apparently, it was the only copy in existence. I felt that I had to read the story, so I traveled by car from Durham to Boston and presented my letter of credentials from Duke. They located the issue in their archives, and I made a copy of the story.

As a result of my fetish for details, I was certain that my bibliography was complete. Later, because the list was comprehensive, it was published. And nearly 40 years later my bibliography is still a standard reference for Cheever scholars.

INSIGHT

Detail by detail, your vision will become real.

My wife, Kathleen, used to be a commercial banker, and she developed a habit for doing “due diligence”—about nearly everything. Every time we travel away from home she creates a folder packed with information about the airline, rental car, hotel, interesting venues and routes of travel. It’s all there, courtesy of the internet. It’s amazing how trouble-free our trips are!

She’s also the document reader in the family. Before we bought our home in the Texas Hill Country, she studied the land survey and discovered that a small part of the driveway was inside the county easement. Further checking revealed that the county had the authority to make us move the driveway at some future date. It was unlikely that this would happen, but there it was—an unpleasant possibility. So she got the contractor to obtain an exception from the county. End of worries.

Her desire to do background research paid off well back in the stock market boom of the late 1990s. One day I purchased a highly-touted tech stock because its price was climbing rapidly. Concerned, Kathleen obtained and studied documents about the company. What she learned was that the structure was so convoluted that she couldn’t tell who owned it or how they would make money. Faced with these facts, we decided to sell the stock at a profit. Several months later, the company collapsed and the stock lost 99% of its value.

A success for us, but several years later I met a man who lost a lot of money by hanging on to that stock. The lesson: do your homework. You can’t control what you don’t understand. If something has the potential to do you harm, you’d better check it out. It’s usually not easy to get all the facts, but you should make the effort, even if you have to work to get them—and use what you learn to make your decision. That way, you won’t be taken by surprise. You don’t want to be blind-sided by dangers you assume aren’t there.

YOUR ACTION ASSIGNMENT

The best way to ingrain the lessons of thoroughness is to be thorough. I recommend this exercise:

1.    The next time you’re about to purchase something that costs more than $100, gather data for at least four options.
2.    Get detailed information about capabilities, features and costs. Be thorough.
3.    Arrange the information in a matrix to facilitate a comparison.
4.    Include qualitative or subjective considerations.
5.    Compare the options and make your decision.
 

*     *     *

Consider the facts, for they will prove your opinions.

“Genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains.” - Thomas Carlyle 

"Beware of the man who won't be bothered with details." - William Feather


THOROUGHNESS - Why the Compassion of 10 Missionaries Went Wrong

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., , Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .