The Achievement Habit (20 page)

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Now recall all the things that you are
sure
are correct about this issue. Don’t lie to yourself.

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When you are finished, imagine yet again that the object’s physical embodiment is a few feet in front of you, and repeat the inventory of its physical properties. (Note: Repeat this survey of the object’s properties after each of the following items.)

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Next, tell yourself all the things you think
might
be correct about this issue.

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Now look at all the things you think might be
incorrect
about this issue.

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Now recall all the things that happen to your body when you experience this issue.

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What are your body positions when this issue comes up for you?

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Do you have any physical reactions associated with this issue?

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Now recall all the emotional states you go through when you have this experience. Think back to the actual experience—not your ideas about it!

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Now look at all the sensations and feelings you associate with this issue. Don’t lie to yourself.

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Next, look at all the evaluations and judgments you have regarding this issue.

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Now tell yourself all the things you get out of keeping this issue in your life. Don’t lie to yourself. What does it do for you to keep this issue?

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Now imagine being upset about this issue. Next, imagine not being upset about this issue. Again imagine being upset and then not being upset, and repeat about five times. Then imagine having an upset about this issue. Next, imagine not having an upset about this issue. Again imagine having an upset and not having an upset, repeating about five times. Next, imagine being upset and then not being upset, and then having an upset and not having an upset.

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Now imagine you are in front of a whiteboard mounted on a frame with wheels. On this whiteboard write a list of all the things, and people’s names, that are keeping this issue
in your life. At this point again imagine that the object’s physical embodiment is a few feet in front of you, and repeat the inventory of its physical properties for the last time.

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Now imagine you are again in front of the whiteboard and that you have an eraser in your hand. Look over your list of what is keeping this problem in your life. Erase all things or people’s names that are no longer valid. Now imagine pushing the whiteboard up to the edge of a high precipice that has a seemingly bottomless drop on the other side.

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Take one last look at your list, erase anything else you want from it, and then push the board over the precipice.

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Now imagine yourself at the beach on a nice, sunny day. Do your favorite thing for a while. When you feel ready, open your eyes and slowly get up.

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Take all the time you need to quietly digest what you went through during this exercise.

I have always felt affection for the Welsh and Irish poets and playwrights. Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” has always resonated with me, and earlier in my life I thought of myself going to the grave kicking and screaming. Unfortunately I have had too much contact with death to remain guided by my youthful emotions. What I have found is that deaths, like lives, are unique, and that if I pay attention, each death provides me some wisdom.

Karel Deleeuw’s death was a celebrated murder case. Karel was a mathematics professor and a close friend who lived on
the same street as I on the Stanford campus; we were frequent visitors to each other’s homes. Two nights before Ruth and I left on a trip, Karel and I were amusing ourselves reading bizarre ads in a Berkeley newspaper. One ad was for an audiotape that explained how to return from the dead; it came with a T-shirt. The ad’s irresistible appeal was its statement, “Buy this shirt and tape, who wants to be dead forever?” So we sent away for the shirt and the tape.

When Ruth and I returned from our trip, we were surprised to find Karel’s wife, Sita, at the San Francisco airport to meet us. She was wearing the T-shirt Karel and I had ordered. I started to joke about the shirt when she stopped me to tell us that Karel had been murdered, bludgeoned to death by Ted Streleski, a longtime PhD candidate in Stanford’s Department of Mathematics.

Streleski felt he had not been treated fairly by the department, and he wanted to bring public attention to his case. Even though his advisor had recently told him that his work was acceptable for submission as a PhD dissertation, and graduation was finally in sight, he felt his life had been ruined by the long delay in obtaining his degree. Many mathematicians had done their best work when they were young, and now he felt he was too old to become great.

He was stuck in the wrongheaded view of achievement that says accolades and awards are the most important things in life. He had brainwashed himself into thinking that this was all that mattered. And because of this, he was more interested in his grievance than in his degree. He considered the standard avenues of redress, such as writing letters to newspapers, Stanford administrators, or Stanford alumni, or filing an official grievance. He decided these would not be strong enough. He
concluded that he could get much greater publicity if he murdered someone prominent and then went to trial.

He made a “hit list” of several professors in the mathematics department and then used public transportation from his apartment in San Francisco to Stanford in an incredibly circuitous route. When he finally got to Stanford, he was unable to find the first few people on his list. Then he got to Karel’s name, and unfortunately Karel was in his office, grading the final exams from his summer class. Streleski had brought a small sledgehammer and used it to murder Karel. He then left undetected. A few days later he surrendered to the police.

His idea was to plead not guilty and have a trial that would be covered by the press. During his trial he planned to have members of the mathematics department faculty on the witness stand and question them so as to publicly reveal practices that he felt were abusive.

He succeeded, to a certain degree; he got publicity, and there was some linking of his case to the general plight of PhD students as a political underclass. This incident was a prime example, to me, of the weakness of pure logic. Streleski’s logic was impeccable in terms of his desire to get the most publicity for his case, except he forgot the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Unfortunately, this kind of omission is much too prevalent in decision making at various levels of our society. Streleski was just another tragic example.

I went to the trial every day. Streleski pleaded not guilty, even though he admitted committing the murder as well as having planned to do it, using the sledgehammer he brought with him. His lawyer wanted him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity; Streleski refused because he did not want to be regarded as insane. He wanted to convince the media that the murder
was “logically and morally correct” and that it was “a political statement” about the department’s treatment of its graduate students.

Here was a bright man who could have had a good life had he not been so fixated on what he felt was “owed” him. If he couldn’t have his perfectly planned life as a math genius, then he would make people pay. In doing so, of course, he made himself miserable too. There is no degree, award, job, or referral worth dying or killing for. Of course, most people are not murderers, and this is an extreme case, yet it highlights the danger of being too rigid in your view of what your life path should be. Life will throw you curveballs; if you adapt, you can find happiness in any situation.

My close colleague Rolf Faste’s death was remarkable in that he did not follow the expected knee-jerk reaction of seeking survival at any price. To be a traditional “achiever,” you’re supposed to fight, fight, fight for your life! Rolf didn’t really care about what others thought, however. His achievements would be on his own terms. After he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, he noticed that when he visited his regular doctor, the experience left him feeling bad. When he went to his Zen master, he came home feeling good.

He resolved to treat his body as a sacred gift and not to poison it in the name of survival. He made it clear he did not welcome visitors advising him to seek standard chemotherapy or radiation treatments. He spent his time quietly meditating and in positive conversations with family and friends. He died according to the same principles he had lived by.

By contrast, another colleague, who was a difficult person, totally changed while undergoing hospice care. He was not someone I was close to. We had a cordial relationship, even
though I did not enjoy his company. After he got sick, I went to visit him at home out of obligation. To my surprise he had changed and was now engaging to be with. I ended up visiting him frequently.

Other colleagues started coming regularly to visit. We all found him to now be a very attractive companion. Finally, close to death, he had stopped posturing and was simply there with us. It was a pity he had to be dying before he felt free to be at ease with his true self. He and everyone around him would have had a better life if he had arrived there sooner.

Bill Moggridge was a close friend who had a strong sense of self and was extremely independent. Nobody could get him to wear a bicycle helmet, even when we came roaring down the mountain passing cars on blind turns. When he asked himself the question “Who are you?” that’s what he came up with. He decided how he wanted to live his life and didn’t let anyone interfere.

When he became ill, he adapted the same inner strength toward the invasive treatments. His positive attitude gave him a remarkable ability to maintain a normal work life in conditions where most others would simply shut down.

Finally, when it was clear he was dying, he made it easy to be open about his situation. The first morning I walked into his hospital room, he asked me if I had been at the bedside of many dying friends. I knew he was telling me it was okay to be open in talking to him about his condition. It was an extremely generous gift.

Bill was hospitalized in a substandard situation in New York. There he became accepting of various abusive and neglectful practices. I was surprised at how accepting he was. Then I realized it was protective behavior. He was “going along in order to
get along.” He probably figured if he was no trouble, he would get as good care as they were capable of providing. Finally his care conditions got so bad that it was decided to move him from New York to a hospice facility in San Francisco.

The move required an overnight stay in a motel near the San Francisco airport. The next morning five of us were involved in moving Bill from the motel room to a waiting station wagon. He could not walk, so we moved him in a chair from the motel room to the door of the station wagon. Because he was a big guy, it was not clear how best to maneuver him onto the front seat.

His two sons, Eric and Alex, Izzy (a friend from New York), Matt (Bill’s trusted colleague from work), and I were discussing different ways to proceed. Unfortunately, it was cold due to raw summer fog and chilling wind. The discussion went on too long. Finally Bill had had enough. He had said almost nothing in the past day, and when he had spoken, it was very soft and hard to understand. Now, in a booming voice, he said, “Bernie, you shut up. Izzy, you shut up. Eric, you shut up, Alex, you shut up. Matt, you decide!”

It was a magic moment: my friend Bill had come alive, and he was expressing his own self-image to us. He was a problem solver till the end and had taken charge of the situation. With his British accent, it was as though Dylan Thomas himself was telling us he would not be going gently into that good night. That was his great gift to us all.

Imagine you have only ten minutes to live. What would you do?

Imagine you have only ten days to live. What would you do?

Imagine you have only ten months to live. What would you do?

Imagine you have only ten years to live. What would you do?

Imagine you have only the rest of your life to live. What would you do?

Looking at your answers to these questions, you have a lot of information about yourself. In this exercise we are talking about your endgame. Can you think of any changes you would like to design into your self-image? Start designing and changing! None of the friends I just told you about knew when they would enter the final countdown. I don’t know when mine will come, and you don’t know yours either. One thing for sure—it is closer today than it was yesterday, and it will be closer still tomorrow. So now is the time to develop into the person you want to be.

Story writers are concerned with different points of view. They classify them as an objective point of view, a third-person point of view, a first-person point of view, an omniscient point of view, and a limited omniscient point of view.

In the objective point of view the writer takes the position of a detached observer, never telling more than can be directly inferred from the dialogue and action. In the third-person point of view the narrator does not participate in the action of the story; we find out about the characters through the narrator’s outside voice.

In the first-person point of view the narrator is a participant in the story, and now the trustworthiness of the account is in question because it might lack objectivity. In omniscient accounts the writer knows everything about all the characters and actions or, in a more limited version, knows everything about a limited number of characters or actions.

In real life, we get to write our own stories. Some people
may be arrogant enough to think they can take on an objective or omniscient point of view, and some rare people might be disassociated enough from their lives to take on a third-person point of view. Some people have the delusion they can take on
any
point of view. Perhaps they can for brief moments, but most of us are all limited to a first-person point of view, and just as in fiction, the question of reliability arises.