Those Who Inspire Us……

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I have to be the luckiest guy on earth, throughout my life, incredible people have shown up on a regular basis with life experiences that are extraordinary and extraordinarily inspirational.  As I have searched for what my true purpose is in life, I always thought I wanted to inspire people through books, audio programs and public speaking, I was foolish enough to think that I had done something inspirational and that I could speak from personal experiences.   While I have had many successes, many challenges and many comebacks in the past and hopefully in the future, my experiences are nothing compared to the people that have shown up in my life that truly were an inspiration and whose examples of conquering challenges in their lives have kept me going and made my challenges minor in comparison.

As I thought about all the incredible people that have come into my life at various times to inspire me, it became clear that the best way for me to inspire others was by sharing with the stories of those that have inspired me over the years.  In an earlier post on my blog I spoke about some of the people that inspired me as I was growing up through my high school years, including former Minnesota Twins Shortstop  Danny Thompson, my American Legion Baseball Coach Ted Leuer and many others.  Today I had an opportunity to think about those who have inspired me in the years after I graduated from High School and one of the first persons that came to mind was a life insurance salesman from Spearfish, South Dakota.  I moved to Spearfish in October of 1979 after taking a job as the mid-day announcer at KBFS Radio in Belle Fourche, one of the first people to welcome me to Spearfish was Harvey Krautschun, I was just 20 years old and Harvey was the most positive and energetic person I had met in my life.  At first, I thought Harvey was just being so cool because he wanted to sell me life insurance, which I bought shortly after our first visit, but I soon discovered that Harvey just loved people and loved making a difference in everyone’s lives.  Over the 2 years I spent in Spearfish, Harvey and I had the opportunity to become good friends, heck Harvey even returned the favor, and bought some radio ads from me and had me record his commercials.

After leaving Spearfish in the Spring of 1981, Harvey and I stayed in contact, or should I say Harvey kept in touch with me,  every time I would think about calling Harvey, he would call me before I had the chance to call him.   Harvey’s calls were always different than any other calls I would ever receive,  Harvey never called to talk about himself, he always called to check on me and more importantly my family.  After every call I got from Harvey, I always found myself wondering why I hadn’t taken the time to find out how Harvey and his family were doing.  In the 90’s when I had started a fairly significant company in the Floppy disk replication business, Harvey tried hard to convince me and my partners to move the company headquarters to South Dakota, he made arrangements for a trip that flew me to Sioux Falls and  Spearfish where I met with City and State Government officials who wanted to do anything they could to get us to move our company, I was all for it but my partners just didn’t think it made sense.  That trip was the first time that I realized what a great business builder and supporter of local communities Harvey was.  Later in the 90’s Harvey became be a state legislator and ultimately the Speaker of the State House of Representatives and many thought he would end up as Governor.

Here’s where the story gets interesting, throughout the 90’s Harvey called me on a regular basis and as usual was only interested in checking on me and my family, and again I always wondered why I never asked about Harvey and his family.  Harvey never missed a beat calling including throughout 1995 and 1996 which I would later find out was a very difficult time for Harvey, even though he didn’t mention his challenge even once to me during his calls of 1995 and 1996.   In July of 1995, when a newborn colt jumped into an 8-foot pond, Harvey’s wife Joy jumped in to save the colt.  While trying to save the colt, Joy’s heart suddenly failed, Harvey rushed to her side and began mouth to mouth resuscitation.  Harvey and Joy’s son, Bart, rushed to find additional help, calling an ambulance.  Bart returned to his mother’s side and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on her.  Father and son together fought to save Joy’s life.  The massive heart failure pushed her into a coma.  Harvey stood by Joy’s hospital bed as she lay comatose for a month, fighting for her life.  Because of his constancy and commitment to his wife’s life, even as doctor’s began discussing terminating life support, Harvey’s devotion remained unmoved.  He was determined to see his wife awake again.

Joy awoke from her coma.  Her recovery from the massive heart damage would entail months of hospitalization and therapy.  Joy did recover, and today she is living with her family even though doctor’s had believed she would not live.  Harvey and his family made a commitment to Joy’s life and it was that commitment that saved her.  Harvey is truly incredible and an inspiration, even while faced with incredible turbulence in his own life he still found time to call and check on me and my family without mentioning the challenges of his own family.

I found about Joy’s accident and illness in the summer of 1997, I had done quite well with my sales career and had taken 3 weeks off to travel the west with my wife and two young children.   I had a tire blow out on my 31 foot RV that was towing an SUV as I was driving down a mountain in Wyoming at 80 plus miles per hour, while it scared the heck out of me, I was able to pull the vehicle to the shoulder and get the help that was needed to tow the RV to Spearfish, South Dakota.   The first thing I thought of was, I am going to call Harvey to tell him how successful I have been and how much fun I was having taking a long vacation with my incredibly healthy family.  Of course, I would also have to tell him of the trauma caused by the one day delay in our trip because of the flat tire.  I called Harvey and of course Harvey was thrilled to hear from me and offered to take me to lunch.  While having lunch, I bragged about my success and the health of my family and could tell Harvey was sincerely happy for everything that had come my way.   I finally had made it a point that this time I was going to ask Harvey about his family, I did and he finally opened up and told me Joy’s story.  I can’t tell you what a wake up call that was,  I was so caught up with myself that I had forgotten about those who had done so much for me over the years.  Harvey was always there to check on me, to lend me advice and be sure my family was doing well and I never returned the favor.  Inspirational people like Harvey help remind us of what is important and most importantly their stories remind us of how trivial most of our daily issues are.  I have spoken way too often in this blog about the challenges I have faced financially over the past three years, but my family is healthy and while we had a very tough time with the death of my mother in-law, none of our daily challenges come close to those of the people who have shown up in my life like Harvey Krautschun, Terry Lyles, Marian Braun and Kathlyn Hunt.  I want to share more with you about the people who have inspired me and continue to inspire me on a daily basis.  I hope their stories will inspire you and help you realize that challenges of any size are manageable and that miracles do occur when you KNOW they will.

The Worst…Brings out our Best !

Watching TV for me consists of flipping through the channels trying to find something positive and inspiring to watch.  The History channel, the Learning channel and the National Geographic channel seem to be where I end up most.   Last week while surfing the channels I ended up coming across a commercial from a company called West Bend.  The West Bend I knew growing up made small kitchen appliances and certainly wasn’t in the business of creating inspirational commercials that not only sold their products but left you with a strong message.   This particular West Bend is an insurance company and their commercials center around being your best when you are faced with the worst.  I think it is a brilliant ad campaign and to follow it up with their tag line, “West Bend” “The Silver Lining Company” is even cooler.

Terry Lyles, America’s Stress Doctor and Human Performance Engineer, likes to say “Expect the best but prepare for the worst” . There are the practical applications of this thinking that we can apply to our everyday experience that helps us better cope with what ever we are facing and then there is the deeper and lasting application that can change your life.

I like to think that I have spent most of my 51 years life looking for the good in everything, that certainly was the case for the first 47 when I enjoyed incredible success and happiness in just about everything that I took on.  But over the last few years when my guard was down, I let the opinions of others influence my thinking.  When I was faced with what anyone else would consider a major issue, I no longer tackled it myself, I tried to tackle it by committee, unfortunately the committee wasn’t on the same page with me.  While I was saw the cup as half full, those that surrounding me always saw that cup as half empty and worried about all the bad stuff they expected to happen.  I had done a poor job of inspiring the troops and bringing them to the level that had always served me well.   All of sudden my knowing every situation would work out was outweighed by an army that expected it not to work out and worked hard and ultimately convinced me that in their opinion I was  not in their words a “realist”.  Funny thing though, for 47 years, my definition of being a “realist” worked pretty well for me, I made incredible amounts of money, bought my dream home, improved my dream home with more funds than I purchased it with, travelled all over the world, gave my kids everything and experience they could want and it was all easy because I knew I could create anything I wanted.  For 47 years, everything flowed to me like magic,  friends would tell me that everything I touched turned to gold and that I always landed on my feet when ever there was a down turn and you know what they were right.  Those first 47 years were incredible but it wasn’t the best I could do because I wasn’t as disciplined in regards to managing my thoughts as I needed to be.  I let the outside world seep in to my head, I let well-meaning friends and associates try to bring me back down to earth and they certainly did.

So after 47 years of living an incredibly fulfilling life, the wheels came off because I did not manage my thoughts efficiently or did they come off because the Universe needed to find a way to tell me to “kick it up a notch”  to really bring out the best that I could be.  The past 3 years were pretty horrible by anyone’s standards, losing my home of 25 years, losing many loved ones to cancer and other diseases and losing everything I had created materially during those first 47 years.   I needed the Worst, to shake me up so I could bring out the Best !  and baby you ain’t seen nothing yet !

Truly bringing out your best requires massive action and when it comes to managing your thoughts and getting your head in the right place it calls for massive infusions of “The Right Stuff”.  In my case,  the first thing I did was to quit listening to talk radio and news on TV while removing myself from the political discussion of the day.  Once you do that you realize that the least intelligent life forms on the face of the earth are our politicians and elected officials and it doesn’t matter which party they are in, they are all small thinkers focused on advancing a personal agenda.  The next thing I did was to fill my car and Ipod full of the most positive and enlightening audio material I could find.  And finally, I keep a personal written journal and a video journal to record my thoughts and to remind me of the reality I am going to create.  The next 51 years will be hundreds of times more incredible than my last 51 years.  The Universe has so much to offer and you can find it anywhere.

Let me leave you with a little story from last night while having a conversation with my son.  Another part of my massive action plan is that I have taken on additional positions ( I won’t call them jobs because I don’t see them as such)  that pretty much fill up 20 to 22 hours of each 24 hour day, 7 days  week.  One of those positions happens to be as a night manager at convenience/gas station.  I took the position because I truly wanted the opportunity to interact with people and see if I could make a difference in the lives of people who visit that store when I am there.  I didn’t even care what the position paid, I am not even sure I asked.  I think the person who hired me wasn’t sure what to think as he told me I was way over qualified for the position and I told him that was a good thing that I wasn’t even considering this a job.  I think he thought I was nuts, but he hired me anyway.  Back to the conversation with son who couldn’t believe his dad was going to work at a gas station.  He told he could get me a job working at the place he does unloading trucks and stocking shelves overnight for twice the money.  He also told me that how much you make is much more important than whether you enjoy what you are doing…really ?  The wisdom of a 22 year old ! and an illustration of how one person’s reality is totally different from someone else’s.  The bottom line is I look at everything I do as an adventure, as new experience, as something that may take places I have never been before.  Life is all about experiences and finding new and interesting experiences is most of the fun.  I wonder how much more people would enjoy life if they looked at every single thing they do as adventure that may take them well beyond what most people would think.     Whatever you do, let “The Worst..Bring out the Best” and soon you will understand that the worst is what gave you the best.

The Lost Art of Dining with Friends

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Last night my wife and I had a terrific evening dining with my American Legion Baseball Coach (33 years ago)and his wife.  While we arrived at the restaurant fairly early we found ourselves all alone at the end of the evening in the dining room.  Usually when I go out to dinner with anyone whether it is my wife, friends or business associates it seems like I am watching the time to make sure the whole affair is limited to 60 minutes or less.  I am not sure where the 60 minute time limit came from but I know that I have felt bound by those time limits for most of my life.  The 60 minute self-imposed time limit was most apparent to me during my travels to Europe from 2002 – 2006 especially in Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France.  My wife and I would go into a restaurant, eat our food and would be ready to leave after 45 minutes but it usually would take almost another hour to get our check so we could finally pay and leave.  This was interesting because it forced us to start talking and relaxing while we waited for the check to come.   The more we dined out in Europe the more we noticed that everyone else came to dinner for the entire evening.  Now I know this is not unique to Europe and I know there are many people in the United States that spend more time at dinner than I do but I believe in the US the opposite is true at most restaurants, even if you want to make a long evening of it, the wait staff is usually quick to bring your check, ask if you need a box and clean up your table to hurry you out the door so the table can be freed up for someone else.

Last evening, we really spent the entire evening visiting so much so that it took me almost two hours to eat my French Dip sandwich.  I can only really recall two such evenings in the last 10 years where I truly spent the evening dining with friends or should I say visiting with friends and the dining was secondary.  Last night was fantastic as I had a chance to talk to my coach about the old days and spent a little too much time telling him and his wife about everything I had done personally.  I felt bad for talking so much but I think I just wanted to let him know everything I had done with my life and that he was an inspiration for my success and an example for me to remember when I felt sorry for myself or was facing a tough challenge in my life. 

The other all night dinner I recall took place in Cannes, France where I was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner with a group of guys, all of them English who were a big part of the British Invasion (Music) of the 60’s and 70’s.  The group consisted of former managers, agents , publicists and record company executives who had been involved with all the huge names of the era, Janis Joplin, The Who, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Ozzie Osbourn, ABBA and more.  I spent the evening listening to all of their stories and thinking that a book or movie could have been made just about our dinner conversation.   I remember just sitting back and listening and enjoying everything so much.  Several times during the course of the evening, I got apologies from people in our group who would say to me “I hope we are not boring you with our stories”, they actually thought no one else would be interested in what they had to say, but I couldn’t get enough.  The restaurant we were at had only two tables, the large table we were at with our group of 6 and a smaller table for 2.  The only customers of that restaurant that evening was our group of 6 and the couple that sat at the other table.  Our dinner and evening lasted at least 6 hours and the couple dining at the other table was there most of the evening as well.   The wait staff never tried to move us along, they simply brought more food and wine as the evening progressed.

The “Art of Dining with Friends” may not be lost everywhere in America but from my experience there are very few people who still go out with friends and enjoy an extended evening of really enjoying their friends company just at a restaurant.   After last evening and after thinking about what I observed in Europe, I plan on tossing out my 60 minute dinner limit, start searching for restaurants that would enjoy and accommodate a group of friends who linger at their table late into the evening, I am also going to toss out the movie that commonly was a part of going out to “Dinner and a movie” and of course I am going to start tracking down friends to join us for long leisurely dinners.

In these days of “Social Networks” that are primarily electronic, I believe that returning to evening long dinners with friends could really help people connect face to face with people again.   I am not knocking the electronic “social networks” as I think they are terrific way to reconnect with old friends so you can make plans for an evening of Dining with Friends.   So what’s the point of me writing this particular entry ?  I guess I am just trying to say that too many of us spend way too much time isolated at home or rushed to meet some self-imposed time limit on a meal, I guess that is why we have so much “fast food” in the United States.  Now I am thinking maybe I am the only one that hadn’t taken time to spend a long evening with friends, maybe it is only me that had lost the art of dining with friends, regardless I am going to make a point of at least one evening a month where all I do is find a group of friends that will join me to eat, drink and visit for entire evening.