Wisdom for Big Challenges

Last night, I was in another great Morehead-Cain Zoom session with one of my MC cousins, this time George Hodgin, UNC Class of 09, who began his short chat by describing an experience he once had at 2 AM, 60 miles from the Pakistan border, hearing the crunch of gravel under his boots as he led a group through the dark for his first time as team leader. He was in his twenty-fifth year, a quarter of a century young, and for most of us what happened in the next seconds would have aged us through the rest of that century. His night vision goggles picked up a shape ahead, what turned out quickly to be a human shape that instantly turned and started spraying George and his men with automatic weapon fire. That was the challenging start of a mission of overwhelming success that ended with George getting his entire SEAL team back to base completely uninjured and ready for the next adventure.

After seven years as a SEAL, George decided to go to Stanford Business School. But the change at first was tough. As a SEAL he had experienced a daily sense of fulfillment from a clear purpose and with great camaraderie. That wasn’t all reproduced automatically in a business school setting. At first, he didn’t have a compelling, clear sense of purpose, or great partners in the challenge like the guys who had been on his team. He learned some important advice for anything we do. Last night he put it like this: “Find a partner to pick you up when you fall.” It’s Biblical, and it’s the principle used by Batman when he sheds the loner MO to take on a sidekick known to us as Robin.

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him who is alone when he falls; for he does not have another to help him." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

Speaking of the Dark Knight, in a masterful series on Batman entitled “Hush”, superstar writer Jeph Loeb quotes Aristotle: “Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” Friends, colleagues, comrades, good partners: This may be the most commonly overlooked secret to success in anything we do. It’s no surprise to me that the oldest western war epic, The Iliad, is really about the power of partnership and what happens when it isn’t properly maintained. The Odyssey is then about the power of purpose and its importance to help us get through the greatest difficulties we face.

George’s favorite professor at Stanford one day wrote this on the board:

"Regret for what you have done can be tempered by time. Regret for what you haven't done is inconsolable."

It lit a fire. George needed a new sense of purpose and new partners, or at least a challenge from a friend. One of his SEAL pals was struggling with injuries and the opioids used to treat his pain. The man wanted to use the known properties of marijuana as a safer alternative, but there wasn’t any medically available. And doctors couldn't even do legal research on what might work. So my MC cousin quickly went on to succeed at Stanford Biz, a daunting task in itself, did a tremendous amount of research on the health relevant properties of marijuana, and has now taken on a new major challenge: to become the first federally approved legal provider of medical marijuana, nationwide. But federal agencies can be tougher than the Taliban. They’re uninterested. They drag their feet. They produce obstacles instead of solutions. But George says, “I have to be an optimist.” It turns out that SEALS don’t quit. No surprise there. And they’re opportunistic, always looking for the hidden doorway, or the covered path forward that others might not see. And I learned a few other things in our session.

There’s a common misconception that Navy SEALS are successful because they’re very good at doing enormously complex things. But George says the truth is rather that they do the basics best. I like the old football analogy. It’s not trick plays. It’s being the best at blocking, tackling, catching, and running. Be better than anyone else at the basics. That's the secret.

And you don’t have to go out on night patrol in Afghanistan to experience fear. There’s plenty of it readily available in our business lives, and in our personal affairs. George says the key is to manage it and your other emotions well. “You are not your emotions.” You are the person who can manage and control your emotions. But fear can be instructive. When you feel it, ask what’s causing it, exactly. It may be able to speak to you on a deep level about something you need to notice or address. Then act on it or move beyond it.

George points out that having pre-established procedures, like a checklist, is immensely helpful. When you’re doing combat scuba and you suddenly hear a boat above you that’s not supposed to be there and there's an instant visceral reaction that could get in your way, you need to fall back on procedures and checklists. Yeah, thanks George, I’ve had exactly the same experience. Just kidding. But we all have our own shocks and reactions of fear from things we didn’t expect. It always goes better if you have something to fall back on, some rehearsed way of responding, at least inwardly.

And even in a business meeting, the 4x4x4 rule can help with anxiety or stress. Breathe in for four seconds. Hold it for four. Breathe out for four. Use your breath to calm your heart and head and center yourself for the challenge.

I love this. George gave us one of his favorite analogies. We’re almost always juggling too many balls in the air. Just don’t drop the glass one.

Don’t drop what’s actually most important, dearest, and perhaps preciously fragile, in your pursuit of any success. Know which balls can be dropped, which will bounce and be fine, and which must be protected most of all. In a great zoom session today with bankers, I mentioned this advice and mused that for most of us, those glass balls may be faith, family, or friends, perhaps proper self care, and likely our basic integrity.

George Hodgin is like Steve Jobs in taking on big challenges, problems that are as big as his heart and head, his spirit, and his talents. And he’s learned the joy of the journey. It’s not the mission accomplished that brings the delight, but the deed well done in the doing.

And I could go on. Lots. But it’s fifteen hundred hours and by the ROE, I’ve got to pull chocks right now and get outa here. The only easy day was yesterday. Hooyah.

My Morehead-Cain Weekend

I had a weekend with the most remarkable people. It was the 8th triennial Morehead-Cain Forum, bringing together over 700 Morehead-Cain Scholars from across the nation and around the world. Originally funded by John Motley Morehead III of Union Carbide fame, the Morehead-Cain Foundation exists to bring great students to UNC Chapel Hill and pay all their expenses, launching them into summer adventures and building them up during the academic year as the people they're capable of being.

No one in my family before me had ever been to college. We had farmers, truck drivers, and mechanics in the family. I grew up in an 800 square foot rented house on a street that had ditches rather than sidewalks. It seemed that most everyone on the street worked for one of the two tobacco companies in town, Liggett and Meyers or The American Tobacco Company. The dads came home in their khaki uniforms at the end of the day, weary of work and ready to rest. Durham High School nominated me for what at the time was called simply The Morehead Scholarship, now The Morehead-Cain, and I went through a local interview, a regional, and a final interview with prominent people in business, government, the military, and academia asking me hard questions about myself, my plans, and my world. My mother told me there was no money for college. The scholarship paid for everything, absolutely every expense I had, and being a Morehead got me a free six years of graduate school and a double Ph.D. at Yale, which led to a teaching career at Notre Dame and an unexpected adventure after that as a public philosopher, worldwide. Not bad for a poor kid who had been facing extremely limited prospects, and due to the trust put in me by the great people of the Morehead-Cain.

Every three years, we Morehead-Cains have an amazing weekend together full of talks and panel discussions, impromptu conversations that are utterly mind-blowing, and incredible meals. Last year, we ate dinner on center court of the Dean Dome and one of our group who founded Ancestry.com spoke, right before another of our cohort, a wonderful Broadway performer, sang. This year for our Saturday night dinner, we completely took over the UNC Football Stadium, ate in the Blue Zone where all the donors and celebrities and top leaders watch games through the huge glass walls, and then we went out into the stadium under a clear Carolina Sky in the crisp of the evening to hear another of our Morehead-Cain cousins, as we now fondly refer to each other, NC Governor Roy Cooper, speak about public service, right before a band of more cousins performed. Coop, as expected, was funny, energetic, and inspiring.

The 2018 weekend as always was full of wonder. I got to hang out with people who have made major contributions to almost every facet of modern life, across industries and nations. One old friend is about to revolutionize safety margins in medicine. Another cousin as a young woman had ridden a bicycle across Asia and some of the middle east, over closed borders and through forbidden wastelands and she lived to tell the tale. The cuz next to me at dinner told me about his 3,300 jumps out of airplanes and his subsequent heart attack. I would have had 3,300 heart attacks. Entering the men's room, a young man came up to me to say, "I read everything you write on Twitter and really love it!" I asked his name and occupation. Global Research and Optimization for Twitter. Well, then. A wonderful couple called me over to their table at another meal, and then another later in the weekend. He's the Chief Product Officer for GoDaddy, the people who host my websites, and most of the world's websites. I met a young cousin who is bringing baseball to Egypt for the first time. He showed me a picture of kids swinging bats in front of the Pyramids. I met a man whose house was built in the 13th century, but whose barn goes back much farther in time. I walked across campus and talked and laughed for half an hour with one of the most creative television directors in England, who tried to film his new comedy about Brits moving to Florida in my own town of Wilmington NC, but it was too expensive for their production budget. It turned out that it was cheaper to recreate Florida in Southern Spain. I talked to the Editor of Outside Magazine about her history of selling stories to Netflix and other movie and TV companies. I had a whirlwind conversation with a UNC senior who says she wants to solve global warming. And I think she might be able to.

And then, as in all the other Forum Weekends I've attended over the past twenty-some years, I got to give the closing talk for this magical weekend, to all those astounding people, which itself was an out of this world experience. And afterwards, on the drive home, in the words of the narrator in Willa Cather's novel, My Antonia, "I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content."

The young man, Jim Burden, goes on to say:

"I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep." (pages 19 and 20).

Amen. And it's a bonus to be a part of something entire that partakes of sun and air and goodness and knowledge while we're here. May more of us find communities of the like minded who can help us flourish, be our best, do our best, and experience that elusive state of dissolving and yet also empowering soul flourishing we often call happiness.

For more Willa Cather: https://amzn.to/2CWjcuo

When You Run, Run Free

Imagine for a moment that The Kentucky Derby is underway. It’s a beautiful day. The horses are all rounding a turn in full stride, close together, hooves pounding, sprays and clumps of dirt flying up from the track. The colors are dazzling. The jockeys’ bright silks are glistening in the sun – green, red, yellow, in solids, stripes, and patterns of diamonds. The action is frenetic. Whips pop against the horses’ flanks. You can hear the thunderous pounding on the track.

Now consider this. Many of us are those horses. We’re racing around a track we didn't create. We have jockeys on our backs urging us on, guiding us, and at times whipping us forward. If we’re good enough to win, someone gets a trophy. And when this race is over, there’s always the Preakness. And then we’ll get ready for the Belmont Stakes. And so it goes.

I was recently at a weekend retreat for incredibly high achievers. It was the triennial Morehead-Cain Forum that brings together from around the world and across the decades hundreds of men and women, along with their spouses, who have attended The University of North Carolina on a Morehead-Cain Scholarship, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious full merit scholarship. This honor pays for all college expenses, sends its recipients around the globe and across disciplines to continue their learning in the summertime, and gives them extra funds for personal and intellectual discovery along the way. Long ago, it allowed me to be the first person in my family and its history on both sides ever to go to college, something that would otherwise have been impossible for a young man like me who grew up in an eight hundred square foot rental house and could eat only two meals a day at home. I’m sure the Morehead-Cain also helped get me a full ride to graduate school at Yale, where I was able to study free of cost for six more years after college and earn a double Ph.D. in philosophy and religious studies. 

And here I was in a big room full of Morehead-Cains, as I have been over a long magical weekend every three years for the past couple of decades. Many of those around me are prominent doctors and lawyers who have changed their hometowns, or their prestigious big city practices, for the better, transforming things wherever they go. They’ve started companies, or television channels, produced movies, run global enterprises, made films, created Broadway plays, or performed in such venues. They’ve discovered, invented, created, and published. They’ve helped save the US Postal Service from insolvency, transformed blighted inner city neighborhoods, launched film festivals, fought wars, and run companies like Ancestry.com where we can get our bearings in the world by discovering our historical roots. Some of the former scholars are household names. Others quietly work behind the scenes to do incredible things that boggle the mind and help create the future for us all. 

And in one of our weekend sessions, we were discussing throughout small breakout groups how we define success. In two of the groups I sat in, it became clear to me, hearing everyone else speak, that we all got to college as great young race horses who knew how to win. And we all had small but powerful jockeys on our backs – the hopes and expectations of our families, the pressures of our peers, and our own needs for praise and accomplishment, along with various other forces that pushed us and prodded us to run faster, and always faster. As a result, we had indeed won lots of races and garnered vast arrays of trophies.

But at some point, it seemed, most of the older achievers in the room were starting to ask new questions. Do I want a jockey on my back? Am I running a race that I feel compelled to run or that I choose to run? Am I enjoying the process, or is it all for the water trough and big feedbag at the end?

As I listened to my esteemed colleagues speak of their lives in a vast array of very different terms, this vivid image came to me to organize most of what I was hearing. Are we content to run someone else’s race, on their track, for the entirety of our lives? Or is there perhaps a time to leave the winner’s circle at those venues and find our own paths?

Are we prepared to follow our hearts and go our own way, even if there’s no one to hand out a trophy as a result of what we do? Are we free enough in our inner selves to set our own standards, find our own goals, and pursue dreams that are distinctively ours, outside the glare and glamour of the track where everyone gathers? That’s a key to what I call true success.

There’s actually nothing wrong with running on someone else’s track, as long as that’s what we truly enjoy and freely want to do, and as long as there’s no bright smocked jockey pushing and forcing and prodding us along. We need to shake off the blinders and bits that have been constraining us, and make sure we’re finding our own way and doing what we do because it’s truly ours to accomplish and contribute to the world.

It was still a day away from when I would stand in front of all these successful people from around the world and close the weekend with my own session on “Wisdom for the Journey.” And I had other things to say. But as I sat in the final summation around the room of our small group discussions, I was moved to raise my hand and share these simple thoughts. And when I did, the great thoroughbreds in the room broke into spontaneous applause – something that surprised me. But then I realized that we had touched a nerve, and articulated a feeling.  The only smart bet for true success is that when you run, you need to run free, and stay true to your deepest self.

Image and Reality

I turned on the radio the other day, and the first words I heard on my local NPR station were something like this:

Yeah, well, when I started to get better known, and, really, sort of famous, somebody told me my wife was worried it would all go to my head. As soon as I heard that, I had my people call her to reassure her. For some reason, it didn't work.

I had to laugh. In my own adventures as a public philosopher, I've even had such experiences. I think it was after doing some television commercials for Disney, and an appearance on Regis and Kathy Lee, back in the day of its peak popularity on ABC, followed by a session with Matt Lauer on the NBC Today Show, that my wife gave me a little blue button to pin on my shirt that said, "Almost Famous Person." I think she wanted both to celebrate those improbably experiences with me, and to remind me diplomatically that I was still solidly on the "ordinary person" side of the line in our culture of fame and instant celebrity.

My workout partner sometimes goes to GoodWill stores to look for old books. He recently gave me a novel set in North Carolina and UNC Chapel Hill, beginning in 1954, and then spanning a couple of decades, called Everybody's All American. It was published in 1981 by the prominent sports writer Frank Deford. It's about a great UNC football player who becomes a legend, and almost a myth - The Grey Ghost they call him. He's much larger than life because of his natural talents and tremendous exploits as a running back on the football field. People treat him differently. His girlfriend is the most beautiful woman anyone has ever seen. Everyone also treats her differently, both because of her physical attributes, and of course, since she's with The Ghost. They are a couple who bring larger-than-life glamour and a certain electricity with them wherever they go.

The Ghost, Gavin Grey, never seems quite comfortable with the way people relate to him during his glory days. And yet, when it eventually ends and all goes away, he's desperate to return to those times, or to recreate some measure of it all. He goes to the pros. He flourishes, but then he's injured. They retire his jersey. And he falls from Olympus. He finds quickly that he just can't deal with ordinary life. He shows that he's become addicted to the legend - to the excitement and the action, and especially to the glory of doing something with his distinctive talents, and doing it exceptionally well. This addiction then spirals into others and eventually takes him down, in an act of tragic desperation.

What does a teacher do without a class, a judge without a courtroom, a doctor without patients? Most of us have a situation in our lives where we feel useful, helpful to others, and appreciated for what we do. If that situation comes to and end, as it does at retirement, or for empty nesters, with the departure of a child, or perhaps when business wanes, how do we fare? Are we able to reinvent ourselves and launch into a new adventure, appreciating what's past, but looking forward to what's ahead? Is the source of our self image and our self esteem deep enough to withstand a loss of great affirmation and any positive attention we've enjoyed? Or have we become addicted to something in ways we ourselves may not easily identify or understand? 

The plight of the college star who graduates, or the pro athlete who retires young, of the musician whose records are no longer the hits they once were, or the actor who now doesn't get the parts he long enjoyed - these scenarios are well known. Deford does a great job in his book of describing one, in a compelling story of loss and diminishment. But smaller versions of the same problem can come into any life. We all experience hills and valleys. We need to learn to live happily in the valleys, as well as high on the hills. Life is all about ups and downs. Without an inner balance, a center of philosophical equanimity, and a sure place for our own self understanding, we can suffer greatly from those times when the tide turns and the spotlight shifts.

What the Grey Ghost needed to realize, and what we all benefit from knowing, is that the true values of life amount to an inner game that may or may not be manifested in outer recognition or affirmation. We can enjoy that outer good when it comes, but it's best to do so without needing it or becoming addicted to it. This resilience of spirit isn't easy to attain. But those who have it are greatly blessed.

Create an Extraordinary Life

Create an Extraordinary Life. That's the motto of the Morehead-Cain Foundation, the people who sent me to college. And it's piece of advice that each of us should heed.

No one in my family background, so far as I could tell, had ever been to college. My relatives were mechanics, truck drivers, and farmers who went to work, or served their country in the military, right out of high school. When I was a senior at Durham High, my mother told me there was no money for college. Then, out of the blue, or to be more precise, the Carolina Blue, I was nominated for what at the time was called a Morehead Scholarship, now a Morehead-Cain. After writing an application and going to three interviews, they told me I would have a completely free education at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I soon learned that I also had a magic ticket to meet all the best people, work with the top professors, and follow my instincts wherever they might lead. The scholarship was a doorway, and a long red carpet, that would guide me to an extraordinary life.

I love the way the Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘extraordinary.’ It uses terms like ‘exceptional,’ ‘surprising,’ and ‘unusually great.’ By contrast, the word ‘ordinary’ gets this treatment:  

"Regular, normal, customary, usual, not exceptional, not above the usual, commonplace…"

There is, in principle, absolutely nothing wrong with what’s ordinary – except when it’s also poor-to-mediocre, or significantly less than our best. But that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? That’s just what ordinary most ordinarily is.

The ordinary life is typically one defined by the past rather than by the possible, by other people’s expectations rather than our own aspirations, by what’s easy rather than what’s right, and by always considering the safe path rather than the best one. Ordinary efforts seldom yield exceptional results.  
    
Why should we settle for ordinary when so much more is available? Something extraordinary beckons to us all, and simply awaits our passionate, determined response. But we don’t have to answer the call alone. Some of the most exceptionally wise people in all of human history have left us incredible insights on how to create and live an extraordinary life. That's why I urge people all the time to read the great practical philosophers of the past - people like Lao Tsu, Confucius, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Hadrat Ali, Balthasar Gracian, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. They are some of our best guides to what an extraordinary life can be, for each of us.

This past weekend, the Morehead-Cain Foundation celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of its wonderful Associate Director, Megan Mazzochi, who arrived at her job in Chapel Hill at a time when the foundation had no computers and was debating whether it needed a fax machine. For three decades, she's helped waves of young students, such as I once was, to enter the doorway of an extraordinary life. She and the great director Chuck Lovelace, with their remarkable staff, have made extraordinary things possible for more people than they can ever know. They've encouraged and supported me in every way imaginable throughout my career as a university professor and now as a public philosopher. They've shown me in vivid ways how we can each live extraordinary lives while helping others to do the same. They inspire me in an ongoing way. And through their work with future leaders in every facet of our society, they give me an additional source of hope for the future.

Megan at the Morehead-Cain Foundation, The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Like Megan Mazzochi, like Chuck Lovelace and the exceptional staff of the Morehead-Cain Foundation, and like the great thinkers of the ages who have left their wisdom behind for us to use, let's all try to play a role in helping others to live their own version of an extraordinary life, as we do so, likewise, to our own great benefit.

Oh, and for a short video of people congratulating Megan and thanking her for all her hard work over the decades, plus, at the end, a little country music style ditty I composed and played in honor of her truly super extraordinary extraordinariness, click here.