Short and Sweet

Succinct Substance

If I ever am asked to make a list of the top ten things I’ve eaten that gave me peak pleasure, I always have to include a dessert that I can’t even remember the name of. It was at an almost deserted resort during the off season in Jamaica. At a former plantation called Sign Great House, the dessert was some kind of solid chocolate concoction that was about an inch wide and long and two inches high. Every bite was exquisite, and though not a large amount to consume, it was totally satisfying, and obviously memorable.

I remember a brief conversation I had with noted author and anthropologist, Ashley Montagu, at a psychology conference in the 1970s in which he said that all great discoveries and the answers to all profound questions were usually simple things. I have found this to be true in life and love and even politics. In relationships, for instance, the most solid advice I ever received and put into a practice as a guideline for success was for the man of any couple to be willing give the woman whatever she wants. This is based on the wisdom that the foundation of any relationship is a happy woman. Everything else springs from that simple well.

In politics and world affairs, the simple solution to almost everything is “Let’s sit down and find common ground and be willing to negotiate and each compromise a little.” Sounds easy.  It isn’t–but it is simple. Sometimes simpleminded humans find it difficult to carry out the simplest solutions and tasks.

In terms of prosperity, the simplest answer and mantra is to, “Find what you most love doing and then do it with total passion and commitment.” This is the basic law of attraction, the short and sweet answer to fulfillment and material abundance. It’s the essence of Moneylove and every other prosperity philosophy or teaching.

I suppose the point I am making is that in a world overwhelmed with complexity and complication, the path through all the clutter is often a direct line to the simplest of answers. Sometimes we dismiss these because they seem too easy, too simple, too obvious. But in our hearts and in our gut, we usually know these simple answers are the right ones. We just need to focus our minds to accept and enjoy the shortest, sweetest, most obvious answer.

Jerry

The Happy Truth About The Economy

Some Simple and Perhaps Unpalatable Truths

Since Rick Santorum’s dropping out today makes it certain it will be a Romney-Obama choice election, with the economy playing a major role in the campaign, it may be time to take our collective heads out of the sand when it comes to what is really going on with the economy.

For over thirty years now, I have been talking about basic structural changes in our economic structure as we move from a manufacturing economy to an information/high tech economy. I have not been alone in discussing this, but the politicians and a majority of the population have not been listening, which is exactly why we seem to be in an economic mess right now. I say “seem to be” because the mess is largely illusory, fostered by politicians in the opposition, whichever party that happens to be.

In Moneylove Seminars in the 1980s, I talked about the best opportunity for prosperity being one that involves leaving the job market. I stressed that in order for a company to pay an employee a certain salary, they had to be able to make five times that salary as the result of the employees work production. This constituted, I suggested, a lot of wasted energy on the part of the employee, and was not a very fair arrangement. It has gotten even less so as technological breakthroughs have made companies more efficient and workers even more productive, so that many firms lighten their load by getting rid of employees, thus contributing to the joblessness problem. But it’s not really a problem of joblessness, it’s a problem of no one figuring out how to effectively use the increased productivity of workers to the advantage of those workers.

In 2007, according to a report just yesterday by The Wall St. Journal, the revenue per employee at Standard and Poor’s 500 companies was $378,000–and in 2011 it had increased to $420,000 per employee. For an employee making $42,000 a year, this means the company is making ten times what they are paying that person on that individual’s work output.

This is not economic catastrophe, it is unfair distribution of wealth–and confirms many of the complaints of the Occupy Movements. As David Brooks wrote yesterday in the New York Times,  two years ago President Obama promised to double U.S. exports in five years. It now looks like we will reach that goal even sooner. America’s export revenues are expected to surge for the foreseeable future.

Another positive factor in my optimistic economic outlook is one that means outsourcing will slow down and we will be much more competitive in the global economy. We lead the world in the development, design, and production of robots and super smart software. This means factories with workers on very low wages crowded together will not longer be able to compete with our manufacturing companies, operating with fewer, more productive, and a lot better paid workers.

Of course, the more efficiently American companies are run, the more workers need to get away from the old paradigms, need better education and training to be available to the many higher tech jobs that are now screaming for applicants, and will continue to do so for years to come. And need to have more support, encouragement, and training programs that will allow them to follow the true American Dream: being in business for one’s self.

The export boom alone guarantees America is not in economic decline, but more productive companies needing less actual bodies to do the producing has created a major challenge. It is the candidate who talks about education, training programs, green energy, infrastructure and programs to develop more entrepreneurs who will be in synch with what we actually need. Not the candidate who talks about lowering corporate tax rates for companies already making record high profits, and lowering taxes on millionaires and billionaires. They’re doing just fine–they’re not the Americans needing retraining for the new economy. I will leave it up to you to decide which candidate and political party has the best policies for our changing economic reality.

Jerry

I Got Plenty of Nothing

The Philosophy of Embracing What You Don’t Know

I got this one from the amazing Sara Blakely, just added to the Forbes list of the billionaires of the world as the youngest (41) self-made woman to make the list. She’s the inventor of Spanx, and creator of the whole industry known as shapewear. I feature her among the billionaires I think we can all learn from on my latest Moneylove Club audio. This fits in with my Law of Attraction, which I discuss on page 5 in my 38-page Moneylove Manifesto, which you can download free by clicking on the cover in the righthand margin of this page.

It also fits in with a wonderful teachable moment I had over thirty years ago. Five women millionaire entrepreneurs were on a TV talk show, perhaps Phil Donohue. They included cosmetics tycoon Mary Kay Ash and Ruth Handler, who invented the Barbie doll and then went on to head the huge Mattel toy company. All five women agreed that the secret of success they all had in common was that they didn’t know enough to realize how impossible it was to accomplish what they were determined to accomplish. Unlike men, when they were younger, they weren’t indoctrinated with all the rules of how to create and run a business, and therefore were able to innovate without the restrictions of preconceived notions.

Sara Blakely put it like this,

What you don’t know can become your greatest asset.

I got the title for this post from the Gershwyn opera, Porgy & Bess:

I got plenty of nothing
And nothing is plenty for me.

Back in 1990, TIME essayist Lance Morrow did a piece on how important it was in the age of information overload, just starting then, to empty one’s mind of unnecessary, inhibiting, and cluttering ideas and information. One sentence of his became one of my favorite quotes, and I used it in the Moneylove Manifesto:

“The mind takes its shape from what it holds, and therefore, Zen-like, sometimes grows more graceful because of what it has kept out.”

There was an old and very popular radio show called, It Pays to Be Ignorant. It was a spoof of quiz shows, running from 1942 to 1951 and even spent a few years as a TV show. Panelists would be asked very dumb questions and come up with wrong and funny answers. Questions like, “For what meal do you wear a dinner jacket?” But I am being serious when I say it sometimes pays to be ignorant of the way things have always been done. In recent generations, young boys have been taught to be good, get a good job and stick to it for forty or so years and the company will take care of you and provide you with a good pension so you can live out your golden years in comfort. I doubt any of the 1226 men and women on that current billionaires list paid any attention to that advice, and in the case of the women, they probably never even heard it.

A useful exercise might be to look back and decide what early advice you received that did not serve you well, that you would have been better off not knowing.  What haven’t you known that turned out to be an asset?

Jerry

Hurray For The Unemployed!

The Optimum Goal Is Not Getting A Job

None of the economists or politicians really have a grasp on the central issue of the current historically high unemployment rates. This is simply that we have moved past the point where working for someone else is the best option for being successful. Thirty years ago, in my prosperity seminars, I pointed out that in order for you to be worth the salary and benefits an employer paid you, your labor had to create five times that amount for the employer. I suggested it was time to cut out the middleman and get to keep a much higher proportion of your daily bread.

It’s not the deficit, unrest in the Middle East, stringent government regulations, higher taxes or higher oil prices that are shrinking the job market. And it is not only that we are not educating and training people for the skill sets needed in today’s information-oriented economy. It’s that we are not teaching students to be out on their own, creating their own wealth without the dubious benefits of an employer hiring them. Instead of teaching how to create an attractive resumé or be impressive during a job interview, we should be teaching entrepreneurship–how to thrive without the faltering crutch of a job, without the co-dependence of the employee-employer relationship. When the average CEO earns 400 times what his or her average worker earns, we should have gotten the message years ago. Of course, many have gotten this message. This is one of the reasons fewer people are actually looking for work. This is often cited as part of the problem, but it actually is part of the solution.

The  Ultimate Economic Disconnect

Here’s where we have it essentially wrong: At a time when Americans are at the height of productivity, and more and more jobs that were once performed by people are now performed by machines, robots, and computers, we are reacting by bitching about the lack of jobs. Instead, we should be celebrating the freeing up of former working drudges and drones so that they can more creatively and joyfully earn a living by being self-employed.

I know the argument is that not everyone is equipped by education, skills, or temperament to be out on their own. And it is true that worker bees will always be needed. But not nearly as many as in the past. And it’s time politicians told the truth about the massive changes in our education/preparation system required to deal with the realities of the 21st Century.

I’m amazed that I hadn’t realized the following truth before, and a bit embarrassed that I never thought it completely through. It’s simply that of all the thousands of people who have written or spoken to me over the past thirty years about the positive prosperity changes they’ve made after reading Moneylove, or listening to my tapes or audios, or attending my talks or workshops–I can’t think of a single one who attributed their success to being able to get a job, or a higher salary or promotion. In fact, the ultimate phrase that indicated to me that they really were on a path to more prosperity in their lives was simply, “I finally was able to quit my job.”

Jerry

The Female Factor

Success Comes From Giving Women What They Want

Some years ago, I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life–that the best way to have a successful love relationship is to give the woman whatever she wants. The premise is simple but potent: a happy woman is at the heart of any successful relationship. For dubious and skeptical men, I have this one suggestion:  try it out as a sociological experiment and see if the results don’t amaze you in terms of not only getting back what you want, but wondrous female gifts beyond your fondest dreams.

I see now, however, that the terms of this knowledge have to be extended well beyond the realm of relationships and into business and politics. We see some of the Republican presidential candidates getting into trouble by not being willing to give women what they want, like control over their own bodies. And what triggered this essay was a news item I saw on Politico.com:

Carly Fiorina, National Republican Senatorial Committee Vice-Chairman, on Friday condemned Rush Limbaugh for calling law student Sandra Fluke a “slut.” Fiorina said, “That language is insulting, in my opinion. It’s incendiary…”

What I find amazing about this item is that Carly Fiorina is the first Republican of national prominence to come out so strongly against Limbaugh’s insensitive, bullying attack on an articulate and attractively smart young Georgetown law student. Arguably, Carly Fiorina is the most successful business person now in politics, as the former CEO of Hewlitt-Packard. While she did lose her Senate bid in California to incumbent Barbara Boxer, she is an upcoming political force to be reckoned with. And her putting Rush Limbaugh in his place as a small-minded blowhard won’t hurt her future aspirations.

More importantly, however, this got me to thinking about a number of reports I’ve seen in the past few years about women in business, especially in the upper realms of business. There is much information, including a research study at Harvard, that shows having women on corporate boards increases profitability and stock prices. But the most provocative part of this involves the idea–backed up by some solid statistical data–that suggests testosterone may be a negative factor when an overabundance of it is present in the boardroom. The bottom line is that the information suggests that higher levels of the male hormone lead to bad decision-making. Women on a board may be just the ameliorating factor needed to counter this negative effect. Of course, a lot more research is called for. However,  just the fact that time and again it has been demonstrated that giving woman more upper management status leads to more financial success should help change their under-representation on corporate boards.

And it goes well beyond this. Men, we can be more successful at whatever we do in the world if we focus on giving women what they want. Especially in whatever skills, services, information, or products we offer and expect or hope to receive money in exchange for. Women have more money than men, and tend to be more loyal customers.

In terms of having women as business colleagues, just the fact that they have not received the antiquated business model indoctrination most men get at an early age makes them more able and willing to think outside the box. I admit I am biased in this, having come to the conclusion at a very early age that women are not only equal to men in many endeavors, but often superior. And I’ve acted on this belief by usually choosing women literary agents, doctors, dentists, and coaches. All other things being equal, I would always prefer to partner with a woman in any project requiring innovation and rational decision-making. Not to mention how much better it makes the workplace look and smell. (Okay, I apologize for that one–I just couldn’t resist!)

Jerry

75 Years of Think And Grow Rich

The Ultimate Prosperity Book’s Diamond Jubilee

It was 1937 and we were in the midst of The Great Depression. Americans were broke and many were homeless and going hungry. Imagine an author saying that someone’s economic status had to do with their mental attitude. I imagine what prevented Napoleon Hill from being ridden out of a town on a rail was that his ideas about creating wealth were inspired and mentored by the richest industrialist in the world, Andrew Carnegie. In the past 75 years, the book has been constantly in print in many languages and has sold tens of millions of copies. It almost singlehandedly spawned the self-help book and motivational business.

I like to wait until about a week before my newest audio for the Moneylove Club gets recorded to come up with the theme, and I like to come up with some new idea or format for each edition. It was just by accident that I came upon some quotes by Napoleon Hill, and then realized that Think And Grow Rich was published in 1937, so this was its 75th anniversary. What better subject to talk about than some of Napoleon Hill’s wealth creation ideas with my own comments and suggestions on how to apply them to today’s economy.

I always like to read the first sentence in a book I am about to read or study. In the case of Think And Grow Rich, the first sentence really sets the tone for the whole book, and just by itself could constitute an entire prosperity seminar. Read it a few times and see if you don’t agree:

“Truly thoughts are things, and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches or other material objects.”

I enjoy speculating on what might have happened if certain circumstances had occurred in a slightly different or even opposite way from how they actually happened. I wonder what impact it would have had if Andrew Carnegie hadn’t built those nearly 3000 libraries, where millions of children over the years, many of them before the invention of television or computers, gained knowledge and imagination and inspiration roaming those buildings. And what impact would it have had if the millions of people who read Think And Grow Rich actually put the ideas and strategies into practice in their lives, so that a huge wave of prosperity consciousness swept over the nation and across the world.

What if the above opening sentence from the book became a universal mantra that every man, woman, and child said and believed as they woke up every morning? Of course, we could speculate on and on–but one action rooted in the physical world and the present moment would be for you to start memorizing that sentence and sharing it with others and repeating it over and over again to yourself. And you don’t have to speculate–you’ll actually be there to see the results.

Jerry

The Presidential Election Prosperity Game

Seriously, folks….

Some people reading this will just assume I am kidding, trying to make a satirical point about the current campaign. I suppose this is understandable, considering my background in writing many cartoon gags for major magazines, along with stand-up material, and my recently previewed one man show combining humor, inspiration, and revelation about my prison experience. But while I am smiling as I write this, and hope you find it amusing, I am also seriously suggesting you can positively affect your prosperity consciousness by playing the Presidential Election Moneylove Prosperity Game I unveil here for the first time.

Though it could easily be converted to a drinking game, as a non-drinker, I prefer to use it to add not only fun to the process of following the next nine months of political pregnancy, but a way to use the often frivolous campaign rhetoric to enrich ourselves. It’s very simple and can also be challenging, especially if you are resistant to using money in exchange for pleasure in difficult economic times.

Many prosperity teachers have adopted money games I have created for my Moneylove Seminars over the past thirty years, and all of these games are designed, as is this new one, to give those playing some new perspectives on prosperity, and new experiences in the actual handling of money. An additional benefit of this election campaign game is that it is a way to playfully look at what everyone is predicting will be one of the nastiest political battles in American history. We are already seeing that with the unprecedented attacks the Republican primary candidates are making on each other.

This game also fits in with my basic optimistic philosophy. “So, Jerry, we are looking at a really negative political skirmish in both the current primary season and the coming general election campaign, as well as facing some tremendously difficult challenges with both the U.S. and global economy–what do you suggest we do about all that?”  ”Well, folks, my suggestion is that since there is really little any one of us can do about it except let it play out and then vote to elect the  person we think will be best equipped to deal with the major issues–we should have as much fun and use this period in as positive a way as possible to enhance, enrich, and enlighten our daily lives.”

And it doesn’t matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, or Green Party member–or even, as I sometimes have been leaning toward, None Of The Above. So lets get to the game.

The Moneylove Election Prosperity Game

As I said, it’s very simple–as the best games often are. First, you need to find a place to pile up some cash over the next months; some specific drawer, container, receptacle that will hold potentially hundreds of single dollar bills. Next, you just have to pay attention to the campaign rhetoric. Whether  you read it online, in blogs or in magazines and newspapers, listen to it on radio or podcasts, or watch it on TV or your computer–or even attend live political speeches and events. Using the following formula, you simply deposit the appropriate amount of dollar bills in your chosen vessel.

1. Every time a candidate criticizes another candidate by name, deposit one dollar bill.

2. Every time a candidate exaggerates or tells a lie about himself or an opponent, deposit two dollars.

3. Every time a candidate says something really stupid or even crazy, deposit three dollar bills.

That’s it–I told you it was simple. By the end of October, you should have amassed a substantial collection of dollar bills. And you have all these months to decide how you will celebrate, no matter who wins the election. Perhaps you will have enough to take you and your significant other out to a fancy dinner, or perhaps even a luxury weekend trip. If you really are a political junkie and read and watch a lot of the campaign, you may even be able to spring for a cruise. As long as you exchange those dollar bills for something that brings  you pleasure, something that creates some extra fun in your life, and something that makes the election a lighthearted, positive event in your life, whether the result exhilarates or disappoints you.

Some Variations

Not being someone who embraces rigid rules, I suggest you feel free to come up with any variations to my game that feel right. You can vary the amounts, using higher denomination bills, especially if you feel that will challenge some of your negative beliefs about using money in playful ways. You can also widen the scope by also following Congressional races, or even local contests for mayor, governor, etc.

Happy Campaign Season!

Jerry

Deeper Truth for Wider Success

A Lesson Presidential Candidates Could Learn

“Aloof.” “Out of touch.” “No Passion.” “A stick.” “Can’t connect with regular people.”

These are some of the comments and criticisms one hears about some of the current field of presidential candidates gearing up for the 2012 election, including even President Obama, who seems to give great speeches, but has trouble relating in small groups at a human level.

My Cure For Candidate Disconnect

Coincidentally, or perhaps serendipitously, I may have found a solution for these difficulties some of the candidates have in relating to voters. As the campaign begins in earnest, even though the Republicans are still picking their nominee, and the primary debates are revealing some of these deficiencies to a wider audience than usual, a 1980s tape program of mine reminded me of some answers to this very challenge. It’s on a segment called Prosperous Speaking from my bestselling motivational tape album, Moneylove, produced through Nightingale-Conant and no longer available (except in used copies offered on eBay and other sites).

The coincidence is that, just as this issue is becoming more commonly discussed among pundits, I was deciding on my  newest program for my monthly Moneylove Club audio (see details of club by clicking on the Join Moneylove Club link at the top of this page). I am in the process of converting that earlier tape album into a digital mp3 file format. My favorite track from that program was the one on speaking, so I decided to create an annotated audio version of it for my subscription members as this month’s offering. I included the original tape track, broken up into cogent segments followed by some new ideas and comments I added on. In listening to the final edit before sending it out, I realized one three minute segment really could really help those candidates who seem to need more skill at connecting on a human level.

I really believe that if anyone just listened to this short audio segment and started applying it whenever he or she had to speak to another person, a small group, or a large audience, it would change the dynamic in a positive, more impactful way. Listen yourself and see if  you don’t agree. And feel free to pass it on to your friends and any candidate you happen to encounter. It starts out with the original material, followed by my new comments.

http://MoneyloveBlog.com/GilliesOnSpeakingTruth.mp3

In an increasingly depersonalized world, the more we can reach out and touch someone, or many someones, with our personal true stories, the more personal power we will manifest.

Happy Speaking!

Jerry

Don’t Be An Iffing Idiot!

Thoughts of “What If” In Your Head

My latest “what if” thought was “What if I wrote a post about what ifs?” This was inspired by a beautiful woman friend who commented on Facebook that thoughts of “what ifs” were running around in her head. I don’t know if these were troubling “what ifs” or uplifting ones. But it got me thinking, and the phrase I use as my title above just popped into my head. It’s serendipitous and spontaneous mind eruptions like this that allow me to sometimes think of myself as an iffing genius.

We all have what ifs pop up from time to time, and these are colored by what is going on in our lives at the time, and whether we come from a basic emotional foundation of optimism or pessimism. And some of us swing back and forth between those two states. My own life model, which I am elaborating on in the prison memoir I am now writing–as well as the one man show I recently presented in a short workshop form at San Francisco’s famed Marsh Theatre–is to get the negative what ifs out of the way to make room for the positive ones. A way I do this is by my old Moneylove strategy of drowning out the negative little voice in my head, the one Buddhists call “monkey mind,” and I call simply Stanley, with a sea of positive voices.

Translated into a What If format, this means dealing with the worst case scenario before moving on to the best case scenarios. At least in my life, I find there may be one huge worse case possibility, but many best case alternatives. For instance, sitting in a cell in the depressingly dreary and dilapidated Folsom State Prison, I could easily conjure up a what if scenario that had me fading, losing my creative powers, emerging from incarceration a broken man as so many fellow inmates seemed destined to do. Instead, I visualized many positive What Ifs. For instance:

1. What if I could be paroled after turning my debilitating experience into an immensely positive one, so that I could inspire others into transcending their own obstacles and adversities?

2. What if I could write a bestselling book about my prison experience that was filled with humor, and wisdom, and practical strategies for anyone to use to escape their self-imposed prison sentences?

3. What if I could be a guest on Oprah and amaze her with my story?

4. What if I could be released after 12 years of incarceration looking and feeling and acting smarter, healthier, and younger than when I went in?

5. What if I could turn this experience that many viewed as tragic and catastrophic  into a spiritual and creative awakening that took me to new heights in consciousness and allowed me to leave an even larger thumbprint on the world?

Obviously, in 12 years, I came up with a lot more “what ifs,” but most were in this spirit. I didn’t run away from the bad ones, just diminished their potency by inundating my imagination with positive ones. After all, it’s all fantasy, it’s all a movie we create inside our own heads. If we take responsibility and practice accountability for our own script, cast, and artistic direction–and decide we are making an uplifting, funny, sweet, and loving film, how can it turn out other than inspiring and fun to watch?

Most What Ifs just don’t happen. And if that is so, we may as well enjoy the process itself.  I am blessed in that a lot of my good ones turned out to be true. I haven’t finished the book, but a very prestigious literary agent is excited about selling it to publishers and a possible movie producer. I may not look younger, but I feel great and it’s getting better every day. Oprah ended her powerful show, but started her own cable network, so my new What If involves her offering me my own show on that network once my book is out. And since I was already a guest on her show back when it was just on in Chicago, that is not as unrealistic a what if as it might seem. And I am feeling a much, much greater surge of creative energy than I ever did before, as well as a much greater sense of peace and joyful contentment. I turned a lot of my What Ifs into What Is.

Your Inner Feast

Each of us prepares the meal with which we feed our consciousness. If you choose healthy, delicious ingredients, and prepare them expecting it to turn out wonderful, you end up with a joyful feast. If you choose spoiled, ugly ingredients, and carelessly prepare them, you end up with food poisoning. The path you choose (and you can change this at any moment) determines whether you are an Iffing Idiot or an Iffing Genius.

Jerry

MLOs (Missed Learning Opportunities)

How Many Teachers Have You Ignored?

Is it just me, or do most of us have a past filled with lost learning opportunities? Times when we knew someone or were close to someone who could have taught us something interesting, useful, or valuable, and we just missed the boat. I guess I’m ready to admit my abject failure at taking advantage of some of these MLOs in my own life, or I wouldn’t have started this post.

I suppose one of the first such missed opportunities was learning to play a musical instrument. I don’t play any, and my father played at least six. Before he married my mother, he was a member of the famous Ferko String Band appearing in the annual Philadelphia New Year’s Mummer’s Parade, where his instrument was the banjo. He also played the banjo mandolin, accordion, guitar, harmonica, and ukulele.  He tried to teach me the guitar, but it hurt my very young fingertips and I gave up quickly. I imagine a psychologist would have a field day exploring what that said about my relationship with my father and how it affected my future life.

My grandmother spoke Russian and I could have easily learned the language in childhood, but I didn’t and to this day only speak English. I’ve talked about my 12 years in prison, but not about the fact that it would have been a great opportunity to learn Spanish from Mexican or Cuban fellow inmates. But other than a few curses, I didn’t.

Back in the mid-1990s, I lived in a commune not far from Silicon Valley and one of my housemates was a young man who wrote articles for WIRED magazine, reviewing new software. He was an expert at surfing the Internet before most people even knew it existed, and offered to guide me through its intricacies and secrets–and I wasn’t interested.

One of the great loves of my life was a yoga teacher, and I never learned a single posture. I had a French girlfriend for a year, but never learned any French (mainly because she was fluent in English and didn’t like speaking her native language outside France). I could go on and on. Considering this, it is amazing how many different things I actually have learned over the years. Looking back, I am sorry I didn’t take the time to benefit from all this additional available knowledge. I suppose this just confirms all the research that says that at the end of a life, we don’t regret what we did, but what we didn’t do.

There’s Still Time

So here’s my point: unless you are fading and faltering and on your last legs, you still have lots of time to learn lots of things. You could start by going back and making a list of perhaps 10 Things I Could Have Learned, or 10 Of My Missed Learning Opportunities. And then pick out one you are willing and able to learn at this point in your life. Another one for me is from my life just after high school, when I attended The American Foundation of Dramatic Arts. I took a one year program in radio and television broadcasting. They also had some classes on improvisation, a relatively new art form at the time. I was fascinated when I saw the students having so much fun in class, but still having a lot of my childhood shyness remaining, I did not take the risk to explore improvisation. 2012 looks like a good year to remedy that, and I am checking out some improv classes in San Francisco.

This goes to something I have long maintained, that there is no such thing as a missed opportunity, merely a delayed one.

Jerry