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Gratitude

November 14, 2022 — 7 Comments

I am deeply honored by the decision of West Point’s Library and Associate Dean Christopher D. Barth, Director of Libraries and Archives, to receive the original manuscripts of my eight books.

      Years ago, as an immature poker-playing Cadet, I often used the USMA Library not to complete required reading, but to devour novels and to study arcane archives. Meanwhile, CPT Chester Joseph Stanley Piolunek, my wounded, war-hero English prof, via To Kill a Mockingbird, was stealthily teaching me how to write.

       My modest writing collection is currently half novels and half-non-fiction. West Point later selected one from each category to become examinable required reading by West Point Cadets, to lamentably include the course that produced the lowest average grades.

West Point later forgave me my low grades and named me its first chair of character development. Now, the Academy Library has added my writing to its illustrious permanent historical collections.

       I absolutely know that only in America could a sickly, blind, self-doubting kid from a poor, broken immigrant family learn to become a novelist at a renowned service academy. Only in the USA could military service have given me skills of the spirit to strive, however imperfectly, to provide value, however small, to all others regardless of the person’s background and regardless of feelings.,

Duty Honor Country, and a Present Arms to all our veterans.

I’ll next return to How to Get Courage.

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The Big Two

September 3, 2019 — 1 Comment

We must model the behaviors we expect from others. Gandhi

We watched our grandkids happily join a playgroup along a quiet stream in the Rockies. Sticks became shovels, magic wands and light sabers. Rocks were curated gems and blocks formed a great wall. Ala Last Child in the Woods, their creativity and birds, trees and chipmunks stirred deeper meaning than bright objects that flash, beep and drug their receptive brains.

A young mom said, “I can’t wait for them to hit the Big Four. Potty trained, sleep through the night, dress themselves and eat independently.”

We laughed. The benchmarks for tired parents! But if chimps can master the Big Four, were we elevating the trivial and forgetting the higher standards?

Where was the moral element – the stuff of essential and eternal human value?

I grew up in a busted family of weeping and wounds ruled by adults who could punch but wouldn’t cook and could criticize but wouldn’t restrain their anger. Despite my fears, I joined my courageous wife in imparting The Big Two to our own children.

1. UPR: UNCONDITIONALLY AND POSITIVELY RESPECT ALL PEOPLE. Easy as a self-inflicted root canal!

I’d yell, “SHOW RESPECT!” But for that to occur, I had to respect them so they knew what respect looked like. What I modeled would be reflected back.

I’d bellow, “NO MORE TEMPER TANTRUMS!” A big Ah-ha: If I complain and carp and disrespect the world and then denounce and blame those I despise, I’m training our children to complain, carp, denounce and blame siblings, outliers, those with differing opinions and, eventually, us.

“STOP FIGHTING!” I’d yell combatively. If I mean it, then I can’t explode, ever. I had to model calm listening, peaceful compromise and self-governance despite the wily seduction of my precious anger lest I teach them that anger is the true and wise adult answer to problems.

“DON’T SAY THAT!” Meant I’d have to ditch the oaths I’d adopted as a Soldier humping hills too steep, grunting on forced marches too forced, suffering weather too insufferable and subsisting on tinned food too tinny.

“SIT UP AND BE POLITE!” Meant I had to pay exquisite attention to immature children instead of tending to my comfort-seeking self and trivia-dripping screens. For them to listen, I had to listen. To invite respect, I had to be respectful. If I desired peace, I had to stop making war on what triggered my emotions. To hear happy words, I actually had to be happy – a condition I controlled more than I knew.

Is it that simple? Yup.

2. HELP OTHERS DO THE HIGHEST MORAL ACTION, the HMA. To grow happy and truly successful kids, I need to do the Highest Moral Action despite discomfort or risk to self-interest. I need the guts to dial back my career hungers and ramp-up love of my family lest I become not, too cool for school, but too stressed to love.

It’s easy to overwork – for external kudos and money – and damage our most tender, interior relationships – the true and worthy subjects of love.

Parenting challenged me to look at myself and my true core values – not the ones I claimed, but the ones I was living. I waited too long to accept The Big Two, but our children say they’re thankful that I did. Few things cause greater happiness than seeing them guiding their own children toward right living by modeling UPR and Doing the HMA.

What would happen today if you replaced your natural impulsive anger with intentional courageous patience and the personal strength of attentive listening?

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Belichick & Dr. King?

March 1, 2019 — 1 Comment
New England quarterback Tom Brady and Coach Bill Belichick

BELICHICK, DR. KING & UPSIDE DOWN VALUES. How do the hated Patriots rule the NFL? Jerry Rice overcame poor speed with harder work. Fred Astaire was not a great dancer but a great rehearser.[i] Tom Brady, maybe The Greatest of All Time, has won more Super Bowls and MVPs than Wheaties has flakes, yet he opts to rank only 15th in QB pay.

“Kid,” said YMCA Coach Tony, “yur upside-down. Ya missed class the day they gave out bodies ‘n other fighters got all the muscles. They ain’t blind like a bat with the asthma ‘n don’t cry ‘n wheeze in the ring.” I strove to be a black male youth, an honorable goal for which I was poorly suited. Coach was training me to box other street kids who were stronger, faster and tougher.

“Build yur try, yur endurance. First round, the opponent’ll beat you like a bongo drum. But in the last round, he’s tired, arm-weary, slow, ‘n his kidneys hurt. If yur conditioned better and got the spirit to be tough when yur tired, sure as bears crap in the woods, you’ll beat a stronger fighter.”

The YMCA’s upside down values: Mind, Body, Spirit. Spirit meant courage, and we got courage by practicing it, again and again. From courage came a better Body to be used for right purposes, and a Mind that would help others. Without moral courage, I’d be an ego with biceps and would use Mind to be a show-off. For little pay, my coaches trained angry and violent teens in the disciplines of moral courage. They taught us not to look good, but to be good to others.

The Pats are also upside-down. Others saw Brady, Edelman, White and Van Noy as weak, small and as promising as my first attempts to box. Coach Belichick studies the opponent’s moral flaws and then game-plans to win; his opponents try to beat him with physical strength.

  NFL: SKINNY BRADY COURAGEOUS BRADY
1 Bad measurables, never saw a weight
room, poor musculature, poor build 		Out-works, out-studies,
out-practices others
2 Weak in talent, not athletic, can’t
throw a tight spiral 		Courageous, calm, no
panic, blame or griping
3 Lacks physical stature, strength,
gangly, a ping pong player 		Loves teammates, team,
values
4 Poor decision-making, can’t read
defenses, easy to sack 		Tough, executes under
pressure and in pain

Belichick values courage, humility and responsibility. They love team more than self and the game more than raises. They embrace a gut-busting Ranger School-like regimen to be the NFL’s smartest, most reliable and best-conditioned team. The Pats chose to run onto the field as a team with no names. They don’t showboat; they toss each other’s hair. They improve from early games and learn from first halves and win in the 4th quarter by being smarter, stronger, more focused and more inter-dependent. Not all NFL players, or people in other fields, want to be humble or work that hard.

It’s not being bigger, special or having groovy music, cool threads, fun friends or living based on how we feel. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., our true identity is not in color of skin, beauty of thoughts, depth of passion, specialness of Me, or firmness of bodies.

He said his children should be judged by the content of their character. That was for us. We are our selflessness and our brave oaths to honor all persons. We are the quotient of our courage.  

Can you live his upside-down words? 1. Are you selfless or selfish? 2. Respect all persons or dis those who disagree with you? 3. Self-disciplined or quick to anger? 4. Always improving how you treat others or increasing how you blame others? May we all improve our answers!

Next time: the difference between honesty, grit, ethics, courage and character.

  NFL (PHYSICAL) PATS (COURAGE)
1 Stand-out statistics TRUSTWORTHY
2 Strength, Size, Speed SELFLESS
3 Agility, the Combine TOUGHEST
4 Smart enough LEAD OTHERS
5 Ego but not too big DO THE RIGHT THING

From The Courage Quotient, the working title of Gus’s next book.

Photo: http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/15160801/new-england-patriots-bill-belichick-calls-tom-brady-greatest-quarterback-all

[i] Attributed to Fred Astaire

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LIFE VALUES: OVERLOOKED TO BECOMING GREAT

February 15, 2019 — 1 Comment

This just in: the hated NFL Patriots once again made the NFL’s better-talented teams look like they forgot their vitamins and then sent them to the doghouse. Seven hundred coaches not named Belichick, McDaniels or Scarnecchia are munching kibble and binging on 2018 game film.

They’re trying to decode Coach Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady’s method. In September, after serving a mandatory seven months in the Dog Pound, they and 1,600 of the world’s toughest athletes will take the field. But high hopes may drop like old elevators when they face Belichick, Bradyand those upside-down, zip-superstars-you-can’t-beat-us-but-we’re-still-here-Patriots.

With higher draft picks and better players, 31 teams will try to stop a head coach (fired by the bottom-drawer Browns) who uses alien technology to rule the ‘verse. His poster kid? An unwanted 41-year old senior citizen QB with a boyish voice. Tom Brady was rated as slow, weak, breakable and un-athletic whose poor abilities and footwork would be exposed by pressure. He couldn’t throw a spiral, had the build of a ping pong player and was skinny.

Quarterback hopeful Tom Brady at the 2000 NFL Combine

He dropped to the 199th pick in the 6th round. Now for 19 seasons, he’s been tougher than a rodeo cowboy and executes under pressure with the panic that Batman exhibits while reading an old novel. Brady’s quick, strong and smart in the pocket. He throws into tight windows, grinds like a grinder and is as hard to beat as Indiana Jones. He’s taken 1,000 mind-warping hits and gets up like he’s going to re-fill the puppy’s water bowl. He’s #1 in Super Bowls, SB MVPs, SB wins, playoff TD’s and yards, ya-da-ya-da. By his choice, he’s 15th in QB pay. (More on this next time). He wins at table tennis, no doubt takes out the garbage and writes haiku for his kids.

There’s his go-to receiver, Julian Edelman, a small Bam-Bam Jetson guy who went 232nd in the draft and was penciled in as a training camp blocking dummy or a camp arm to toss a ball at practice. (Yo – who’s the dummy now?)

He missed the standard for top receivers: 6-5, 225, fleet as Mercury, meat hook hands, rich as Midas, younger than springtime and bigger than Skaar, son of Hulk. JV-sized Edelman is virtually invisible at 5-10 in boots, is a buck-ninety-five dripping wet, owns so-so speed and at 32 racks up 160 receiver years. A famous superstar receiver’s mediagenic handle: Megatron. Edelman’s is Squirrel. He’s the best receiver in the game and is the Super Bowl MVP.

Over the years, Belichick had 20 All-Pro players with gargantuan arms, greater height, better tattoos, F-22 Raptor speed and championship laurels. But if they busted the team’s operating principles and locker room unity by sporting Godzilla egos, beating women, skipping practice, thinking they’re better than others, or demanding more money, Belichick dumped them. Despite cutting elite physical specimens, Belichick and Brady own the record for Super Bowl and Championship wins, and forged and now own the athletic gold standard for sustained success.

Besides dismissing non-team players, how do they do it? How do forgettable people without top credentials become courageous performers?

It’s not an Area 51 secret. Belichick, Brady, Edelman, and many others in the Patriots organization have explained how they do it. The Patriots own a radical thematic method and haven’t varied the pitch. They’ve kept true to a basic set of operating principles that amount to what we can call life values.

Why haven’t 700 of the best coaches in football figured it out? Might it be something about them, and us? Do we get the feeling that the hated Pats’ winning principles might extend beyond football? If they do, and they’d help us live better, can we learn them, too?

Check in next time for the answers. J Photo credit: http://www.nepatriotsdraft.com/2012/02/2012-nfl-combine-what-to-watch-for.html

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