The Invisible Mentor

Archive for the ‘Self-improvement’ Category

The act of writing things down helps to keep you focused, and on track in your life. Most times when you think of writing things down, you think of goals to keep them front, centered and solidified, or you jot down things that pop into your mind to keep you from forgetting them. But there are other reasons why you should write things down.

1. The great innovators and thinkers who changed the world documented their work, which others were able to build on
2. Documenting your life story is a great way for your family, your descendants to learn and understand who your are/were
3. Documenting and explaining the processes and models you develop to do your work more effectively and efficiently will encourage others to do the same. This is also a way for you to get deserved recognition for your contributions to cost cutting within the company
4. When an idea comes to you, if you write it down, you are less likely to forget it, and more likely to act on it
5. When you are trying to figure things out, writing it on paper makes it easier and helps you to make connections that you otherwise wouldn’t make
6. When reading, other than for entertainment, taking notes helps you to build your reservoir of knowledge, which will prove useful when brainstorming or looking for innovative solutions
7. Writing things down shows that you are accountable, and signals that you are serious

What do you have to add to the conversation? Why do you write things down? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Summer is the time when most get caught up on their reading. And most are reading novels during this time, but what if you did something a little differently from the rest. Gene Waddell, an architectural historian and College Archivist at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, pulled together an extensive list of rare books that inspire learning. I have taken 10 books from his list, and as you will note, they are from a variety genres to build your general knowledge and increase your ability to strategize and solve problems.

1. Anthropology: Race, Language, Psychology, Prehistory, Kroeber
2. Antiquities of Athens by James Stuart; Nicholas Revett
3. Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen: Discovered by the late Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter, Howard Carter
4. Roughing It, Mark Twain
5. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, Frederick Douglas
6. Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Richard Griffin Baybrook
7. New System of Chemical Philosophy, John Dalton
8. Emerson: Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, Mungo Park
10. The Wright Brothers Aëroplane, by Orville and Wilbur Wright Century Magazine, September 1908

Over the summer, try to read a couple of the above, and I will do the same. What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Some of the links to the books are for free downloads, some are Amazon affiliate links.

Photo Credit: Flickr via Apture

The publishers of The Skinny on Series sent The Skinny on Willpower: How to Develop Self-discipline, The Skinny on the Art of Persuasion and The Skinny on Networking for me to review. In previous blog posts, I reviewed The Skinny on Success and The Skinny on Time Management. The objective of The Skinny On series of books is to provide concentrated learning by extensively researching a topic, distilling the salient facts, and presenting them in a “progression of drawings, dialogue and text intended to convey information in a concise fashion.

You can easily read this book in less than two hours and at end of The Skinny of Willpower, the author Jim Randel provides a 15-Point Plan for improving your willpower which is quite helpful. As I have said in previous reviews of The Skinny On series, and I will mention it again, the reason why I do not like the books is why most people will love them. Though Jim Randel does a good job of summarizing the topic, and the series is a response to the fast-paced world we live in, I feel like he is spoon feeding the reader. I am detailed oriented so I like to read and distil information for myself. However, I recognize that not everyone can do that or is willing to expend the time and effort.

Now having said that, the author provides a bibliography for people like me to read further about the topic, and throughout the book, he has the names of the books that he referenced for information on willpower.

Willpower is defined as “the strength to act, or forbear from acting in the pursuit of a goal – is a critical determinant to success… [It is] the effort needed to get going in a forward motion.” Jim Randel is qualified to write The Skinny on Willpower because he and his team spent countless hours reading and listening to everything they could find on willpower, searching online for insights, as well as speaking to professors and researchers and interviewing highly accomplished people.

As outlined in the book, to achieve your goal you have to be very specific about what you’d like to accomplish and be committed to yourself in attaining your goal – you have to have a real hunger, and the “why” underlying the goal achievement drives the how. Additionally it’s important to break the goal into bite-sized pieces so that you do not become overwhelmed, and when you have negative thoughts in your mind about your goal, it’s good to have a response to get you through that moment to eject all thoughts of negativism, and find the strength deep within you to work on achieving your goal.

Randel identifies three steps you need to take to keep you focused on your goal.

1. Take your temperature – how badly do you want it
2. Set realistic expectation – the best things in life seldom come easily
3. Don’t compare yourself to others – it’s what you think about you that really matters, be in it for the long haul

Here are the author’s 15 points for improving willpower and self-discipline:

1. Be sure you are totally committed
2. Prepare yourself for a difficult journey
3. Prepare for your challenges by reducing the instances in which you will exert willpower
4. Identify your goal and the process to get there in as concrete, specific and finite terms as possible
5. Divide your challenge into small manageable pieces
6. Maintain vigilance over your thoughts
7. Control your dominant thoughts
8. Frame your challenges in a pleasurable, not painful manner
9. Pick your spots
10. Force yourself to visualize the end of a succession of “either/or” choices
11. You really have more willpower than you realize
12. The more you use your willpower, the more confidence and strength you have for new challenges
13. Turn positive activity into habits
14. Self-discipline is not self-deprivation
15. Strong willpower can take you to new heights in life.

The 15-points listed above for improving your willpower and self-discipline is a good summary for you to refer to after you have read The Skinny on Willpower which I recommend because my goal is to help you succeed. I also recommend that you revisit my blog post on the Einstein Distraction Index – it will strengthen your resolve against giving in, and I also recommend that you create a mind movie which is a sequence of photos, and mantras that represent what you are trying to accomplish, accompanied with music that uplifts you and make you happy. Having willpower is often what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

All book links are affiliate links

I am interested in ancient wisdom and constantly looking for books written centuries ago to explore my idea that we can use yesterday’s concepts to solve today’s problems. I wanted a source where an author distilled the works of others. And that’s why I bought and read Books That Changed The World: The 50 Most Influential Books in History by Andrew Taylor. I appreciate that most of the books he focused on were published over five decades ago – only three books were written less that five decades ago: Silent Springs (1962), Quotations from Chairman Mao (1964), and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997). And the earliest work is The Iliad (8^th Century BC).

Andrew Taylor introduces readers to many books that they probably would not know about. In Books That Changed The World, he presents a summary of the work he is discussing, but he also talks about other major works by the author, who influenced them, what was happening in society when the book was written, in other words he provides context for the book. After reading the summaries you can easily determine which book you’d actually want to read, and for me that was very important. And in many of the works presented, if you are paying attention, you discover new processes and systems that you can use in your life.

In How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler says there are three reasons to read a book: for entertainment, information and to further knowledge. I had two objectives for reading Books That Changed the World, for information and to further my knowledge, and I was not disappointed. If you haven’t done so already, please read yesterday’s post, Three Steps to Claim Legitimacy for Your Work which uses this book to demonstrate a point.

I was surprised to find The Telephone Directory (1878) included among the 50 books, but after you read the summary you clearly understand why. “The telephone also created an occasion for the technology of communication to join with a much old[er] technology – print. Subscribers to the new telephone services needed to know how to contact other subscribers – otherwise the new invention would be little more than a toy. Hence the publication of the first telephone directory, called simply The Telephone Directory [by New Haven District Telephone Company].”

I enjoyed reading, and really appreciated Books That Changed The World because I learned who introduced or legitimized the fields of history, geography, medicine and so on and it was nice to be in-the-know with classics such as Canterbury Tales, Madame Bovary, Moby Dick… Based on what I learned after reading Books That Changed The World, some of the books I plan to scan or read (some of them are too long to read) are:

• The Histories, Herodotus (5^th Century BC)
• Odes, Horace (23 – 13 BC)
• Geographia, Ptolemy (C.AD 100 – 170)
• Canon of Medicine, Avicenna (1025)
• Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes (1605 – 15)
• Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei (1632)
• Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1851)
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (1857)
• The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes (1936)

I recommend Books That Changed The World: The 50 Most Influential Books in History by Andrew Taylor.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

All book links are affiliate links

After I had read about a third of Books That Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in History by Andrew Taylor, the light bulb suddenly went on in my head. The book includes works from a variety of fields, and several of the 50 books mentioned were written by pioneers who were experimental thinkers. They were instrumental in starting a new field of study, and/or adding legitimacy to an existing field.

I noticed that they legitimized the field by adding information systems and processes. They did not always succeed in what they were trying to do, sometimes they strayed a bit, but the point is that they often turned things upside down and revolutionized the way things were done. Life isn’t about perfection, but doing your best and trying to move forward.

Herodotus who is considered the “Father of History,” in his work The Histories, was the first person who focused on what actually happened, why, then created a record. In the 5^th Century BC, this was very revolutionary because he didn’t attribute what happened to miracles or godly intervention.

In Geographia, 100 – 170 AD, Ptolemy the ”Father of Geography,” attempted to accurately measure and record coastlines, rivers and mountains. It turns out that his calculations were off by about 25 percent, but his work was the foundation for others to move the field forward. Centuries later, 1585 – 95, Gerald Mercator who created an atlas of the world, spent many years compiling maps based on information from Ptolemy.

Avicenna produced Canon of Medicine in 1025, the first book of medicine that based “theories on evidence and objective experimentation.”

William Harvey’s 1628 An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals was a radical departure from the beliefs at the time, and his work was based on “careful reasoning and observations from his dissections of animals.”

There are many more examples in Books That Changed the World. I see a pattern emerging, how about you? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there are three steps to claim legitimacy in whatever you are doing.

1. Gather information
   1. pull together what’s been done before
   2. rely on personal experience
   3. observe
   4. use practical experimentation
2. Assess the information gathered
3. Combine the information with what you already know

To become an experiment thinker requires taking risks and shifting your mindset. Sometimes these pioneers were ostracized, which often meant imprisonment or death, but we are living in different times and much has changed. So how can you use this information?

Take a look at the work you do, are there ways that you can add more rigor to the way that you do it? If you are working in a new field, how can you use the three steps above to legitimize what you do? In the examples above, these innovative thinkers took a chance, and departed from the status quo, and the result is that humankind benefited. How can you innovate or revolutionize your work? And more importantly, how can you radically change YOUR world?

Did you notice that the three steps to legitimacy are basic steps for innovation, creativity as well as mastering a subject? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

How to Analyze Information

How to Master a Subject

How to Generate Creative Ideas

Image Credit: Fountain in St. Peter’s Square, Dimity B via Apture

All book links are Amazon affiliate links.

Here is the second part of the interview with Jenny Pickles who has worked in the publishing industry for 15 years. What are five great ideas from the interview, and which bits of the interview can you use?

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I have worked in the publishing industry since 1995, firstly at Emerald Group Publishing Ltd initially  in the Editorial department.  Here I was responsible for organizing the annual best paper awards for excellence and managing a suite of real estate and environmental scholarly journals. In 2000 I transferred to the Business Development department and took on responsibility for digital licensing, reprints and permissions.  Two years ago I was lucky enough to be offered the role of Associate Director of Global Rights at John Wiley & Sons in the UK. This involves responsibility for all secondary licensing of the many thousands of books and journals published by Wiley including translation rights, permissions and digital licensing.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Since moving to the south of the country to take up my new role my work/life balance has not been especially good, so I am working at building a new network of friends and areas of interest – a work in progress.

What’s a major regret that you’ve had in life?

Would like to spend more time with my family – I am sure most people would wish for that.  I try to visit as often as I can and they visit me, but this is definitely at the top of my to-do list after I retire and don’t have to juggle limited time and the need to earn a living.

What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Respect people and they will be more likely to respect you back. Listen to people, they often have interesting and important things to say that you can learn from, spend your money wisely but enjoy your life too, you only get one chance to get it right, aim to leave the world (or even just your workplace or community) in a better place than you found it, be kind and always try to see the other person’s point of view – I don’t always practice what I preach but I try to work at it – it definitely improves both the personal and business aspects of life.

When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

I like the theatre, music, and spend a great amount of my time immersed in a good book – usually thrillers, mysteries and I am not averse to a little supernatural element here and there, my particular favourites of the moment are Harlen Coben, Kathy Reichs, Dean Koontz, Diana Gabaldon,Tess Gerittsen and Andew Gross.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Talking to my colleagues over drinks or a good Thai meal always works for me. We usually come back to the office with lots of ideas.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

See mentor section above

How do you define success?

Fulfillment at a job well done or an achievement worked hard for.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

The willingness to work for it without stamping on others in the process.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Outlined above

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

As above

If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Ah now that is a challenge in itself. Assuming they don’t all have to be alive now – if they do I will need to rethink –

1. Stephen Fry (who is), the English actor and comedian now also appearing more often in US programmes such as Bones,  because he is  so intelligent, witty and interesting and makes me laugh.
2. Richard III because I am curious to know if the portrayal of him by some historians and Shakespeare as such an out and out villain who killed his nephews in the Tower is actually true or what really happened.
3. Thomas Jefferson because I would like to hear more first-hand about how the ‘Founding Fathers’ came together, developed their ideas and justified the conflict between individual freedom and slavery.
4. Freddie Mercury, late great from man from Queen, who I miss since his untimely death and all the wonderful music that the world has foregone. I would love him to sing some of my favourites and maybe something new too.
5. Shakespeare to clear up the rumours  about whether he did actually write all of his plays and how he found his inspiration and ideas.

Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Too many to mention.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

A survival book to teach me how to stay alive long enough to read my five books, Diana Gabalden’s Outlander series which is cheating really because there are about 7 volumes – having read them all I have gone back to the beginning to enjoy it all over again – I would describe it as the most romantic and enduring of historical novels with a supernatural/time travel twist. The characters are wonderful, the writing both funny and emotional.  Can’t think of any others off hand, just too numerous to mention.

What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no 2 because of its stunningly beautiful melodies, how they change throughout the piece by featuring different instruments from the orchestra and the way it makes me feel – relaxed, invigorated and moved to tears all at the same time. If there is room on the CD to include Tchiakovsky’s Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty as well all the better. The Movie would be my 15^th Anniversary version of the musical version of Les Miserables – absolutely my all time favourite with such a beautiful score and a dashing Marius in Michael Ball.

If you cannot view the YouTube Video of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no 2 please click here.

If you cannot view the YouTube Video of  Tchiakovsky’s Swan Lake click here.

What excites you about life?

New opportunities

How do you nurture your soul?

With beautiful music, great novels and good friends

If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for? Or, if I gave you a magic wand, what would you use it for?

The good thing to wish for would be the rather clichés world peace but on a personal level a long life with good health in which to enjoy it.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I can spend time with my family, especially if that time is spent in a lovely sunny location with pool and great restaurants near-by.

What are to takeaways from the interview? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Today I present the first part of the interview with Jenny Pickles who has worked in the publishing industry for 15 years. As usual, look for the nuggets of brilliance, and be open to the bits that you can apply to your unique situation.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I have worked in the publishing industry since 1995, firstly at Emerald Group Publishing Ltd initially  in the Editorial department.  Here I was responsible for organizing the annual best paper awards for excellence and managing a suite of real estate and environmental scholarly journals. In 2000 I transferred to the Business Development department and took on responsibility for digital licensing, reprints and permissions.  Two years ago I was lucky enough to be offered the role of Associate Director of Global Rights at John Wiley & Sons in the UK. This involves responsibility for all secondary licensing of the many thousands of books and journals published by Wiley including translation rights, permissions and digital licensing.

What’s a typical day like for you?

Dealing with the many emails from external and internal customers, working with my staff who are based in both Oxford and Chichester and with our Global Rights colleagues who are based around the world.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Working every day with talented, enthusiastic and committed staff always motivates me to try harder myself, lead by example, and fully support my team. I like to encourage their ideas for improving the business, our business processes, our service levels and our productivity.  Additionally in a digital age the way in which knowledge is created and disseminated is constantly changing and developing, the consequent demands and expectations of our customers grows exponentially and this constantly challenges us to find ways to meet those demands and expectations. The job is never boring.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I would probably have got into the publishing industry much sooner than I did. I took the job initially because it was available at a time that a grant funded role at Bradford University came to an end, not because I had a burning desire to get into publishing.  However, I quickly found that I loved the job, the constant challenges and the dynamics of publishing. I feel that I would know much more now if I had been aware of this when I was much younger.

What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

That partnering with respected organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Centre to develop an automated online permissions clearance service for our journals can not only vastly improve the service that we offer our customers and authors, but also cut down significantly on the time consuming manual elements of the job thus enhancing the Permissions team’s daily tasks and enabling them to spend more quality time evaluating the more complex and challenging requests we receive daily.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

Definitely the opportunities afforded to increase readership of our authors’ work through both developing e-books and other digital, audio and mobile products in-house and at the same time partnering with external specialists in these formats to license our titles for inclusion in these services.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

I would say the continued campaign for open access in the absence of viable alternative funding models, thus threatening the very industry which has provided refereed scholarship for centuries – we are trying to handle this issue by offering authors the option to pay an online open fee to make their final published refereed article’s openly accessible on our site. We are also planning to launch new entirely open access journals next year each of which will continue to receive the same rigorous review process to maintain quality, accuracy and high standards; the proliferation of piracy and online file sharing sites for which we are working with the Publishers Association, other industry groups and legal colleagues to tackle and thirdly, the proliferation of unauthorized, outdated and inaccurate information that the aforementioned can result in and which should not be relied on through casual searches on the internet.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Rights management and content licensing is not unique but it is important.  We publish a wide range of books and journals in the English language which are sold throughout the English speaking world. However many students and professionals around the world would not be able to benefit unless local publishers were able to translate and sell the books in their local markets.  The wide range of licenses and permissions requests to reuse published works negotiated daily, based on the rights granted to us by our authors, mean that the authors’ work get much more widely read and that they benefit from additional royalties from sales of their work in for example Russian or Spanish translation as well as primary sales in  English.  We are also able to negotiate special arrangements for developing countries to ensure that access is truly global.

What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?

Can’t really comment

Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.

We have been working on updating an internal IT system and this has involved selecting the most high priority issues and project managing these with IT and business colleagues  over the last year or so.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

Patience, patience, and more patience – and accepting that not everything can or maybe even should be automated.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

The owner of Emerald Group Publishing Ltd who agreed to allow be to participate in an in-house MBA program which was funded by the company. It was he who supported me and encouraged me to take as my dissertation the copyright implications of digital publishing – this in no small part contributed to the job I have now.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

In accepting the job I have now I had to relocate away from my family and friends – I love and appreciate the job but I do miss not seeing my family as much as I would like to.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

My family and having my children, I have one daughter and four sons who are the greatest joy in life; the support and encouragement I received from my late husband who pushed me into going back to university as a mature student to study for my Masters degree in history and politics and taking up the challenge of the in house MBA which was done alongside my daily job – the hardest and most challenging thing I have ever done but which taught me most about opportunities to grow and progress in the workplace.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Raising my family.

How did mentors influence your life?

By encouraging me to look at life and achievements differently.

What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Set your goals and be prepared to pay the price in advance – this is a mantra that I have always followed. The mentor was one of the directors and co-owners of Emerald at the time, Barrie Pettman, a self made millionaire and I always thought the statement made a lot of sense. The price you pay may be financial in terms of the fees for a particular course of study or training you need to undertake, it might be the time you have to be prepared to invest in learning new skills or gaining the required qualifications to get where you want to be, it might be what you have to personally forego in other areas of your life in order to spend that time, or it might be the effort of identifying who you need to seek out who may be willing to offer you further help and guidance. Whatever the price, you need to research what it is first and decide if you are prepared to pay that price, then just do it.

As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

I would pass on the advise that was given to me,(above) to have confidence in yourself – if you truly want to achieve something in your life, find out what you need to do in order to achieve it and if you are prepared to expend that effort in planning and working hard at it you can achieve your goal.  Conversely, there is no shame in admitting defeat if, having evaluated the possibilities and challenges of a particular objective you decide that it is not for you after all.

What are to takeaways from the interview? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Published in 1913, Bunker Bean is one of the many novels Harry Leon Wilson wrote during his writing career which spanned over decades. Bunker Bean – adapted into film three times: 1918, 1925 and 1936 – has an amazing start which many of us can relate to, “Bunker Bean was wishing he could be different. This discontent with himself was suffered in a moment of idleness as he sat at a desk on a high floor of a very high office-building in “downtown” New York. The first correction he would have made was that he should be “well over six feet” tall. He had observed that this was the accepted stature for a hero,” because most of us are never happy with the hand we’ve been dealt in life.

I must admit that this was my second attempt reading this book. Let me explain, I am an active reader so I interact with the words on the page, which is good most of the time, but other times I get so caught up with what’s unfolding in the story that it stresses me out. I found Bunker Bean to be a character who really stressed me out and I wondered if people were that naive. Bunker Bean was recommended to me a few years ago so I decided to give it another shot – and I am glad I did. There are many lessons interspersed throughout the novel.

Harry Leon Wilson is very skilled at his craft, and the book is very well written. There were a few times while reading that I found the text difficult, and those were the times when the characters spoke in very bad and weird English (couldn’t figure out what kind of dialect they would have in the United States, even if it was the early 20th century), which stretched my imagination more than I liked in trying to figure out exactly what they were saying.

Bunker Bean’s mother was very elitist and believed that she had married beneath her. She was ridiculously strict with Bunker and did not nurture or encourage him in any way. She constantly criticized and corrected him and I suppose in that environment after a while you would think that you cannot do anything right. Though his mother died a few days after the birth of her second son when Bunker was seven, he grew up to be a very timid and fearful adult. Despite being very timid and fearful, he criticized others quite severely, but did so behind their backs: either in writing that would never see the light of day, or in his head, quite safe ways.

After graduating from business college with a specialty in stenography and typewriting, his first job was with “a noble-looking old man, white-bearded, and vast of brow… He was a believer in the cult of theosophy and specialized on reincarnation. [Bean] learned that the old gentleman was writing a book and would need an amanuensis. They agreed upon terms and the work began. The book was a romance entitled, “Glimpses Through the Veil of Time,” and it was to tell of a soul’s adventures through a prolonged series of reincarnations.”

This encounter sparked an interest in Bean to learn about his past lives, but he didn’t act on it until a few years later when he saw an advertisement in the newspaper placed by Countess Casanova, Clairvoyant … Clairaudient…Psychometric. Bunker Bean went to see Countess Casanova and learned that he was Napoleon Bonaparte in a previous life. He enjoyed reading, so he scanned his memory banks, and brought up, “A Corsican upstart, an assassin, no gentleman!… Emperor of France.” After his psychic consultation, he studied Napoleon and the more he studied the more distressed he became so he decided to consult Countess Casanova again – he wanted to know who he was before Napoleon.

On his second visit, the Countess realized that she was in over her head, so she called on her sidekick Professor Balthasar, and offered to split her $20. Shortly after the Professor arrives he goes into a trance-like state, and the dialog is quite amusing.

“What is this? A statesman, still crafty, still the lines of cunning cruelty about the mouth. The city is Venice in the fourteenth century. He is dressed in a richly bejewelled robe and toys with an inlaid dagger. He is plotting the assassination of a Doge—”

“Please get still farther back, can’t you?” pleaded Bean.

The seer struggled once more with his control.

“I next see you at the head of a Roman legion, going forth to battle. You are a tyrant, ruling by fear alone, and with your own sword I see you cut off the heads of—”

“Farther back,” beseeched the sitter. “I—I’ve had enough of all that battle and killing. I—I don’t like it. Go on back to the very first.”

Patiently the adept redirected his forces.

“I see a poet. He sings his deathless lay by a roadside in ancient Greece. He is an old man, feeble, blind—”

“Something else,” broke in the persistent sitter, resolving not to pay twenty dollars for having been a blind poet.

The professor glanced sharply at him. Perhaps his control did not relish these interruptions. He seemed to suppress words of impatience and began anew.

“Ah! Now I see your very first appearance on this planet. You were born from another as yet unknown to our astronomers. You are now”—he lowered his eyes to the sitter’s face—”an Egyptian king.”

Detecting no sign of displeasure at this, he continued with refreshed enthusiasm.

“It is thousands of years ago. You are the last king of the pre-dynastic era—”

Bunker Bean liked the idea of having been Ram-tah, an Egyptian in one of his previous lives. He was transformed, and started to think and act like a king. After his second visit to Countess Casanova, Bunker Bean inherited $10,000 with $7,000 more to come. He wasted $5,000 trying to secure the mummified remains of King Ran-tah. To gather strength, Bunker consulted what he thought was King Ram-tah, and acted courageously. As part of the money he received, he got 50 shares in the Federal Express Company. Some of his co-workers, his boss and the board of directors of Federal Express pressured him into selling his shares. He acquiesced, then snuck out of the office, used the funds he received from the sale of the shares and bought a much larger amount of shares, and ended up with close to $400,000. The joke was now on those who tried to use him for their gain.

One day, he accidentally discovered that he’d been duped by Countess Casanova and Professor Balthasar, and what he thought was the mummified remains of King Ram-tah was actually papier-mâché. His newfound way of life quietly slipped away and he reverted to his old timid and fearful self. Fortunately for Bunker, someone he met soon after, kept on saying to him, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!” Bunker thought about these words and their meaning, and one day he finally got it.

Bunker Bean by Harry Leon Wilson highlights the dangers of seeking satisfaction in things outside of yourself, it also demonstrates what can happen when you are desperate, and when you try to be something you are not. These are the key lessons for me, and I am sure that you will have your own lessons. I recommend Bunker Bean and you can get an electronic copy by clicking here.

How can you use this information? What are the nuggets of brilliance and wisdom? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

Napoleon Bonaparte: 7 Lessons from a Despot

Many of you have heard the quote, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself,” by Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is a variation of “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself,” the title of a speech he gave at his inaugural address, March 4, 1933. “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself” is among the speeches included in Speeches That Changed the World. The speech is hopeful, Roosevelt’s passion comes through, he is open and honest and names the problem, and he rallies the nation and asks for their support. You can read and or listen to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself” speech.

If you cannot view the YouTube Video of The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself click here.

Here are my seven lessons learned from the speech, what are yours?

7 Lessons from The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself

1. Revive and prosper: You will always face adversity in life, get up, dust yourself off and move forward.
2. Lead with frankness: Look at your situation objectively and lead with frankness, even if you are only leading yourself.
3. Failure is a part of life: The only people who never fail are the ones who never try. Fail quickly and fail forward to success.
4. Create jobs – even if it’s only for yourself. If you are an employee, think of your career as your own small business where you provide a service that’s in demand. Make yourself indispensable, put yourself to work.
5. Have a definite purpose – have a plan and purpose for doing what you’re doing. The “how” is important, but the “why” is what keeps you going.
6. Have courage and unite – it may be scary, and you may not know exactly how to proceed, but take the first step, with your family, friends, or even colleagues. Rally the troops!
7. Take decisive action – always take action, doing nothing isn’t a sound plan.

Why is this speech one that changed the world? It’s timeless and it’s still as relevant today as it was in March 4, 1933. The 7 Lessons Series presented weekly, is a way for you learn about ideas, concepts, models, speeches and extract the nuggets of brilliance and wisdom they offer, while building your body of knowledge. It’s impossible to succeed in a spectacular way without a lot of knowledge.

How can you use this information? What are the nuggets of brilliance and wisdom? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself

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“What Ants Can Teach You” was inspired by Jim Rohn‘s Ant Philosophy, which he sums up at the end of the article, “Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can,” but I would like to add to the conversation and deepen it somewhat. Ants are from the Formicidae family, and with wasps and bees belong to the Hymenoptera order.

Ants Facts

• There are about 10,000 species of ants
• Ants can lift up to 50 times their weight
• There are three classes of ants: queen ants, worker ants and male ants
  • Queen ants lay eggs and live five to 30 years
  • Worker ants are female, do most of the work, rarely become queens, or reproduce and live one to three years. They may keep the same job all their lives or job hop a few times. The colony cannot survive without worker ants
  • Male ants do not work. They mate with young queens and die shortly after. They live a few weeks to months.
• Ant nests can reach 20 feet below the ground
• Ants suppress pest population and aerate the soil

What Ants Can Teach You

1. Social insects: They live and work in communities, and members rely on each other. They feed and protect each other
2. Successful survivors: Able to survive and adapt to many different habitats
3. Robust: Can recover from setbacks. When one or more ants fail, the group can still perform all the tasks
4. Self-organized: Activities are decentralized and they get the job done without supervision. Members have specific functions to perform such as lay eggs, gather food, protect the colony and so on, depending on their size
5. Well developed senses, especially smell. They use scent trails to find their way back home after traveling great distances, up to 700 feet from their nests, and they communicate with each other using pheromones

In summary, ants: understand the importance of community building, able to pick themselves up when adversity comes knocking, resilient and can work in many environments, does what needs to be done without supervision, and use their senses to spot opportunities. Aren’t these great lessons to learn?

YouTube video of Ants!

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants! compliments of the Science Channel, click here.

Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife, click here.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

The Ant Philosophy by Jim Rohn

Sources Referenced

AskNature.org

How Stuff Works

Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Yahoo via Apture