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Alan C. FoxAuthor. Entrepreneur. Game-changer.
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Things Are Only Things

by Alan C. Fox 3 Comments

 

When I was eighteen I took the thousand-dollar inheritance from my grandmother, added some of my own savings, and bought my first car—a brand new metallic blue VW Bug.

Since my father always parked his car in the garage, I had to park mine on the street. A few weeks after my big purchase, I walked out of the house toward my beautiful new car and my jaw dropped. My precious VW had been sideswiped, leaving two ugly black scratches on its left rear fender. I was furious. My brand new car was ruined.

After a month of fuming I realized that I was allowing my life to be ruined by those two horrible scratches, and that my anger wasn’t doing me a bit of good. It couldn’t help me to find or punish the culprit. It couldn’t transform my car back to its original pristine condition.

A car, no matter how expensive or how beautiful, is only a thing. So I decided to let go of my anger, and for the rest of my life to never be upset about things. I resolved to reserve my emotional energy exclusively for people. Things can be fixed. Things can be replaced. People cannot.

And I am pleased to report that from that day to this I have lived by my decision. I have not darkened my mood or my life with anger or regret about a thing.

I recently scratched a van I now own. I refuse to be angry. I will just pay to have it fixed. When she was seventeen one of my daughters was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. As I write this, her condition can be treated but it cannot be fixed. I am concerned about her, not the van.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

I once traveled with my family to Australia where more than 95 percent of the world’s gem-quality opals are mined. One afternoon in Sydney, after a boat tour of its beautiful harbor, we stepped into a shop which our guide said was the best in Australia for buying opals.

 

My wife collects rings, and the ring she picked out was drop-dead gorgeous. It was also drop-dead expensive, and probably cost as much as half of the other rings in her collection combined. But after some brief negotiation and hesitation I bought it for her.

Daveen wore her green and blue opal consistently for two weeks after we returned.

Until we went to the theater. . .

When the curtain fell and the lights rose after the first act of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels the musical playing at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater, Daveen gasped.

“My ring!”

I looked at her hand, and saw the thin gold outline of a ring, but no gemstone.

“Your orange stone?” I asked.

“No! My opal!”

Daveen doesn’t panic easily, but her response reminded me of how I felt when I first saw those ugly scratches on my VW Bug.

We searched the floor. We searched the seats. Five ushers helped us during intermission. No opal.

After the show was over we searched the theater again, this time with eight or ten ushers helping out. Still no opal.

I certainly don’t like to lose anything. Even more, I don’t like someone else to lose a gift that I’ve given them, especially when the gift was expensive. But gone is gone and I refuse to be upset about the loss or destruction of a thing. So we gave our name and telephone number to the manager of the theater and left for home.

The drive home was silent. While we both thought that we had seen the last of the opal, I am pleased to report that the mini-disaster did not spoil the rest of our evening. Daveen, to her credit, seemed to put her anguish aside.

The next morning life went on and the new day was not to be marred by a missing thing.  We were both able to weather this potential storm by using what has come to be one of my favorite People Tools: Things Are Only Things.

Love can come to everyone, The best things in life are free.
—Buddy DeSylva

Do you like happy endings? I do.

Immediately after I arrived at work the next day, I called Daveen:

“Hi, Daveen.”

“Hi.”

“I found the opal.”

“What!?

“It was on my desk. It probably fell out when you picked me up at the office last night.  The cleaning crew must have found it and put it on my desk.”

Silence. Then, “Thank goodness.”

I love Daveen. I like, but do not love, any ring, or any car, no matter how expensive or how beautiful.

Alan

 

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Kill Your Darlings

by Alan C. Fox 0 Comments

 

Last week, I finally finished the manuscript for my new book, People Tools for Business: 50 Strategies for Building Success, Creating Wealth, and Finding Happiness. In the midst of the final throes of the writing process, I was happy to stumble upon a delightful NY Times article by Amy Klein about her experience having her writing critiqued by others at a writer’s workshop. Using humor and insight, she lists a variety of tips that one should have in mind when engaging in the often-excruciating process of critique.

I found her experience to be quite familiar and got a much-needed comic break from my own writing process. I wanted to share several of my favorite tips here, which you may or may not be familiar with.

When in Doubt, Take it Out

This is the age of texting.  I limit my weekly blog to about 600 words.  Would you be as eager to read it at 2,000 words?  I wouldn’t.  Take out every word that is not necessary.  I recently edited the following sentence:

Original — I am writing this letter to you today to ask for a one line endorsement of my new book “People Tools for Business,” which is scheduled to be published on September 30, 2014.

Revision — I am writing to respectfully request a one line endorsement of my new book “People Tools for Business.”

Deletions — “this letter” (that fact is obvious); “today” (obvious – did you write it tomorrow?  Last week?  Who cares.); “which is scheduled to be published on September 30, 2014.” (At this point not relevant.  If the answer is “yes,” then timing will be discussed.)

Use Words Which are Strong, Specific, and Interesting

“Ran” is stronger than “went.”  “Smug” or “vain” are more specific than “proud.” “Thundering” is more interesting than “loud.” 

Use the Microsoft Word Thesaurus.  I find it to be both quick and helpful.

Write the way you Talk

If you wouldn’t use a word when you speak, then don’t use it when you write.  Would you ever say in conversation, “The articulateness of the speaker was surpassed only by his exaggerated sense of his own self-importance”?  I prefer, “He was more smug than articulate.”

Never Over-edit

Revise your writing to your heart’s content, but be aware that, especially when you are tired, your edits might weaken your text rather than improve it. 

‘Kill  Your  Darlings’ (from the article)

William Faulkner is  one  of  the  writers  attributed  with  having  said  “In writing,  you  must  kill  all  your  darlings,”  which  means  you  should  take  the one  phrase  you  love  most  and  get  rid  of  it.  That’s because if you’re  so enamored  with  some  bit,  it  probably  doesn’t  work  in  the  grand  scheme  of the  piece.

However, when your peers  tell  you  this,  they  might  be  excising  every original  construction  you  ever  wrote  (see  #1,  “Find  Your  Voice”).  Perhaps they don’t understand brilliance.  Perhaps they understand brilliance but don’t want you to succeed. 

You can read the full article here.

Always remember that each of us, including you, often has a hidden agenda that lives in the unconscious mind, and we would deny that agenda if asked.

CAVEAT:  I am not writing this blog to let you know how wonderful I am as a writer or to plug People Tools for Business.  

-Alan

 

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Old Money Habits Die Hard, if at All

by Alan C. Fox 4 Comments

 

I hate to waste money, but for the past six months I’ve been driving my new red Tesla which is the most enjoyable car I’ve ever handled.  I’m able to listen to every radio station in the world, including News Burundi.  I now have a trunk in front and a trunk in back, so my new car serves as an even better portable closet than my last one with hardly any storage space at all.

The two factors which I most love about my Tesla are:

1.    The burst of speed.  I haven’t been pulled over for speeding yet, but I do accelerate from 60 mph to 80 mph rather swiftly.  In fact, if I aim for 80 I usually hit 92 before I notice and throttle back.  Oh, well.
2.    No gas.  I haven’t visited a gas station in the past six months.  I plug my car into its special electrical outlet at home every evening, and in the morning I’m ready to drive another 200 miles.  When I drove to Monterey I did stop twice at a Tesla charging station where the price for the electric charge was right.  It was free.

Of course, there is always a little trouble in paradise.  In this case the difficulty was announced by a flashing light on my Tesla dashboard, proclaiming that the tires had low pressure.

My first line of defense was to ignore the flashing light.  Sure enough, it soon went dark, validating my approach.  I properly assumed that there was an electronic malfunction rather than a tire problem.  During the next several weeks the flashing light and I established an intermittent relationship.  It blinked.  I ignored.  Blinking stopped.  Until today.

This morning, as I backed out of my garage, the blinking light was joined by a rather nasty “beep beep beep,” and the message changed to “very low tire pressure.”

Fortunately I remembered where there was one of those relics – a gas station – on my way to work.  I stopped to fill my tires, and immediately encountered a problem.  There was a $1.00 charge for using the air pump.  As I walked around the rear of my car, intending to drive on to work, I had the following internal debate.

“How dare they charge a dollar for air.  Air should be free.”
“But Alan, they have to stay in business, and they’re selling less gas all the time.”
“But a dollar?  Why not twenty-five cents?”
“What difference does it make?  You’re not buying gas anymore.”
“Maybe there’s a station down the street where the air is free.”
“You don’t have time.  And you’re driving on the freeway later.  This is a safety issue.”
“Suppose the machine takes my four quarters and then doesn’t work?”
“Alan, shut up and just do it.”
“I don’t know if I even have four quarters.”
“DO IT!”

That’s the way this type of inner debate usually ends.  Normally reason trumps emotion, but my emotional habit is to save every dollar I possibly can.  I had a similar debate with myself in a men’s room yesterday.  A penny was lying on the restroom floor.  It was a bright copper penny.  But I had to bend over to pick it up.  In that case emotion won.  I picked it up and dropped it into my pocket, vowing to write an article in a few years about how I turned the penny into a million dollars in my spare time.

Of course, now that penny is gone, together with 99 of its brothers and sisters, disappearing into the machine selling me nothing but air.

I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my wife.  She’s going to laugh at me.  I spent $1.00 this morning for air.

Alan

 

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