Hey there, faithful followers!&nbsp; I received the following note in my inbox this morning and thought I'd share.&nbsp; Folks are often asking me for book recommendations and because I enjoy the Heath Bros., I thought you might enjoy them&mdash;and their recommendations&mdash;too.&nbsp; Time to load up that Kindle for the summer vacays!
-blake
&nbsp;&nbsp;
* * *
&nbsp;
Greetings everyone,
Welcome to our erratically-published newsletter for readers of our books: Made to Stick, Switch, and Decisive.
As our long-time newsletter readers know, we rarely make book recommendations, because it can get dicey for us. We have a lot of friends who are authors, so calling out a few books is asking for trouble ("Hey, where's my recommendation? I thought we were friends!!"). We also try to avoid mutual-back-scratching situations, where we plug books in hopes that the authors will repay the favor someday. Bottom line: Both of us are old-school enough to believe that when we recommend something, we should really believe in it.
Below are some books we believe in. We gave ourselves three constraints in making recommendations: (1) The book must offer great *practical* advice. It might not be so captivating that it keeps you up at night, but it will deliver a big return on your investment of time; (2) The book must be a &lsquo;hidden gem&rsquo; &ndash; not something you&rsquo;ve seen 100 times at the airport; (3) We must avoid a &lsquo;conflict of interest&rsquo;&mdash;i.e., we&rsquo;re not friends with the authors or otherwise biased in their favor.
Given those three constraints, we came up with 7 books. Please read the descriptions carefully; these are not really &ldquo;general-interest&rdquo; books&mdash;they&rsquo;re more like specialized tools that will be absolutely perfect for 6% of you and irrelevant for the other 94%. Here goes:
1. Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. This is a terrific book for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial advisers. If you love Lean Startup, you&rsquo;ll love this. We both find ourselves teaching the analog, antilog, and &ldquo;leap of faith&rdquo; framework at least every month or two.
2. Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results by Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg. There is no shortage of creativity books in the world. Almost all of them include quick exercises that are fun to do in the moment. The strength of this book is its more robust and research-informed system for inspiring creativity. Good stuff.
3. The Complete Guide to Writing Questionnaires: How to Get Better Information for Better Decisions by David F. Harris. Again, this is not a general interest book. But if you need to write questionnaires that yield data you can trust, this is a must-read. Who knew questionnaires could go wrong in so many ways? And this book is actually more fun to read than it has any right to be. By the way, this is an expensive book and it should be; it is absurd to expect such specialized knowledge to cost the same as a Jack Reacher novel.
4. Sleeping with Your Smart Phone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work by Leslie Perlow. We are puzzled by the title and cover of this book. Do NOT buy this book because you work late and obsessively check your iPhone at night. Rather, buy this book because you want to read a brilliant case study of how to improve the performance and sustainability of a team in a high-pressure environment. Our #1 takeaway: To have outstanding team performance, the team must build self-awareness&mdash;that is, a team must be good at what it does AND be able to have a dialogue about how to get better at what it does.&nbsp;
5. Alpha Project Managers: What the Top 2% Know that Everyone Else Does Not by Andy Crowe. If you want a book that keeps you reading until the wee hours of the night, read Presumed Innocent. If you want a book that draws distinctions between great project managers and mediocre ones&mdash;distinctions that may surprise you&mdash;read this one. One huge &ldquo;a-ha!&rdquo; for us: The alpha project managers are rated much more highly by their peers on communication, even though they don&rsquo;t spend any more time communicating. Want to know why? Read it.
6. Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams to Solve Hard Problems by J. Richard Hackman. It&rsquo;s all too rare to find a book that does a good job blending academic research, practical experience, and concrete examples/stories. For teamwork, this is that book. If your job requires you to assemble high-performing teams and to equip them with the right tools for success, then drop everything and spend a half day reading Hackman&rsquo;s book.
7. [bonus] Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. Confession: This is a technical violation of our standards on two grounds: Shafir and Chip shared the same graduate advisor so we do have a conflict of interest. Also, Scarcity does have many practical implications, but it is not a &ldquo;nuts &amp; bolts&rdquo; book like the other 6. Nonetheless, rules are made to be broken, and this is a book that we find ourselves thinking about frequently. The concept of &ldquo;tunneling&rdquo; was a huge eye-opener for us. If you loved Thinking Fast and Slow, you&rsquo;ll love this.
Hope you found this helpful. We'll watch the response rate to this email and if it seems like you're finding these tips useful, we'll plan to do a new list every year or two.
That&rsquo;s all for now -- enjoy your spring and we&rsquo;ll be in touch again sometime in the near (or distant) future.
Best,
Chip &amp; Dan Heath
&nbsp;

Summer Book Recommendations by The Brothers Heath

This past December, a precious friend of many retired after a quarter-century with the USDA Forest Service.&nbsp; A few weeks prior, a former co-worker of his (himself a recent retiree) contacted several of us inquiring whether we'd be willing to submit a few photographs or modest remembrances of said gentleman during his storied career with the Agency.
When I received the email and began internalizing the news, the wave of emotions that swept over me was really quite surprising.
On the one hand, gosh, I was so very happy for him.&nbsp; On the other, it signified the end of an era; one of many I&rsquo;ve experienced in the course of my own career.&nbsp; Of the gentleman, whom many affectionately called &ldquo;Guido,&rdquo; I wrote in part:
Guido&mdash;part emcee, part film historian, part entertainer, part A/V wonk, part moralist, part servant, part cheerleader, part storyteller, part prankster, part waiter, part confidant, part consigliere, all friend and all heart and all encourager and all leader&mdash;would rally us each morning, mic us every hour, guide us every step of the way, make connections we&rsquo;d never seen before, and encourage us as we concluded every exhausting evening.&nbsp; He was then, and is now (even more so, in light of his retirement), a National Treasure.
I have never known a human being with a more effortless combination of humility, authenticity, wisdom, wit and flat-out joy.&nbsp; In a world of disappointment and ne&rsquo;er do wells, Guido is the person who serves as North Star, reminding us that we are, indeed, here for a reason; we are, indeed, going someplace; how we live our lives does, indeed, matter.&nbsp; And perhaps equally important, there is a story to be told in there somewhere, and told well.
Eventually, I was to learn that more than 52 pages of content was received: paragraphs, anecdotes, mischievous recollections, full-blown stories&hellip;tributes, one and all&hellip;compiled into a document that was lovingly curated, laid-out, bound and presented at his retirement ceremony, which I was so terribly disappointed to have missed for reasons I can only attribute to inexcusable travel woes.&nbsp; I would have given my eyeteeth to have seen this beautiful human being receive his document, take it in his hands, weigh its meaning, rotate it this way and that and then&mdash;perhaps over the course of two or three nights thereafter&mdash;slip on his reading glasses and comb through the pages as his wife, Sue, sat by his side and elbowed him the ribs as if to say, &ldquo;See, I told you so.&rdquo;
Guido, like my own father and Oliver Warin, Dick Reynolds, Terry Millard, Ed Wingard, Lou Romero, Dalton Jantzen, Steve Buchholz or the dozen other gentlemen who entered my life at precisely the right time and made a particularly necessary impact on me for myriad reasons will be forever etched in my brain and branded on my heart.
I wish that each of them, and every deserving mentor, could receive a document as meticulously crafted as Guido&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I pray that each of them hears me when I say, &ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;
I can think of few greater satisfactions than to arrive at the end of one&rsquo;s career or life and feel like, &ldquo;Yeah, I was here.&nbsp; I made a difference.&nbsp; I accepted and gave love, lived a life of faith and faithfulness, and will be forgiven my failures and remembered for my efforts.&rdquo;
Eventually, these bodies return to dust and, some years hence, our existence from this place will be all but expunged.&nbsp; There will come that day when the last person who knew us or was impacted by us will speak our name for the final time and, poof, whatever we were or thought we were or hoped to be is a story for another realm.
But until then, for the generation now and those that immediately follow, either through our blood or our behavior, may we do good works, remain steadfast, and positively impact as many as possible.
My personal hope is that I will die entirely empty.&nbsp; Dried up, having left everything on this field.&nbsp; Perhaps preceded by my phenomenal parents, a cousin or two, succeeded or not by a precious sister and remembered foremost in the minds of a beautiful bride and daughter and a few friends who overlooked my sizeable flaws and eccentricities and movie shenanigans.&nbsp; Folks whom I pray will be able to truthfully say as they lower me into the cool clay on a hot Dallas day, &ldquo;Yeah, he was here.&nbsp; He made a difference.&nbsp; He accepted and gave and persevered in faith and shall be forgiven, remembered and redeemed.&rdquo;
May we be so fortunate, right?&nbsp; Abundantly so.
As for Guido, you exemplar, may the balance of your years be the best yet and regaled as earnestly as those in Volume One.
It has been a privilege, my friend, and I wish you a restorative retirement.
&nbsp;

The Meaningfulness of Mentors

Another school year is coming to an end.&nbsp; Our daughter is so excited!
I am bummed.
Sure, I look forward to a trip or two, to the usual change of pace, routine and scenery.&nbsp; And, of course, the sense of relief and joy and levity that animates my daughter for the next couple months is a wonderful blessing.
But you know what?&nbsp; With the advent of summer, it seems that we all fall away.&nbsp; Folks and families head for the hills.&nbsp; There are vacations galore: road trips and flights and cruises and mountainhikes and beaches.&nbsp; The dress code changes considerably as kids squeeze into last summer's swimsuits and men don their goofy shorts and sandals.
Children braid their little bracelets, cut their hair, develop their tan, and parents and adults everywhere imbibe&mdash;while also keeping an eye on the calendar.&nbsp; Sure, it goes fast, but gosh, when will September be here?
The trough between Memorial Day and Labor Day is punctuated by Independence Day, but is otherwise a moonscape.&nbsp; People are hither and yon, running this way and that.
It&rsquo;s great, yeah.
But that falling away&hellip;the sojourns&hellip;the summer&hellip;it&rsquo;s always tough for me.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m an October-February kinda guy.&nbsp; I prefer the cool to the warm, and love being able to wear my jacket with all its pockets.&nbsp; The one where I can stash my phone and car keys and wallet and earbuds and kindle and whatnot, and not slosh around in baggy shorts and awkward flip-flops, slathered in sunscreen and bedecked in sunglasses and odd baseball cap.
No, I greatly prefer the chill.&nbsp; The early evenings, the darkening skies, the silence of snowfall, the sounds of high school bands practicing and plastic helmets clicking as two-a-days begin and football looms on the horizon.&nbsp; Baseball, basketball; you can have &lsquo;em.
Give me football, any day, and the Oscar race.&nbsp; Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s my stretch; my spread.
As far as I&rsquo;m concerned, Valentine&rsquo;s Day marks the beginning of the end!
Gone is the sense of Christmas&hellip;or &ldquo;Winter Break,&rdquo; if you must.&nbsp; The &ldquo;something,&rdquo; anything, that motivates a few zealous folks to decorate their homes like crazy, to look out for one another, to shop a little, to give a lot, to sing carols offkey, to watch TV specials with aging stars, to eat pie and drink nog and unite as a family in some distant land of old while wearing ugly knitted sweaters.
Say what you will about the holidays&mdash;whatever yours may be&mdash;but my take is this: the end of the year brings with it a sense of national consciousness; a oneness.&nbsp; No matter our beliefs, our religions, our lack thereof, the year's end is a natural time for thanksgiving and reflection, and with the New Year that looms over each December, the holidays are also a time of hope and promise and potential.
I love the holidays.&nbsp; And I love Christmas.&nbsp; I feel like we&rsquo;re in something together, even when we're not.
Sure, I appreciate the irony and the hokum and the prestidigitation.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not a complete idiot.
But for those few weeks&mdash;the ones that fall somewhere between mid-October and January 2nd&mdash;I feel like anything is possible.&nbsp; For everyone.
I&rsquo;ll enjoy my summer, but probably not as much as you.
I&rsquo;ll savor my time with my girls, my time with family, our trips with friends.&nbsp; And I&rsquo;ll appreciate and value the long days and warm sun on my pasty, vitamin D-deficient skin.
But God bless Christmas, and the moment I hear that marching band on the field up the road.
&nbsp;

Summer Christmas

Gosh, there sure are a lot of coaches out there.&nbsp; Performance Coaches, Career Coaches, Life Coaches, Marriage Coaches, Financial Coaches, Health Coaches, Christian Coaches, even Divorce Coaches.&nbsp; Every time I fly, I sit next to a coach.&nbsp; It just seems to work out that way&hellip;men and women who hand me business cards with certifications from Covey, Maxwell, some university, or prestigious and puffy-sounding institutions like International Association of Coaching, Professional Business Coach Alliance, International Coaching Council, International Coach Federation, Certified Coaches Federation, Coach U, Certified Coach Training Alliance, New Age World Order, Worldwide This or That, Intergalactic Something-or-Other, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
It makes sense.&nbsp; According to MarketData, beginning in 2008 our nation was flooded with men and women, unemployed or underemployed HR and OD types, many of whom&mdash;necessity being the mother of invention&mdash;hung a shingle, called Vistaprint and, poof, became a coach overnight.&nbsp; Today, this wholly unregulated industry approaches nearly $2.5B USD per annum and is comprised of an estimated 40,000 individuals.&nbsp; Oh, and the market is growing nearly 20% every year.
It&rsquo;s the wild west, and all comers are welcome!
Because coaches are not quite mental health professionals or counselors or therapists, no form of accreditation, certification, licensure or ordainment is required, and therefore the floodgates are open wide and what might otherwise qualify as &ldquo;malpractice&rdquo; is practiced all the time, but doesn&rsquo;t even have a name in this zoo.&nbsp; I mean, after all, what term would you use to describe a charlatan or snake oil salesman in a &lsquo;profession&rsquo; in which no standards exist and negligible or poor or underperformance thrives?&nbsp; Nothing, really, because there is no foundation, no basis, no context, no code, no law, no bylaw, no committee, no board, no &ldquo;standards and practices&rdquo; to which one could or should be [held] accountable.
Anyhoo, these coaches are so abundant, so everywhere.&nbsp; Each of them hawking his wares, peddling MBTI assessments or tarot cards, and describing himself as a professional.
To this, I simply say, caveat emptor, because the genie is out of the bottle, and testimonials are only as legitimate as the person giving them, particularly those that derive from a coach's roundtable or circle or council or cabal or coven, for that matter (the sort that masquerades as a client referral, when it is in fact just a peer-member of said coach's networking group, the members of which conspire to have one another's dues-paying back, that the rising tide may raise all boats therein, not entirely unlike in a pyramid scheme).
The other night, for example, I was invited to attend an elegant awards banquet during which I sat next to a nice young woman who introduced herself as &ldquo;a life coach.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Really?&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t say.&rdquo;&nbsp; She was maybe all of 28.
Earlier this week I spoke with a good friend who is, indeed, a professional coach.&nbsp; He has ten years of graduate education to prove it, is licensed as a clinical psychologist, has attended and taught countless coaching courses over the years, possesses a legitimate base of sound referrals, has published a prolific body of peer-reviewed academic papers, serves as an expert witness in civil trials, and sees the problem as I see it: the path too wide, the walls too low, the crowd too large, the scene unmonitored, and the gates unhinged.&nbsp; He spends a fair amount of time, initially at least, explaining his profession, defending it, and distinguishing himself from the quackery that comes to mind when people ask what it is he does.
But this, too, makes sense, considering how suspicious and skeptical and jaded people have become, employees and institutions alike, as a result of some poor practitioners who give an otherwise noble profession a sometimes stinky reputation.
It's unfortunate and wouldn't be necessary if not for so many bad actors.
There are many legitimate and excellent coaches, proven and successful advocates for one&rsquo;s potential self.&nbsp; They are authentic and courageous and trustworthy, are great relators, ask wonderful questions, listen well, have analytical minds, follow a rigorous and worthy protocol that stands up under substantive scrutiny, see patterns that clients/customers/patients would rarely see for themselves, collaborate to implement workable plans, hold individuals and organizations accountable for personal and systemic and sustainable solutions, achieve deeply qualitative outcomes (many of which are quantifiable, too), have legitimate references, and create independence&mdash;not dependence&mdash;eventually going away.&nbsp; As is the case in leadership, to succeed at coaching means to become unnecessary.&nbsp; Having to return in perpetuity is failure as coach and client.&nbsp; Successful engagements bring an individual or team or organization to such a reliably high level of performance that recurring appointments for prior problems or opportunities become unnecessary; only periodic check-ins and tune-ups are required.&nbsp; The coach who lingers is not a coach, but rather a surrogate, a crutch or, more insidiously, an enabler or parasite, similar to that ilk of ill-reputed therapists who wittingly medicate or treat patients for years and to no avail, never divulging that no off-ramp exists around the bend or that they, through their personal acts of omission, have commissioned dependence.
Should the day come that you, or someone you value or love, require the services of a true coach, be thoughtful in your search.&nbsp; I've seen several coaches graduate to 'friend' status and attend clients' childrens' graduations, while bad coaches will borrow your watch to give you the time, then send a bill for their effort.
&nbsp;

Real Coaching

I saw a news story the other night, on 60 Minutes or wherever, about a coastal tribe someplace that doesn&rsquo;t possess the concepts&mdash;let alone the words&mdash;for &ldquo;when,&rdquo; &ldquo;want,&rdquo; or &ldquo;worry.&rdquo;
Wow, what a world that must be.
It&rsquo;s clearly not our world.&nbsp; Not the one with departure times, the one with materialism, the one with anxiety.
But it&rsquo;s nice to know such a place exists, somewhere beneath our same sun.&nbsp; Though I will never be there, I resolve to worry less, be content more, and to abide in the moment.
Far from being the least, it is perhaps the most one can do.
That any of us can do.
Let&rsquo;s do it together.
&nbsp;

A few weeks ago now, a young man named Rob Reid passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.&nbsp; At his funeral the following Saturday, I got the impression that my own reaction was similar to others&rsquo;: shock and temporary speechlessness.
I didn&rsquo;t know Rob all that well; we&rsquo;d participated in a few meetings together at church, I&rsquo;d heard him preach, I&rsquo;d had lunch with him once, and he was always very gracious and kind and respectful and complimentary and supremely inquisitive.&nbsp; A curious mind, if you will, the sort that roils with energy, crackles with electricity and tosses and tumbles ideas and positions around like rocks in a dryer.&nbsp; He was a great advocate for alternatives, and would have been a natural and fearless debate coach.
In short, after years of substance abuse followed by treatment, more than a dozen institutionalizations, sobriety, counseling, fatherhood, career change, theology, seminary, introspection, writing, authoring, speaking, preaching, proselytizing and what can only be described as personal and spiritual transformation, Rob had gotten his act together and his house and affairs and life in order.&nbsp; Moreover, by sharing his story of addictive torment followed by peace and then steadfastly coming alongside others in distress, he positively impacted the lives of literally hundreds of broken men along the way, a dozen of whom spoke beside his casket with alternatingly booming and quiet voices, offering soliloquys and elegies and psalms and choppy stories made earnest when told by those whom I suspected had spent most of their lives on the back row, not the front.&nbsp; Some wore suits, others torn jeans and sneakers and sunglasses and gold chains.
And they brought the house down.
They shared testimonies, they quoted scriptures, they paced like cornered tigers, they sweat until undulating beads dropped off their chins.&nbsp; Some eulogizers read from worn and torn and crumpled pages of penciled notes, others from dog-eared bibles, and all spoke from the heart.&nbsp; Nearly three hours later, as this assemblage of motley men and proudly tattooed women wound their ways back to the pews, the rapturous revival almost complete, we viewed a parting slideshow of photos that summarized Rob&rsquo;s life as well as any can, images of his Disney daughter filling the screen while young choirboys from some YouTube recording sang like prophetic angels in a voluminously echo-y and stony sanctuary in Europe.
We departed, and hundreds of us&mdash;packed like sardines in a normally large enough facility&mdash;reverentially found our way outside and into the bright afternoon.
It had occurred to me beforehand that Rob&rsquo;s life was the sort Johnny Cash, Don McLean or Billy Joel would have memorialized wonderfully in their early songwriting years...that Rob's potential might hang in the air forever and that his untimely and early death would evoke the ceaseless &ldquo;Whys&rdquo; and &ldquo;What ifs&rdquo; that linger and tarry in throats.&nbsp; These are questions to which we&rsquo;ll not receive sufficient answers in this lifetime, but I can assure you of this fact, for I know it in my bones: in his short time on earth, Rob poured an inexhaustible sum of energies onto the battlefield and somewhere, way on high from across canyons and mountaintops and misty crags, I detect a faint yet comforting whisper in the wind, something that sounds a lot like, &ldquo;You did well, my good and faithful servant.&rdquo;
Rob&mdash;through redemption&mdash;lived just long enough to see his self created anew, clearly better than it ever was, and his restoration illuminated the path for many more.&nbsp; There is much in life that bewilders me, and I admit this freely, resting in the belief that Rob&rsquo;s early suffering proved an indisputably necessary tax, a waypoint to peace for scores unseen.&nbsp; Rob's restlessness, pacified eventually through his testing the bounds of a soul and the limits of love, somehow demanded that he explore, that he gnaw, that he lose all in order to gain all that matters.&nbsp;
The pang of losing a passionate, vigorous, ebullient young father who had so clearly just begun his Second Act will reverberate in my own heart for quite some time, but I take solace knowing that on one spellbinding day in the spring of '15, several of us had the distinct privilege to watch what had heretofore been an oft battered and beleaguered soul become the strongest and most beautiful thread&mdash;weaving and tying and uniting an entire procession of individuals together, each of whom is a beneficiary of Rob's pricked fingers.&nbsp; "Amazing Grace," indeed, for it was on that day, and most fully so, that Rob's spirit, perhaps leathery and scar-tissued from years of wandering and wondering, finally tore free from its chrysalis and bounced high on streams of warm air, straight past the sun.
&nbsp;

Rob Reid, The Fondest of Farewells

As another Monday comes to a close, maybe it&rsquo;s time for a movie review? Here&rsquo;s a peek at &ldquo;American Sniper.&rdquo; (Gimme a few more days to recover and, time and energy permitting, I&rsquo;ll summarize &ldquo;Inherent Vice,&rdquo; &ldquo;Blackhat,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Paddington.&rdquo; Two I recommend, one I do not.)
But now for the big boy, American Sniper.
For starters, if you saw it, no, your imagination is NOT playing tricks on you: it was &ldquo;CRAZY PACKED,&rdquo; because it opened to HUGE January numbers.
Having played only in limited release since Christmas Day, American Sniper opened nationwide this past weekend and grossed $90.2 million in three days, setting two box office records along the way: (1) It had the largest January opening in cinematic history, besting 2014&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ride Along&rdquo; (starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart) by a whopping $58 million dollars. (2) It is the second highest R-rated opening ever, second only to The Matrix Reloaded's $91.7 million. (Interestingly, Bradley Cooper also starred in the third largest R-rated movie ever, &ldquo;The Hangover Part II,&rdquo; which grossed $85.7 million in 2011.) American Sniper received the coveted &lsquo;A+&rsquo; Cinemascore, which conceivably bodes well for its six Oscar nominations.
I enjoyed the film&mdash;if &ldquo;enjoy&rdquo; is the correct verb&mdash;experiencing it with 26 &ldquo;Movie Men.&rdquo; The word each of us used most frequently as we shuffled out of the theater was &ldquo;sobering.&rdquo; Save a few gunshots and explosions here and there, I found it to be a very quiet film. There is much on the screen, sure, but more of the action occurs within one&rsquo;s heart. If you search for its soundtrack on iTunes, you won&rsquo;t find one...because there isn&rsquo;t one. There are only three songs attributed to the film (&ldquo;Taya&rsquo;s Theme,&rdquo; &ldquo;Someone Like You,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Funeral.&rdquo;) It&rsquo;s THAT quiet.
And precisely as I predicted a couple weeks ago, &ldquo;the left&rdquo; has lashed-out at the film, from Michael Moore and Seth Rogen to countless others bemoaning its [exactly as I wrote] &ldquo;glorification of killing.&rdquo;
C&rsquo;est la vie.
I suppose they&rsquo;d prefer we defend God and Country with butter knives or shoehorns or not at all. Or that we, fighting that shadowy terrorism for which we never asked, simply abide hijacked planes flying into our buildings or stand by silently while disenfranchised punks with guns shoot cartoonists in one of the most pacifistic countries in the world, the land of baguettes, croissants and crepes. Je crois que non.
And for those who lambast snipers as &ldquo;cowards,&rdquo; as some have done in the media recently, all I can say is they are living in fantasyland. The English were routed in our American Revolution because colonists employed tiny militia who, for primarily utilitarian reasons, incorporated guerilla tactics rather than presenting nice, clean lines of infantrymen to be shot down easy as tin ducks at the state fair. Such military adaption is as old as time itself, and snipers have always been and will always be a core force multiplier in wartime. To cede high and superior vantage points, whether through aircraft or rooftops, is suicide. End of politics, end of manners, end of story.
As for the film itself, it&rsquo;s simple and pure and entirely unornamented, as are all Eastwood&rsquo;s sparse creations, from &ldquo;Unforgiven&rdquo; to &ldquo;Gran Torino.&rdquo; In this case, it&rsquo;s a man and his long rifle, representing in their simplicity the entire sweep and zeitgeist of our 14-year war-on-every-front thus far. My takeaway? We are damned if we do and damned if we don&rsquo;t. There is no winning if we continue, but there is surely failure if we stop. In a world-sized playground in which bullies keep on comin&rsquo;, what choice remains but to stand one&rsquo;s ground? Better to die defending oneself than to forfeit freedom by allowing radicals to run the asylum unchecked.
But imagine plunging one&rsquo;s fist into a bucket of water. There&rsquo;s spillage, there&rsquo;s a wet hand, and as soon as it&rsquo;s removed, the water returns&mdash;save a tad less water now&mdash;to much of its original form and state and shape.
Such is the case here, it seems: as Bradley Cooper&rsquo;s SEAL sniper Chris Kyle eliminates 160-255 targets [actual figures remain murky] and kicks down door after door after door, deployment after deployment, tour after tour, the emotional and traumatic spillage is everywhere, and no one&rsquo;s hands are dry. There will be blood, indeed.
And eventually, Kyle makes the very logical decision to fight for his wife, for his children, for the vets who battle an equally real enemy back home in every form imaginable: mental, physical, spiritual.
As with &ldquo;Foxcatcher,&rdquo; we know how Sniper ends, too, but that doesn&rsquo;t make it any easier to bear. Kyle&rsquo;s casket, glistening in gold with an estimated thirteen dozen tridents, is but the umpteenth reminder the high price of war.
As has been described by all, yes, the film ends in utter silence. At this point, really, there is nothing more to convey anyway. A life is gone, more will follow, damned if we do, damned if we don&rsquo;t.
As for Cooper himself, he faces stiff competition for the Oscar on February 22nd. In a field that includes Steve Carell, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Keaton and Eddie Redmayne, there isn&rsquo;t one weak performance in the lot. Keaton is the shiny frontrunner, Cooper&rsquo;s role will likely divide voters right down the middle, Redmayne&rsquo;s Hawking is seamless, and Cumberbatch&rsquo;s Turing may be too obscure for some, so it&rsquo;s a complex race any way you slice it. I suspect Keaton will win (the Academy is lapping up I&ntilde;&aacute;rritu&rsquo;s longshots like sweet milk), and Cooper is phenomenal, but I&rsquo;d personally like to see Carell&rsquo;s portrayal of John E. Du Pont take the prize. He&rsquo;s ceaselessly flawless and haunting in ways only partially seen among his peer group here.
I don&rsquo;t know whether you saw &ldquo;Interstellar&rdquo; but, if you did, you might agree that HALF the film is easily &ldquo;the music.&rdquo; Without it, there is little to no movie. With it, it&rsquo;s arguably anthemic and propulsive, at least to me. And so, if I have only one negative thing to say about American Sniper, it&rsquo;s literally that in Eastwood&rsquo;s classic style, sans much music, American Sniper fails to create what it might have otherwise created had the ringing in Cooper&rsquo;s ears been further exploited, or had the funeral scenes been layered with more auditory crescendo, or had the moments of stillness been&mdash;gasp&mdash;accompanied by some strings or piano or lonely horn, a la &ldquo;The General&rsquo;s Daughter.&rdquo;
Musical accompaniment is, for me, immeasurably potent at creating layers and dimensionality, at creating emotion and movement in an otherwise line-free scene. Powerful as it was, I can only imagine how powerful Kyle&rsquo;s funeral scene(s) would have been had Sigur Ros&rsquo;s Jonsi scored them, or Michael Mann&rsquo;s team (think &ldquo;The Insider&rdquo; or &ldquo;Manhunter&rdquo; or &ldquo;Last of the Mohicans&rdquo;). Had Mann scored the film, for example, and accompanied the funeral procession with Taps, and rolled the credits silently afterward, wow. There DEFINITELY would NOT have been a dry eye in the house, I gua-ran-tee.
As it is, as his procession and burial occur, we only get one scant line of text which conveys that Chris Kyle was killed while trying to help troubled Iraqi veteran Eddie Ray Routh.
No larger account, no further contextualization, no grander perspective beyond what we&rsquo;ve just witnessed for, sure, two hours.
And I&rsquo;m fine with that; this was Kyle&rsquo;s story, not some attempt to cleanly encapsulate the entirety of war. But yes, I do wish we could have gotten four or five black screens about his life, his death, his family, his fallen brethren, our progress or lack thereof and our current state of affairs over there, and a suitable tribute to his legacy today, which is vast.
It is a haunting and beautiful and stripped down film, and I hope that Eastwood and Cooper continue to be acknowledged for their efforts in what is undoubtedly politically-charged subject matter, as they have proficiently created a lasting and impactful tribute&mdash;memorializing for all time one man&rsquo;s sacrifice, the greatest there is, for the country he loved so dearly, so actively, so passionately, so firmly, so unquestionably, so continually.
May he, and eventually each of us, rest in peace.
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American Sniper

Movies & More

Public Speaking, Stage Fright, and Beyond

True Thanksgiving

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<div class="_uaw clearfix _uaw" style="text-align: left;">&ldquo;You just have to decide whether you are Tigger or Eeyore.&nbsp;&nbsp;You have to be clear where you stand on the Tigger/Eeyore debate.&rdquo;</div>
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Ten months before succumbing to pancreatic cancer at age 47, Carnegie Mellon&rsquo;s Randy Pausch made it clear where he stood on the Tigger/Eeyore debate in his final lecture, which ultimately sold 4 &frac12; million copies in the U.S. alone when committed to paper as The Last Lecture.&nbsp; The runaway bestseller has now been translated into 46 languages. 
 It seems the world loves Tigger, in part because he&mdash;like each of us at our very best&mdash;bounces rather than breaks.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s the ultimate proprietor of the proverbial lemonade stand, always making the very best from the worst life has to offer.
 In a world besotted with news, soundbytes, spin and social media, we are similarly saturated in hyperbole and hysteria, much of it negative.&nbsp;&nbsp;It&rsquo;s difficult to turn on and tune in without soon wishing to tune out.&nbsp; Terrorism, &ldquo;fearbola,&rdquo; the long tail of 2008, Congressional gridlock, wars without end, crime, thoughtlessness, selfishness, shallowness&hellip;it&rsquo;s understandable that after prolonged exposure to virtually any newscast, one finds him or herself slowly devolving into Eeyore. 
 Be they good or bad, our attitudes and behaviors&mdash;like yawning and laughing&mdash;are often contagious, and all the more so when they are extreme.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s not the lukewarm and middlers who influence us most, it&rsquo;s the superstars and the slugs, the hot and the cold, the zealots and the absolutely catatonic who seem to motivate or demotivate us the most.&nbsp; The tiggers cajole, challenge and champion, often bringing out our best, while the eeyores serve as cautionary tales, reminding us what happens when one loses his passion, purpose or hope. 
 Any time one finds herself discouraged, daunted or down, it&rsquo;s helpful to consider &ldquo;The Six P&rsquo;s,&rdquo; each and every one of which was demonstrated by Pausch and admittedly run like an undercurrent throughout the entire philosophies of Pooh himself, but which you&rsquo;ll similarly find in any optimistic archetype, from Terry Fox and Viktor Frankl and King George VI and Helen Keller and Winston Churchill to Clara Barton and Rosa Parks and Abraham Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony and George Washington Carver and Teddy Roosevelt, who captured the sentiment of tiggerness so perfectly on April 23, 1910 when he spoke at the Sorbonnes in Paris, saying, in part:
&ldquo;It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.&nbsp; The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.&rdquo;
 Both optimism and pessimism are incontrovertibly contagious, but the former bolsters our immune system, while the latter simply makes us&mdash;and those around us&mdash;ill.&nbsp; But if one were to journey toward optimism, by what stars would he chart his course?&nbsp; Is there such a constellation?&nbsp; Indeed there is, as demonstrated by the aforementioned superstars, so many others like them, and enumerated here:
 1. Perspective. The primary difference between the dour and the dynamic is perspective.&nbsp; It is from perspective that we see the following flow. 
2. Proportion. When bad things happen, the pessimist (Eeyore) blows things out of proportion.&nbsp; The optimist (Tigger) keeps things in proportion. 
3. Pervasiveness. For the pessimist, one bad thing becomes universal, leaking and tainting everything it touches.&nbsp; The optimist partitions &ldquo;that one bad thing.&rdquo; 
4. Permanence. For the pessimist, bad things become lasting, while optimists see them for what they generally are: temporary. 
5. Personalization. Pessimists are blamers, waving their accusatory finger at others, and pointing out the window at those whom they perceive as responsible for their own problems.&nbsp; Optimists are owners, taking responsibility for their choices, the consequences, and staring in the mirror at the captain of their ship (or, as described in Invictus and recounted by Nelson Mandela day after day for the majority of his adult life, &ldquo;the captain of my soul&rdquo;). 
6. Power. Pessimists behave as if they are hapless and helpless victims to a buggy code that lost a zero or one somewhere along the way, while optimists assume control of their own software and rewrite it to achieve a new and better outcome.
&nbsp;
We do well to remember Tolstoy who wrote, &ldquo;Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself&rdquo; because, ultimately, regardless our role, each and every one of us is in charge of us&hellip;and is an influencer in his/her own right.&nbsp; A force for good, positivity and possibility, or for negativity, criticism or despair. 
 Far better, it seems, to be realistic, of course&mdash;but optimistically so.&nbsp; After all, the perils of pessimism are well-documented and undesirable all the way down the line.&nbsp; Doom and gloom may sell tickets and lather crowds, but they never win elections, rarely rally, and have a very poor track record for catalyzing communities or companies toward any sustainable change or culture.
 But Pausch, or Tigger himself, why, they seem to have tails so springy and levers so long that&mdash;time and again&mdash;the world is moved.
&nbsp;
*** Please forgive any errors, omissions or abruptness; this post was conceived around midnight, completed on an iPhone, and uploaded while being jostled in line at TGI Friday's in an airport. But I CHOSE to upload it nonetheless, so any shortcomings are mine and mine alone.
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The Perils of Pessimism & The Power of Positivity

[ Soundtrack for today&#39;s musing:
Jose Gonzalez&#39;s Step Out, followed by M83&#39;s Wait or
Jungle&#39;s Busy Earnin&#39;.&nbsp; It won&#39;t take that long to read my
brain toot, of course, but these are great songs to launch an evening. ] 




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*** 




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Finally saw the documentary
Tim&#39;s Vermeer last night on that most antiquated of devices, our
actual television set.&nbsp; 




&nbsp; 




It&#39;s a tiny tale about one man&#39;s
towering commitment and creativity.&nbsp; Clocking in at just 80 minutes, the
film is one of the fastest routes I can imagine to get from &quot;I&#39;ve lost
faith in people&quot; to &quot;human beings are amazing critters,
right?&quot;&nbsp; 




&nbsp; 




I couldn&#39;t help but think of people
in my own life who already have or whom I believe could do something as
breathtaking: my dad who, at 78, shoots par on a regular basis, plays competitive ping pong and pickleball, has taught
himself to draw, paint, whittle, play guitar and who, just last week (having
never made anything remotely like it before) delivered the most spectacular
&quot;billiard-style conference table light&quot; to our studio that he crafted
from reclaimed GA and NC barn wood, riveted tin scraps, Edison light bulbs and
cotton cording, all while using ordinary implements.&nbsp; His fancy toolbox
was a red Folger&#39;s can.&nbsp; My cousins, Gale Odom and Howard Johnson, the
Centenary opera singer/Dean/professor and voice mail/chip speed guru/Oxford
lecturer, respectively.&nbsp; John Odom, former JAG lawyer, public servant,
amateur photographer, historian, sailor, and public speaker
extraordinaire.&nbsp; My incomparable wife, Dawn, whose spiritual gifts and
leadership abilities seemingly know no bounds.&nbsp; Folks on our team: Dave, Scott,
Amanda, Cesar, Stan, Charity, JR, Clay, Matt, Anne, Patty, Dick, Joe, Lou,
Peter, Sharon (among so many others).&nbsp; These people&#39;s patience, attention
to detail, ingenuity, commitment to excellence and creativity is, at times,
absolutely staggering.&nbsp; Polymaths, in many cases, who are not ensnared by
or entangled in what Bruce Lee called &quot;the classical mess&quot; (but here,
the unnecessary and limiting and ultimately stultifying boundaries between liberal
arts/technical professions and all points in between, most of which were the
Middle Ages&#39; rudimentarily handy way of splitting and lumping disciplines). 




&nbsp; 




Think of all the people in your own
life (or yourself, for that matter), their displays of commitment and creativity,
and smile.&nbsp; As Morpheus might say, &quot;They choose the red pill.&quot; 




&nbsp; 




The little girl who loves to build
wood forts with a saw, hammer, and bucket of nails, or who sews, or writes, or
looms until her fingers practically fall off, then goes to bed journaling, reading The
Hobbit or pre-thinking the launch of her new etsy store.&nbsp; The boy who
loves Tonka truck robotics, origami, judo, scouting, cartooning, soccer,
poetry, mathematics, or video editing.&nbsp; Whatever.&nbsp; Whomever.&nbsp;
Wherever. 




&nbsp; 




We, the people, are an amazing lot,
despite the debauched mess you&#39;ll sometimes see on TV, be it contrived and
often vitriolic reality junk (which might as well be &quot;Hyperbole TV&quot;),
the pablum that passes for journalistic news nowadays, or the political
posturing and grandstanding that we see among our elected nitwits.&nbsp; (Gosh,
what I wouldn&#39;t give for an Abraham Lincoln right now.) 




&nbsp; 




There is much good in the world, and
much genius, especially when considering multiple intelligences.&nbsp; Though
generations have been brainwashed and misled to believe standardized tests are
any worthwhile indication whatsoever of true intellect and/or potential, Tim
Jenison&#39;s Vermeer is a reverberative slap in convention&#39;s face.&nbsp; A
glorious reminder that what we know, or think we know, or are, or think we are...is
only the beginning of a tale that, much like the Choose Your Own
Adventure books of old, can go any which way for tens of pages before it
occurs to you to throw&nbsp;the thing&nbsp;in the nearest wastebasket, grab your own notepad and
pen, and write your own dang story. 




&nbsp; 




&quot;It&#39;s just a mirror on a
stick,&quot; Tim summarizes to a stone-cold-shocked scholar.&nbsp; 




&nbsp; 





That&#39;s right, Tim, in the same way
that a wheel is just a wide circle, water is just a liquid, or Kwai Chang Caine
was just a grubby little grasshopper.




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