There are 2 stories in 1 here. 1 is called Shoeshine Woman and The Beach Bum read it and leave your comments about them The Shoeshine Woman introduction: The Missing ingredient I arrived at the Phoenix airport about 6:30 in the morning. Having time before my plane left, I looked around to see if there was a place where I could get my shoes shined. There was hardly anybody in the airport at that time of the morning. I strolled around. Before long, I found a shoeshine stand. It was open; a woman in her mid to late forties sat in one of the customer chairs, absorbed in a paperback book. She was dressed in black stretch pants, a black apron and a white shirt. She seemed like a nice, solid person. I walked over to her stand. The woman greeted me warmly. She was friendly and happy—not always an easy way to be before the sun comes up, I thought. She got up, set down her book, frst carefully folding over the corner of the page she’d been reading, then took up the tools of her trade and pleasantly ushered me into the chair. Her stand was located right next to a service door through which a constant stream of maintenance men and janitors came and went. Got to be at work by seven, I guessed. As they passed by our shoeshine stand, every one of these men stopped and exchanged greetings with the woman. She knew them all by name and they knew hers, too. It was clear they were all friends. She went to work on my shoes, and we started talking. Her daughter, she told me, had just won a cheerleading contest. Boy was she proud of her! The girl was hoping to go to a cheerleading camp in Dallas. “Tell you the truth,” she confded, her voice dropping a bit, “I don’t know how in the world I’m going to fnd the money to buy her the uniform and plane ticket, let alone the camp tuition.” In just the few minutes that I sat with this woman, I learned a good deal about her life—and about her. She loved her family, and for that matter, liked people in general. She made friends easily and was a natural-born communicator. It was also clear that she enjoyed her work. And it’s a good thing she does, I thought—because she’d been there, shining shoes in that same spot, for more than fve years. I couldn’t help but wonder what this woman’s life would be like if she had taken a different path fve years earlier. She was well spoken, carried herself well, and was friendly and affable. With different clothes and a little attention to her hair, she could easily pass for a successful businessperson. I noticed the book she’d been reading. It was a popular novel, something to pass the time, to survive the stretches of occupational boredom by living vicariously in someone else’s imagined romance. There was a little heap of them sitting dog-eared by the wall. What if, instead of spending ten or ffteen minutes here and there, tucked in between customers, sinking into the pages of those forgettable novels, she had spent the last fve years reading books that were genuinely life changing? What if that little stack of books included Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or David Bach’s Smart Women Finish Rich? Where would she be today? The shoeshine woman was a hard worker. Good with people. She knew how to read and clearly enjoyed doing so. She was a superb communicator. She obviously had the talent, personality and basic life skills to accomplish a lot more than just living off tips from shining the shoes of people who could afford to buy their kids new uniforms and tickets to Dallas. But she was spending her life building other people’s dreams—not her own. Your income tends to equal the average income of your fve best friends, I mused. What if she had spent time around people with signifcantly higher incomes than her own? What if, instead of hanging out only with her colleagues here in the airport, she had cultivated a different group of friends? What if she’d been associating with powerful people, successful people, mentors, movers, shakers, leaders? She could easily have done this—she’s a terrifc conversationalist. If she had, where would she be today? I’m not making a value judgment on modest incomes or simple occupations. There are people who work the humblest of jobs yet live lives rich in relationships and joy, just as there are extremely wealthy people who are also extremely unhappy. And I’m not criticizing popular novels. But it was clear that this woman was struggling, and as we sat there talking, I’d have bet anything that she wanted more out of life. It was clear that she wanted to give her daughter the uniform and the Dallas trip, things she couldn’t afford in the life she was living. And it was clear that it was so much on her mind, she’d confded her worries to a complete stranger within fve minutes of meeting him. She wanted more, it was plain to see. Why didn’t she have it? She’s industrious, motivated and smart. She reads. She listens. She’s sharp. Where would she be today if she’d set foot on a different path a year ago? Five years ago? You can bet she wouldn’t be shining my shoes. Managing a chain of shoeshine stands is more like it. Would she be having any trouble sending her daughter to Dallas? I bet she’d be sponsoring the entire team—and going with them, too! While this woman with the wonderful personality continued shining my shoes, I was watching her in my mind’s eye, seeing her on a plane to Texas surrounded by giggling, excited, happy teenagers, seeing her being successful in so many different ways, in so many areas, making such a difference in her own life and the lives of so many others, if only ... what? What was missing? Feelings welled up in me, a mix of frustration and sadness. I felt for a moment as if I were going to cry, and I wondered, Why are you so moved by all of this? You’ve seen this before a hundred times—why are you so affected by this one instance? One reason, I knew, was that it reminded me of another character I’d observed before—nice, like the shoeshine woman, a good person ... just not succeeding in life. The Beach Bum I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My dad died when I was eleven; I remember being handed the fag from his casket. My mom held everything together; she was a great, loving mom. But it was still a rough way to grow up: a fatherless, blond-headed kid in a Hispanic neighborhood, who didn’t ft in. I really didn’t know what to do with it all, so I turned my energy into mischief and misbehavior: I blamed everything and everyone. In third grade, my teachers informed my mom that I had a low IQ. I quickly gained a reputation for mischief and troublemaking.While my mom worked her way through the years, I struggled my way through school. By age eighteen, it was clear to anyone who knew me that I didn’t have much of a future. The Slight Edge I begged my way into the University of New Mexico. At college, I built on my previous academic career and succeeded in taking my C average to a D average. I did learn one thing, though: I learned that when spring break came, all the students went to Daytona Beach for a week. I thought I could do one better—I quit school and moved there. At Daytona Beach, I pursued my frst profession: I became a beach bum. I lifted weights and chased girls. I let my hair grow long and curly. People started calling me “Gorgeous George,” after the famous wrestler at the time. I got a job at the Orlando Country Club cutting the grass on the golf course. One day, as I was cutting the greens in the hot Florida sun, I paused to watch the wealthy club members playing golf on the grass I had cut. As I watched them hum to and fro in their zippy golf carts, in dapper fne golf outfts, with their classy golf bags flled with expensive golf clubs, I felt a burning question simmer up inside. Why is it that they’re over there riding in carts, and I’m over here working? I don’t get it. Why are they putting and I’m cutting? I don’t get it! I’m as good as these people are. How do they get to have it ten times better than me? Are they ten times better than me? Are they ten times smarter? Or do they work ten times harder? For whatever reason, as happens in so many people’s lives, I found myself staring squarely at a fork in the road, a point I now refer to as a “day of disgust,” that moment of impact we sometimes hit in our lives when we face our circumstances and make a decision to change. In that instant, standing there sweating in the Florida heat, I came to a moment of decision. I suddenly knew that I’d had it up to here with where I was, what I was and who I was. Something clicked; the tumblers in the lock fell into place; and I knew that I could never go back to who I’d been only a minute earlier. I knew that for things to change, I had to change. For things to get better, I had to get better. I left the golf course. I loaded my stereo and clothes into my 1964 Dodge Dart slant-six (all my possessions ft easily into the back seat with room for a passenger) and took off for Albuquerque. It took me six days just to get to Texas because the car kept overheating. It was the longest trip of my life. The Superachiever That semester, for the frst time in my life, I got straight A’s. I went on to business school and graduated at the very top of my class. Fresh out of college, I became one of the youngest international airport managers in the country. I was then recruited by Texas Instruments (TI). I wanted to be in management, but they said, “If you want to be in management, you have to start in sales.” Sales! I hated the idea of sales, knew nothing about it and was terrifed of it, but sales it was. I worked at TI for fve years and went on to become Intelligent Systems Manager. But corporate America wasn’t for me. There was a lot of politics (which I hated) and it did not feel like I’d yet found the place where I belonged. I then decided to start a solar energy company. I knew nothing about solar energy; I barely knew whether the sun came up in the east or in the west. But with four hundred solar companies in the state, New Mexico was the capital of the budding new industry, so ignorance or not, the smart course of action seemed clear. And at frst, it looked like I had indeed made the smart decision.Within two years, my company was in the top 20, and eventually we became the ffth-largest solar-air energy company in America. I was thrilled. I was on top of the world. What I did not yet know was that nothing ever stays the same: everything is in motion. Everything changes. Times changed. Tax laws changed. Our industry was hit hard. Before I knew what was happening, I had lost everything, gone back to zero and below—owing more money than I thought I could ever even hope to make again. The Lesson The night my car was towed away, I sat in despair and thought: This just isn’t fair. After living as a failure all my life, I woke up one day and came to my senses, went back to college, applied myself like crazy, entered at the bottom and graduated at the top, worked for a major corporation for fve years and went to the very top, built my own company in less than fve years and went to the top ... and here I am, after twelve long years of building toward success, at the bottom again! I’m more broke today than when I was Gorgeous George on the beach! Twelve years of blood and guts, and I was more of a failure than ever. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I couldn’t see the logic, the justice, the reasons for any of it. Was life just inherently unfair? Was that it? Was there simply no rhyme or reason for anything? Was there no point in even trying? That was when I began to examine more carefully what had happened in my life. I had been a college dropout, a beach bum and a complete fnancial failure. And I had also been a straight-A student, a top corporate manager, a superachieving entrepreneur in a cutting-edge industry and a complete fnancial he Slight Edge success. And all of those had been the same person. So what was the difference? It made no sense. Or did it? For the frst time, I began to see that over the years of my roller-coaster career, I had gone through a rich sequence of experiences that held the secrets to success as well as to failure. I had proven to myself, beyond any shadow of doubt, the depths of failure that simple daily errors in judgment could produce. I had also seen what simple daily disciplines could accomplish. I just hadn’t quite realized what I knew. It was time to pull away the veil of circumstance and look right at the heart of the matter. To go behind the results and examine the actions, and behind the actions to fnd the attitudes, and behind the attitudes to discover the thinking that held them there. That was when I began to discover and explore the Slight Edge. Since that time, I have built some extraordinary businesses and earned more money than I ever dreamed of back when I was a corporate manager or solar energy entrepreneur. I’ve also experienced more joy and fulfllment within my family and other relationships than I knew was possible. I’ve also discovered new vistas in my own investment in my own development, in terms of both health and learning. Perhaps most important of all is that I’ve built a philosophy that is grounded in reality, in the way things actually work—not on luck but on the power of the simple disciplines. I could lose it all tomorrow. (It’s happened before; I’d survive.) But there is something I cannot lose, and with that one thing I could start from scratch and build it all back up again. That one thing is the Slight Edge. If Only … “You’re lookin’ good, sir, lookin’ good.” The shoeshine woman was grinning at me. Another customer lost in his early morning thoughts. And another job well done. I looked down: I could see my refection in my shoes. Indeed I am. Lookin’ good … thank you. Thanks very much. I paid her, gave her as big a tip as I could without (I hoped) having her feel I was being patronizing, and walked away with clean shoes and a heavy heart. She was right; for me, things were lookin’ good, sir, lookin’ good. But why the beach bum and not the shoeshine woman? The Slight Edge Jeff Olson
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 15:18:54 +0000
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