30 Sep 2001 #0140.html

Judged

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Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt via hardcopy,

cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts, and Sherri Trittipo.

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"Every twice in awhile paranoia strikes, and I wonder why I bother to write these notes. For over a year now some of you havn't commented on whether you even read them anymore. At least they don't bounce back, so I know your computer receives them. I recognize the fact the Thoughtlets do not seem to create any better communication by themselves. For instance, I'm not getting much information back from most of you. Paul it was nice of you to send a note back answering my question about where you were when the tragedy on September 11th happened. It was mostly an excercise for you individually, and so I'm not going to repeat your response. You will each be able to do that for years, yourselves, everytime there is a terrorist aggesssion somewhere in the world.

As was said in an early Thoughtlet, communication requres a source, a media, and a receiver (../9643.html). I know I'm sending information out (the source), and the messages aren't bouncing (the media), and yet there is seldom acknowledgement of receipt. Then I think how much I wish I had a diary of my Dad, my Mom, one of my Gandparents, or their parents, and I realize again why I am writing these notes. Partly it is ego. Partly it is to leave my mark and say to the world, this person lived and his life was not in vain. Mostly it is to find ways to tell you kids how much I love you, and that I want you to be able to learn from and avoid my mistakes, and to find joy in your own lives. The Thoughtlet approach, by it's nature, is a long-term approach, and I do recognize I might not learn if it really has value or what that real value is while I am alive. Oh well! It won't prove to be a valid test if I stop, and so I don't. I am in this for the long-term, and I apologize for those times like this week, when my notes comes across as `poor me,' self-indulgence pity. Maybe seeing me open up my feelings will help some of the rest of you see when you get into this depressive mode of living. The key is to recognize the mood and get out of it.

Maybe I have not learned how to not overreact to something said in passing. It is interesting how word can hurt, even when I am certain they were said with absolutely no malicious intent. Last Sunday evening when I called my Mom, I said something about someone, and she came back with, `Well, I certainly hope I don't get judged for all of the things you have done.' Mom, I honestly believe you did not intend to say anything hurtful. I have certainly said and written much more biting words to you. And your words gave me something to think about this week.

My first reaction was righteous (more probably self-rightous) indignation. I have lived a good life. I have always strived to make the right choices. Since my experience in Corvallis, I have attempted to put God and His work first. I have always provided for my family. I have done the very best I know how to teach correct principles. I have let those I love govern themselves (maybe not as soon as I should have). I have wonderful kids. I have a wonderful wife, whom I love with all of my heart. I have worked to make integrity and honesty part of who I am. I have fulfilled all church callings to the best of my ability. I have worked hard in my profession. I am respected and lauded for my professional accomplishments. And my Mom doesn't want to be judged by all of the things I have done?

My second reaction was I have missed the mark and I have failed. It is easy for me to get into this self-pity mode, and to say `Oh, poor me! I have it so rough!' Certainly I do not have the relationship I would like to have with my parents, of whom only Mom is left, with my sister, with my cousins, nor with my uncles and aunts. I am certainly not as close to you kids as I would like to be, and especially not Roice and Rob. Although I did have a good visit with Roice when he came down two weekends ago. Also, Rob and I have sent several e-mail's back and forth the last couple of weeks. Certainly Rob blames me for his getting kicked out of school, and not graduating with his High School Class. I find it interesting to be on this side of being judged. Especially since the little things I did with regards to answering the school's questions about his extra curricular activities were only a small portion of what the Life-Way Counselors suggested I do. It is certianly easy for me to fall into the trap of feeling like I haven't done anything that really matters, and I have missed the boat on most, if not all, of my activities.

My third reaction was, I will never be able to please my Mom. The goal posts are not fixed, and no matter what I do, my efforts will be judged as insufficient and irrelevant. And if I feel that way at 51, how does Roice feel at 26? Ben at 25? Paul at 24? Heather and Melanie at 22? Audrey at 21? Sara at 20? Rob at 18? Rachel at 17? and Matt at 14? I hope you each know how much I love you, irrespective of any goal posts! Mom, I know how much you love me.

So Mom, thanks for getting me to think about judging and being judged this week. It has provided a good basis for keeping the neurons whirring, during those slack times in the car, between meetings or phone calls, in the evenings, or when I've been out running or walking. I can't say I have come up with any profound insights, and yet there were a couple of things happen I feel are worthwhile to put in this electronic journal.

To start with, yesterday I went and got a haircut. It was Cinco Ranch Homecoming day, and so I had the opportunity to wait for a half an hour. The only non-girl magazine on the table was an Inc. Magazine for July 2001. The article is sufficiently relevant to my topic of being judged, I am going to type it out for all of you to read:

`Groundhog Day by Norm Brodsky There's a common pheonomenon in business that I refer to as Groundhog Day syndrome. It has to do with the tendency of people to fall into self-destructive patterns of behavior even though they end up getting whacked in the head - more or less like the caracter Bill Murry played in the movie Groundhog Day a few years back. I know one guy, for example, who put together a successful clothing business and then started taking out huge amounts of cash to build a palace for himself and his wife. When he ran into business problems, he discovered he didn't have the resources to weather them. In the end, he lost both the company and the house. So what did he do? He went out and started another clothing business, got it going, took out the cash, built another palace, ran into business problems, and lost both the company and the house. Two times in a row. That's not as unusual as you might think. I know another guy who makes a habit of buying companies, raising tons onf money from investors, and then paying himself so much in salary and perks that the company doesn't stand a chance. To be sure, he believes that each business is going to be wildly successful and that he deserves every penny he makes. But he always winds up where he started: broke. He's done that five times. Or consider my friend Danny (not his real name). His downfall is leverage. he's great at starting companies and getting them up and running, but then he starts leveraging them like crazy so that he can chase after business opportunities. He'll do whatever is necessary to get the credit he needs - even to the point of fooling around with his financial statements. Not that he intends to defraud anyone. He's just so focused on growing that he doesn't consider the possibility that things might go wrong. Of course, when you push things too far, they do go wrong. Sooner or later, Danny always lands in a pile of trouble. Those cases may be somewhat extreme, but Groundhog Day syndrome is not a rare affliction. To some extent, we all have habits of mind and ways of thinking that repeatedly get us into trouble, and it's very difficult to change them. For one thing, we don't like to admit that we're the cause of our own problems. There are almost always other culprits around - people who didn't do what we wanted or factors beyond our control. It's easier to blame them for our misfortune than to take responsibility for it, and so we let ourselves off the hook. But we do ourselves a disservice in the process. The most valuable business lessons we can learn come from facing up to our weaknesses. I'll give you the example of my greatest business failure - the bankruptcy of my messenger business, in 1988. Starting from scratch, I had built Perfect Courier to $30 million in sales, making the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies three years in a row. Then I merged Perfect Courier with a public company, CitiPostal. The merged business landed on the Inc. 100 list of fastest-growing public companies in 1987. But I wasn't satisfied. My dream was to have a $100-million company. So when a shortcut came along, I took it, merging with a $70-million company called Sky Courier in 1987. Sky, it turned out, had problems - big problems. For openers, it needed a quick injection of $5 million in cash. I decided to take the money out of Perfect Courier, which in itself wasn't neccessarily a mistake. Even if Sky had folded and the investment had been lost, Perfect Courier would have been able to survive and keep growing at the same rate as before. But I soon realized that the $5 million wasn't going to be enough. Sky needed $2 million more in cash, which I also decided to get from Perfect Courier. In addition, I subsequently agreed to pledge several million dollars of Perfect Courier's credit to keep Sky alive. Those two moves were very serious mistakes. Why? Because they put my principal business in jeopardy. I knew that if I lost the second round of money, Perfect Courier would be hobbled. If we got into trouble with the credit guarantee on top of that, Perfect Courier might not be able to survive. But despite the danger, I never even considered turning back. I didn't think I had to. I was sure I could handle whatever came along. I'd been in tough situations before. I thought I was invincible. What I didn't take into account was the inevitability of unpredictable events. First came the stock-market crash of October 1987. Particularly hard hit were the financial printers with which Sky did a lot of business. Overnight it lost 50% of its sales. Meanwihle, fax machines - which had been around for 20 years - suddenly reached a kind of critical mass, which had a devastating effect on the messenger business. Instead of sending documents by courier, more and more people were faxing them. Within a matter of months, Perfect Courier's business dropped by about 40%. The combination of factors was overwhelming. In September 1988 my companies filed for protection from their creditors under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code. By the time we came out of Chapter 11, three years later, our workforce had shrunk from 3,000 peopple to about 50, and our sales from $120 million to a very shaky $2.5 million. Believe me, that's culture shock. It took a few years before my head cleared enough for me to figure out what had really happened, and why. The process took time partly because I had such good excuses. After all, who could ever have predicted that the stock-market crash and the fax machine would hit us at the same time? In my gut, however, I knew that blaming circumstancies was a cop-out. The real question was, How had the company become so vulnerable to those developments? It was extremely difficult for me to come to grips with the answer to that question. It meant admitting that the bankruptchy had a lot to do with my personality and decision-making process. Nevertheless, I eventually forced myself to acknowledge what I knew to be true. I'd taken a lovely, secure, profitable business and destroyed it. How? By exposing it to a level of risk it should never have faced. I'd done it, moreover, because of something in my nature. I enjoy risk. I like to got to the edge of the cliff and look down. That's the personality trait behind my own Groundhog Day syndrome. This time circumstances had pushed me over the edge of the cliff, but in fact I shouldn't have been anywhere near the edge in the first place. I'd taken a foolish risk and put everything I owned in jeopardy. As a result, hundreds of pepole had lost their jobs, and many others - including me - had suffered through a nightmare. Hard a sit was to admit all that, the act of facing up to it proved to be one of the most liberating experiences of my entire business career. Not that I decided to change my personality. I knew I couldn't, and I really didn't want to anyway. Rather I began focusing on what I could do to avoid ever having to live through that Groundhog Day again. I realized, for example, that I seldem heard the advice other peple gave me and often wound up ignoring good advice as a result. So I trained myself to listen more closely and make sure that I at least understood the advice I was getting, whether or not I chose to accept it. I also made a point of seeking out the opinions of people whose judgment I respected but whose instincts differed from mine. And I came up with certain rules to force myself to think through the consequences of major decisions before making them. Mainly, however, I adjusted my thinking about risk. Don't get me wrong. I'm as much of a risk taker as ever, but these days the risks I take are calcuated ones. In particular, I calculate the danger that a decision of mine may cost other people their jobs. That was without doubt the most important lession I learned from the whole episode. Through the agony of the layoffs, I developed a new understanding of the awesome responsibility CEOs have for the lives of their employees. Out of that understanding came the cardinal rule I used in evaluating every important decision I make: Always protect the pot. Once you have an ongoing, viable business, you have to put its welfare first and never do anything that would place it in jeopardy. It's all right to invest in a risky venture, provided your core business will be safe even if you lose the entire investment and some unexpected calamity comes along as well. It's a rule I've followed scrupulously for more than 12 years now. My business has nver been healthier, and I've never been happier. Best of all, I can wake up every morning and know it's not Groundhog Day.'

So what were some of the other thoughts I've had this week about being judged? There was an e-mail from Heather, I haven't responded to yet, a discussion with Rachel, another discussion with Matt, e-mail from Rob last week, and conversations with Andrea all tied around whether I am judging or not. Interesting thing is, it doesn't matter if it is righteous, just, on-track, or just plain right. The fact is none of us like to feel judged. We all do like to feel loved. Important truths.

Of course, I like each of you have been saturated with media coverage of the war against terrorism. My thoughts have wondered to quotations from various prophets and apostles about calamities in the Last Days, and about the signs of the times. I recall reading prophecies that there will be a second migration to the Rocky Mountains, and that it will make the handcart treks look like eating a piece of cake. In the back of my mind, I have worried about this ever since moving to Texas. In some ways, I have considered all of my scout work as preparation, in case I need to lead groups to Utah. Ken Turner had a dream once about hundreds of tents on his property in New Ulm. I know if there is a terrorist attack in Houston or vicinity, it is my intention to use Ken's place as a staging area to get family and friends out west. Hopefully all of you in Texas remember these words and know how to get to New Ulm. Hopefully this is simply paranoia. However, related to these trials and tribulations, which will `deceive the very elect,' is this quote from Wilford Woodruff, the 4th Prophet of our dispensation:

`Can you tell me where the people are who will be shielded and protected from these great calamities and judgments which are now at our doors? I'll tell you. The priesthood of God who honor their priesthood, and who are worthy of their blessings are the only ones who shall have safety and protection. They are the only mortal beings. No other people have a right to be shielded from these judgments. They are at the very doors; not even this people will not escape them entirely. They will come down like the judgments of Sodom and Gomorrah. And none but the priesthood will be safe from their fury. Young Womens Journal, Volume 5, number 11, August 1894'

The balance between being judged and receiving mercy is often such a fine line it can be considered bipolar (../9709.html). I know I do not consciously judge, and yet experience teaches us we need to judge in order to make decisions. I hope all of you learn from my mistakes and my successes and when it is necessary to make a decision find you have judged with integrity. For none of us can do any better than our best.

In terms of this week's diary, I worked at home quiet a bit of this week. Steve and Albert came out Tuesday evening and had dinner with us. I went in and met with them and one of the folks they are interviewing to run vPatch Wednesday afternoon. I didn't have Young Men's and so I stayed home and watched the 2 hour opening of 'Enterprise,' the new Star Trek series Wednesday evening.

There were a variety of telephone calls and teleconferences. I started making follow-up calls from APPEX, SEG, and GCPE (Gulf Coast Prospect Expo). Even made my first visit to Harry Mcmahon, Vice President Exploration and New Ventures with Anglo Dutch Energy L.L.C. on Friday afternoon. I think they will enter into a little contract with Dynamic within the next couple of weeks. Andrea and I went to the Temple on Friday morning. First time we have been since the attack, and it felt so good to be there. I went by Chroma in the afternoon, and ended up being late for Matt's soccer practice. Brother Burnham was home and he picked up Matt and took him down to practice for me. I picked him up, helped him mow the lawns, and went to a meeting about Saturday Night Live (November 10th for anyone who wants to come and join us) at Steve Salt's. While at that meeting Swede Nelson called and said his investors have put in a bid to purchase Texas Independent Exploration from Rick Zimmerman, with a nice commission for me. I don't expect this to happen. By the way Sara, Steve and Rick want you to come and show them your picture and tell them about your trip to France.

Saturday included a run/walk, and was Matt's first soccer game with his new team. I spent most of the day reading a novel called `Cutting Edge.' It is about high-tech Network Agent software development in Silicon Valley, and I enjoyed it. It was a church member's first novel, and he did a pretty good job. Andrea judged 4 debate tournaments on Friday evening and went to the church wide women's broadcast on Saturday evening. I watched a two hour History Channel special on the history of terrorism over the last 100 years on Saturday night after finishing the book.

Church was nice today. We had another meeting about Latter-Day Night Live (remember, I'm the new Ward Activities Committee Chairman), and our home teacher came by. Matt went with Brother Gebauer to visit one of his other families since his companion Brother Lunt is ill. I hope each of you also had a good day, and I hope you feel loved and not judged."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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Copyright © 2001 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.