Your Pursuit of Greatness – the workbook
“Whether you're a high schooler or professional, it's the right time to read this book. Your Pursuit of Greatness assures us we have the answers within and then empowers us to find them. Ransom Stephens shares his wisdom with great humor and wit.”
-Debra Lamfers, CPCC, Life & Leadership Coach
“This roadmap to a bigger life combines erudition and humor. Through personal stories, practical exercises and powerful concepts, Your Pursuit of Greatness gives you the keys to unlock your inner eminence. The future belongs to those who create it, and this inspired book will help you realize your highest aspirations.”
-Nina Lesowitz, co-author of the bestsellers Living Life as a Thank You and The Courage Companion
“So many of us have struggled with how to create work that we love. Ransom gives us a way to do just that. He inspires us, makes us laugh, and compels us to go for what has heart and meaning. His approach is the perfect combination of practical and inspirational. If you find yourself missing the passion you desire in your work, don't hesitate - read his book and, more importantly, use the wisdom offered in it's pages.”
-Athena Katsaros, MBA, PCC, Leadership Coach and Trainer
“As we face the most significant transition in the history of the human species, we are called upon to pursue our highest purpose. Good won't get us there. Great is our only option if we are going to survive and thrive. In this wonderfully instructive, down to earth book, Ransom Stephens guides us with a gentle but firm hand to pursue what is best in us. But be warned, don't open this book until your ready for greatness. This book will change your life.”
- Jed Diamond, Ph.D., author of The Warrior’s Journey Home
Your Pursuit of Greatness – the speech
“Great new way of looking at The Situation.” -Sandeep Saxena
“Dr. Ransom Stephens’ speeches still elicit rave reviews years, even a decade later. Last week, a former summer science student told me that Dr. Stephens’ talk was the turning point in his decision to pursue a science career… It's rare to find a career scientist with such a gift for communicating the essence of why one's career choices matter, and how to make them wisely; it's even more rare to find someone who can deliver that information in such a compelling way”
-Lori Norris, Special Programs Coordinator, University of Texas at Arlington
“A great talk with tons of good suggestions for looking for jobs and having a fulfilling career. Ransom rocks!"
-Lee Sawyer, Chair, Department of Physics, Louisiana Tech
“The students loved your presentation! It is not often that our students agree on anything, but this time it has happened. Thank you so much for your time and effort to motivate and encourage. Your presentation is one that the students will remember and recall when they need uplifting.”
-Karen Kesseru, Crossroads High School, Petaluma CA
Your Pursuit of Greatness
a workbook
by Ransom Stephens, Ph.D.
Go to www.YourPursuitOfGreatness.com if you’d like to book the speech, see some video, stalk the author, …
Your Pursuit of Greatness – a workbook, by Ransom Stephens, Ph.D.
Copyright 2011 Ransom Stephens, Ph.D.
Smashwords Edition
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED under international and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to www.yourpursuitofgreatness.com and purchase your own copy.
Please respect the authors rights. This book cannot exist independent of the financial benefits the author receives through its legal distribution. Purchase of the electronic/digital work permits the use of a single copy by one person at one time – just as you could use the printed work.
Your Pursuit of Greatness – a workbook includes both fiction and nonfiction vignettes, names, places, characters and incidences are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.
Cover design by Tareq Mirza – Tareq is an amazing guy, check him out at esotareq.squarespace.com
Self-Help > Health, Mind & Body > Creativity
Business > Business Life > Motivation & Self-Improvement
Business > Career Transition
Teens > Career Development
Ransom’s Notes, Petaluma CA, November-2011
Ransom Stephens is also the author of The God Patent (www.TheGodPatent.com, from Numina Press, San Rafael, 2009) – sex, drugs, and quantum physics collide with artificial intelligence, faith and free will in this perspective altering tale.
Contents
Chapter 1. How to use this book
Chapter 3. Your potential for Greatness
Chapter 4. The structure of the Pursuit of Greatness
Chapter 5. The ingredients of Greatness
Chapter 6. The pros and cons of mortality
Chapter 7. The call to adventure
Chapter 9. The genius of the ten-year-old
Chapter 10. What are you waiting for?
Chapter 11. Dreaming is the hard part
Chapter 12. Strategy, tactics and goals
Chapter 14. Networking for introverts
Chapter 16. Wrestling with ogres
Aside: For teenagers, dealing with parents
Chapter 17. Walking on the moon
Chapter 18. Paying your dues... again
Chapter 20. Becoming the signal in a world of noise
Chapter 21. Faith is a funny thing
Chapter 22. Hanging with Groucho
Chapter 23. Thank you, sir, may I have another?
Chapter 24. You’re here to change the world
Chapter 25. Breaking through your own boundaries
Chapter 26. Are you selling out or buying in?
Chapter 27. Delivering the goods
For you and me.
Part 1. Greatness
In the last decade I’ve presented “The Pursuit of Greatness” to thousands of people. The first audiences were high school students entering college and back then the title was “How I Avoided Growing Up.” Over the last few years, the largest audiences have been professionals in career transition (i.e., unwillingly unemployed) and the title was “The Big Picture and Big Decisions.” The words have evolved over the years, but the message hasn’t.
The Pursuit of Greatness is for people at a point in their lives when they are making long-lasting decisions about who they are and what they want to be.
There is something about this speech that fires people up. I’m no bubbly optimist, though I do understand the power of positive thought and can explain it in terms that make sense (and I will in Chapter 13). I make wisecracks. I rub your nose in your own mortality. I mix metaphors. I make demands of you and am prone to making light of your most deeply held beliefs. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but sometimes I am. Regardless of any of that, I am inextricably on your side. Maybe that’s it. Whatever it is, people really like the presentation and love this book. This simple message helps them move on:
Rule 1: You are obligated to fulfill your Greatest potential. Go on, no excuses, get to it right now!
Not only do you owe it to yourself, you owe it to me! And the guy sitting next to you. And your dog. (You don’t owe it to your cat though. Your cat doesn’t actually care about you.)
Chapter 1. How to use this book
This book will help you understand, recognize, and approach each stage of your own unique Pursuit of Greatness. In many ways, you’re making a transition into a new world. This “new world” business is more than a convenient metaphor. For the last 40,000 years or so, the worlds that people inhabit have shifted. The transition from physical evolution to cultural evolution reflects the fact that our cultural environments affect our lives as much as our physical environments.
Economics is the monetary image of a culture. It is ultimately bound by physical laws, but the so-called laws of economics, including market forces, supply and demand, and monopoly and commoditization, depend on a combination of politics, religion, social norms, and the values and ethics of a society; the sum of which is “culture.” It is in this sense that the instant you begin your Pursuit of Greatness you begin the transition from one world to another.
In the course of this transition, I’ll help you find ways to be realistic in charting your course to Greatness. And by “realistic,” I mean a realistic evaluation of the stakes; “realistic” yes, but not in the cynical voice of the jerk who asks, “What are you, nuts?”
We’ll have our cynical moments, some sarcasm, too, but always with the complete appreciation that Great challenges have been met by human beings hundreds of millions of times and there is simply no compelling reason to exclude you from that level of success. That said:
>>> Enlightening Blurb 1 <<<
If you don’t believe you can do it, no one will. So believe in yourself but avoid misconceptions. It won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap, but there will be opportunities and you need to be ready.
To get the most out this book read it all the way through and do the exercises as you go. Wherever you are in your quest, it will help you figure out where you’re going and how to take the next step. As you set out, the first reading will help you prepare, like filling your canteen before setting out to cross a desert.
After the first read, keep this book nearby and as you work forward come back after you’ve had a success or failure and whenever you feel uncertain.
I wrote this book for two people – you and me – and for one reason: to help us maintain the perspectives we need to navigate our separate ways with tempered expectations but without lowering our sights. We’re not on the same path, you and I, but in these pages our paths intersect. And hey, all kidding aside, writing this book and doing these exercises have been an enormous help to me.
Each chapter describes a different stage in the Pursuit of Greatness. I can’t promise that this book will make it easier. “Easier” isn’t the right word. It’s not going to be easy. The stuff of Greatness shouldn’t be easy! If I can help you believe that success is possible, then I’ll be one big step farther along my own path to Greatness.
This is a workbook and that means you need to do the exercises. Well, most of them (some of them?). This is the electronic version, of course, so you might be able to use your reader’s commenting feature (if it has one) to type in your answers. You know? If you paid full retail for this thing, send a note to info@yourpursuitofgreatness.com and Gupti will send you the interactive PDF version. It’s nicely formatted and has fields where you can type in your answers to the exercises.
Type in a lot! What the hell, you don’t have to show it to anyone, right? And if you got a free, unformatted, no-bells-and-whistles electronic version, then use a notebook or buy a fancier version (at www.yourpursuitofgreatness.com).
The exercises are designed to help you both consciously and subconsciously assemble the tools you’ll need. No matter how old you are, you have faced and conquered other challenges. It makes sense to dig through those experiences and use them to sharpen the tools you already have.
Exercise 1.1 is the most important, do it right now:
Exercise 1.1: List your top 10 all time Greatest successes. Include goals that you’ve achieved, problems you’ve overcome, and tragedies you’ve survived. Things like academic degrees, awards, athletic/artistic success, careers you’ve launched, products you’ve produced, children you’ve raised, illnesses you’ve survived, etc. If you have trouble digging them up, here’s a trick: think back to your earliest memory and then move forward year by year, consider each school you’ve attended, places you’ve lived, jobs you’ve had, things you’ve made, performances, and so forth. You can come up with at least ten and don’t worry about the order.
We’ll need your most memorable experiences, too:
Exercise 1.2: List several of your most poignant experiences, both good and bad. Include trips you’ve taken, enlightening encounters, relationships, losses, anything that stands out in your memory as a perspective-altering experience.
Chapter 2. Mixed metaphors, silly rules, enlightening blurbs, great questions, irritating cliches, and boring anecdotes
I read dozens of self-help books while writing this and I made a few discoveries. First, most self-help books really suck. I hope this one doesn’t. Second, they’re all twice as long as they need to be. Few of them make more than one point and whatever they have to offer is presented in the first chapter and then repeated ad nauseum with no further enlightenment. So this book is short and makes lots of points and only a few of them are repeated over and over again in a redundant, repetitive fashion.
One thing that annoyed me while reading the pile of self-help books was that half of them advocated letting “the universe/God/whatever guide you” while the other half advocated a “relentless, determined pursuit of your goals.” As I read them, I found myself agreeing with both types of books. I therefore assert both approaches but with balance. Any reasonable analysis of the two principles leads to one of life’s most fundamental questions:
Great Question 1: Each day and for every obstacle in your path you must answer this question: Will you float with the current or paddle upstream?
The key to Great Question 1 is to answer it consciously.
>>> * <<<
As you travel along this river of time you’ll encounter stretches of calm and periods of rapids. Sometimes it will seem that you’re about to drown and other times it will feel as though the entire universe is designed to advance you directly to your desired fate. Most of the time, though, in nitty gritty everyday life, no matter how pure your desire, your will is cluttered by unimportant but urgent problems, irritating emails, immediate hassle, the lure of Facebook, or the Oakland Raiders blog. It is your responsibility to decide whether to go with the flow of time and let the obstacles and currents guide you downstream or to take your metaphorical paddle and row as hard as you can in the direction you want to go.
Some days we have the vim and vigor to confront the universe/God/whatever and dictate who we are and what we’re about. On those days we embody undaunted ambition. Other days, like today as I write this, with a lingering headache and a pile of laundry, well dude, if there’s a hassle today, I’m going around it. Today it’s mellow Ransom cruising downstream picking the low hanging fruit. I’m well aware, though, that badass Raider-Ransom will be back to do the necessary ass-kicking tomorrow or maybe the next day.
>>> Enlightening Blurb 2 <<<
Be a duck: calm and cool on the surface while paddling like hell! -From a poster that I saw in the office of Nobel Prize winning physicist Robert Schrieffer
Another thing I learned from all those self-help books is that, even when I disagree with most of what they have to say, I can always dissect something useful from the froth. In other words, just to make sure we’re all on board here:
Rule 2: Don’t believe everything I say.
There is no “rule” in this book that I have not violated, no lesson that I have not learned the hard way, no cliche I haven’t driven into the ground. For example, I have a lot of trouble following Rule 2.
In addition to the mixed metaphors, silly rules, enlightening blurbs, great questions, and irritating cliches that litter these pages, there are boring anecdotes. Many of these vignettes are personal stories and I want to make one thing clear before we continue. I am a private person. Neither fame nor notoriety appeals to me. The anecdotes are not here for self-aggrandizement. Despite my nearly complete lack of modesty, I make no claim to have yet achieved Greatness, though I have pursued Greatness since I was ten and have gotten close a few times in a few different fields. The point of my anecdotes is to serve as examples in the sense of how worked examples in math texts help people work the exercises. Your anecdotes are the solutions to the exercises. Your personal stories of triumph and despair store the gold you must mine to pay your way through the gates toward Greatness.
Chapter 3. Your potential for Greatness
According to the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (the OED), the word “Great” (which requires five full, tiny-font pages) is derived from words that mean large in scale. It evolved from “Great” as “big, thick, and stout.” From there, it became “large in emotion and courage;” then it got more abstract: “important, distinguished, or famous; extraordinary in ability, genius, or achievement.” That is, the literal “Great” as “large” became Great as metaphorically large and ultimately Great in magnitude of achievement, transcendent in thought or action.
“Transcendent” is key here. In pursuing Greatness, we’re really just trying to transcend the world we’ve been living in and pass into a Greater world.
“Greatness” means “large” but now in the abstract.
In order to pursue Greatness we must fulfill our potential. The OED says that potential comes from the root for “potent” which means possessed of power. The step from potent to potential alters the concept of power from the actual to the possible; potential is latent or undeveloped power.
>>> Enlightening Blurb 3 <<<
“Got it in me, I got it in me! Ain’t gonna quit until it all comes out.” -Ronnie Montrose, from his song, Rock the Nation.
In physics, a “potential” is an abstract expression used to determine the force exerted on an object. It doesn’t mean that those forces are out there pushing or pulling on things, but it includes all the information for how the pushing/pulling would behave should a thing be put in the potential field.
In the physics analogy, you’re putting yourself in position so that you can release your potential. As your potential becomes a force, it will propel you toward your Greatness.
So what of potential then? How much do you have? Is it talent? I have a suggestion: don’t worry about talent. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway. Concentrate on developing skill and let talent take care of itself. Besides, talent is by no means required for someone to be Great.
Let’s talk about career transition. For most of us, making the decision to pursue Greatness means that we’re ready to switch careers. The OED says that the word “career” is rooted in a person’s course through life. In the modern sense, a career is a profession, a chain of employment. The concept of a vocation differs from that of a career. Your vocation is your calling. The word vocation is rooted in the word “advocate” in the sense that you are called or summoned to a vocation. It stems from the assumption that a divine influence guides you toward a special work in life for which you are peculiarly fit. If you believe in higher power(s), milk the concept of vocation for all it’s worth. Use every tool at your disposal.
In any case, the transformation of potential into Greatness is catalyzed by being called to action. Whether that “call” comes from a decision you make, getting laid off, a random sequence of events, or a higher power doesn’t matter.
Here are the important pieces:
> Potential is something you already have in you
> Your career is the course that you travel as your potential is released
> The Pursuit of Greatness starts with a call to action results in transforming your potential into excellence
> Keep an eye on that first bullet point: it’s something you already have. Consider this:
>>> * <<<
An amazing thing happens when people face tragedy. In the days that follow a devastating event, like a tsunami, hurricane, typhoon, tornado, earthquake, or even an act of war, humans show greater courage, compassion, empathy, and generosity than at any other time. The pettiness dissolves and the will to Greatness emerges.
All the key ingredients of civilization are concentrated in the worst of times. The day before the Big One (that’s what people on the West Coast call the next devastating earthquake) I might berate a neighbor for stealing a parking space I had my eye on but the day after, I’m right next to him digging loved ones out of the wreckage.
>>> * <<<
Rule 3: We all have the potential for Greatness.
You already have everything you need: courage, compassion, empathy, and generosity. The trick is in digging it up and forming it into the tools you need to conquer your Greatest metaphor.
Chapter 4. The structure of the Pursuit of Greatness
In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell (www.jcf.com) demonstrates the universal qualities of human endeavor. He calls it the Hero’s Journey. It boils down to this:
Rule 4: Every challenge we face and every endeavor we attempt has the same essential structure as life itself.
My background as a physicist seems to give me a somewhat different take on things. People tend to think my insights are either ridiculous or insightful. I hope to achieve both and by so doing to offer a perspective you might not have otherwise derived.
I think that the Pursuit of Greatness is a fractal.
A fractal is a thing that looks the same at different scales. Figure 1.1(a) is a photo of a parsley plant, (b) is a branch, (c) a sprig, and (d) a single leaf. At each scale they look quite similar; self-similar. The same can be said for cedar, broccoli, and ferns. Coastlines have the same essential structure whether viewed from a satellite photo, an airplane, a cliff, or when you’re building a sand castle. This is called self-similar behavior and it is a defining property of a fractal.
Figure 1.1: The self-similar structure of Parsley as an example of a fractal.
I propose that life itself also demonstrates self-similar behavior. The process birth-child-teen-adult-elder-death is repeated on smaller timescales over and over again. The first challenge was birth. Leaving the womb, though I don’t remember it, was no trivial feat. Delivery has a set of milestones that can’t be demeaned: the first breath, the first vision, the first taste, the first touch – each one of these must be at least as great a shock as a job interview, a breakup, a touchdown, a graduation. Now, as you embark on your Pursuit of Greatness, whether for the first time or the Nth time, is no different.
Rule 4 is an axiom. It stands on the vast accumulation of evidence rather than a philosophical principle or proof. I envision a system of gears turning a wheel. Each day we’re turning one with a large gear ratio that turns another one, with a smaller gear ratio, that turns another with a yet smaller gear ratio, and so on. Each of our smaller goals, our microgoals, moves us closer to Greatness.
There is no step-by-step map showing how to slay your dragon, how to climb your mountain, how to compose your metaphor, but you have slain bugs, climbed hills, and thought of analogies. When you combine your experience with the collective experience of 40,000+ years of human culture you get an outline of how it works; a format, a great spreadsheet with cells that must be filled by milestones along the path. This outline is what Joseph Campbell determined through his research in mythology. He called his result The Hero’s Journey.
Campbell showed how the myths and fairy tales of every culture provide a standard format for the Pursuit of Greatness. In every epic tale, from slaying a dragon to rescuing a damsel to becoming a Jedi Knight and defeating the Empire, the structure of the journey is repeated.
The first common element of The Hero’s Journey is:
Cliche 1: It ain’t easy.
All of the easy stuff has already been accomplished and it has always been thus. Cave people had it made.
Chapter 5. The ingredients of Greatness
Rule 5: You can’t do everything you set your mind to, but you won’t set your mind to something you can’t do.
We aren’t wired to convince ourselves that we’re capable of something impossible. Of course it happens now and then, someone tries to fly off a building or, under tremendous pressure like grief, people convince themselves that they’re capable of the impossible, but if you’re a sane, rational human being Rule 5 holds. It’s a necessary result of natural selection.
So, wherever you’re headed, it is possible to get there. Just delete that doubt right now.
However, Rule 5 is also related to “the torture problem.” When a spy is captured, how much torture can she take before she talks? If she can just hold out one more second then she can hold out an additional second and then another. In principle she can hold out forever, right?
This is also the core of the success-failure problem. When you launch into a Great challenge it is necessary to believe that you can succeed where others have failed. The reason others failed is probably not due to a lack of talent. The reason for failure is that, for whatever reason, they have run out of resilience, hit the wall of perseverance. Like the tortured spy who spills, they gave up too soon.
>>> Enlightening Blurb 4 <<<
To make it across the desert, no matter how far you have already traveled, you must believe that there is an oasis just beyond the next dune, or perhaps the next.
The great tragedy of failure is when you stop one dune short of the oasis [*]
{* - Any unattributed blurbs are, as far as I know, the para- (pseudo-?) wisdom of the author.}