 Coach Tales
Nancy's Coach Tales Issue One
Success Story: Alvan Clark explored not one, not two, but three intriguing and very different career directions during his 83 years.
Book Review: Chewing through the rind of Spenser Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese.
Think About It: Timely wisdom from Lao Tze concerning the hazards of inaction.
SUCCESS STORY: Alvan Clark
Some people say that they can't leave a "safe" job to do something creative because the only true artists were child prodigies who have been working on their craft since age two. Others are convinced that they are too old to start any new career, even a non-artistic one. To both types of people, I say consider Alvan Clarke.
In 1836, at the age of 32 with a wife and four children to support, Clark gave up his "safe" job engraving patterns on the cylinders used to print fabric and opened a studio in Boston where he painted portraits and miniatures. His business thrived, and eventually he made a name for himself. Now several of his pieces are in major art collections.
This would be accomplishment enough for someone who started so "late" on the artistic track, but he did not stop there. Clark became interested in telescopes, discovered he had an eye for lenses, and built his first telescope (with his two sons) at the age of 40. Soon Clark made friends with English astronomer William Dawes after writing to Dawes about double stars Clark saw through his telescopes that Dawes' instrument could not distinguish. Dawes not only bought one of Clark's telescopes, he introduced Clark to other European astronomers. Soon Clark was selling his telescopes in Europe as well as America.
Clark went into the telescope manufacturing business full-time with his sons when he was 54 years old, giving up his portrait studio altogether. His telescopes' fine large lenses set numerous records, and today many observatories still use the telescopes the Clarks made over 100 years ago. Clark was also highly successful at crafting and selling smaller scopes which are favorites with collectors today.
Don't let anyone tell you that you are too old to start over. Just think of Alvan Clark. By the time he died at the age of 83 he had made three successful careers for himself.
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BOOK REVIEW: Who Moved My Cheese, by Spenser Johnson, M.D., 1998 (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York)
(General Interest)
This little book (and I do mean little--it's only 94 pages long with big print and pictures) is creating quite a stir. It's been the top seller on numerous lists lately, and it's getting recommended and passed around by CEOs, parents, therapists and quite a few motivational coaches, all of whom have found inspiration in what it says about change and how we deal with it.
The main part of the book is a parable about two mice and two "littlepeople" named Hem and Haw. These four small souls live in a maze where they get fed every day from the same "cheese station." When their cheese disappears one day, they react in strikingly different ways. The two mice immediately move off into the maze in search of new cheese; but at first the littlepeople are completely paralyzed by their emotional reaction to the loss of their cheese. Eventually, Haw decides to follow the mice, leaving Hem to rail against the world that has taken away his cheese.
We accompany Haw as he explores the maze, making realizations about his approach to life like "Movement In A New Direction Helps You Find New Cheese" and "What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?" Each realization is helpfully printed out on its own page framed by a wedge of cheese, making it easy to pick out the key points when flipping back through the book. At certain times in your life some of these realizations may resonate for you, and at other times different ones may move you.
The main story about life in the maze is bookended by two sections in which attendees at a high school reunion apply the lessons learned in the maze to changes happening in their own lives, using "cheese" as a metaphor for good things like jobs, businesses, and relationships. The discussion may be helpful to some readers trying to apply the parable to their own lives. However, the simple writing style that worked in the parable goes "clunk" fairly noticeably in these sections so you might choose to skip the reunion discussions--you wouldn't really miss much if you did.
You will either love Who Moved My Cheese? or wonder why everyone has lost their minds and is shelling out twenty bucks for this bit of fluff. If you enjoy taking abstract lessons from stories and applying them to your own life, you will probably find this book quite powerful. If you think Joe Friday had it right when he wanted "Just the facts, ma'am," give this one a miss.
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THINK ABOUT IT: to change or not to change?
I recently came across a wonderful quote (sometimes attributed to the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse) that is just as pointed today as it must have been 2500 years ago: "If we do not change direction, we are liable to end up where we are headed."
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