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| Isaac Newton experimenting with light |
Special Tributes
The English poet, John Donne, famously wrote: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every[one] is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."
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| John Donne 1572-1632 |
—John Donne
Donne is right!
No one lives or works in complete isolation. Every man and woman is, at least in part, a product of the influence of other people. Moreover, the wisest among us are those who surround themselves with a quality network of other people and then remain open-minded to relevant examples, input, feedback, and even criticism of external influences.
The Self-Action Leadership textbook is very much my own independent creation, painstakingly assembled one word at-a-time in seven different editions over the course of the past 20 years. Nevertheless, without the influence, input, feedback, criticism, and examples of countless individuals who have positively touched and otherwise impacted my life, this work would be a fractional shell of what it has ultimately become.
In last week's blog post, I acknowledged a list of important individuals who directly and indirectly assisted me in creating this comprehensive work. In today's post, I expand upon this list by paying special homage to six (6) additional leaders and mentors whose life's work and service to me have been unusually foundational and providential in terms of their scope and reach in my life and career as it relates specifically to the creation of the SAL Textbook.
HYRUM W. SMITH
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Uncle Hyrum and Aunt Gail in 2019, shortly before Hyrum's passing from pancreatic cancer. Like Hyrum and my dad, Hyrum and Gail also met while serving as missionaries in Great Britain in the early-mid 1960s. |
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| "Elder" Hyrum W. Smith as a young missionary in Great Britain |
Meant to be?
Coincidence?
Either way, when my dad returned home to Utah to attend Brigham Young University in 1965, Hyrum, who was also attending BYU, introduced him to his little sister, Pauline, two years his junior.
And the rest is, as they say, history!
My parents were married in 1966, and I was born thirteen years later—the sixth of seven children.
I was only four years old when Hyrum and his associates founded the Franklin Institute in 1983. I was only seven (7) or eight (8) years old when I first attended one of "Uncle Wayne's" time management seminars and received my first Franklin Planner (Note: Hyrum went by his middle name, "Wayne," in family circles before he became famous). Attending one of Hyrum's Franklin Time Management Seminars was a catalytic and pivotal event in my young life because it planted seeds that would eventually spring forth into my passion for personal leadership and public speaking, my academic proclivities, and my choice of profession.
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| Hyrum W. Smith Co-Founder of FranklinCovey |
He was right.
It was a bitter pill for me to swallow at a time in my life when I was being rejected at nearly every turn and everything seemed to be going wrong. But this was a good thing, because life prescribes a brimming bottle of bitter pills to everyone, eventually. Those who seek to authentically grow must choose to humbly consume, dutifully digest, and bravely endure the poignant pungency and excruciating agony of each and every dose. It does no good to kick against the proverbial "pricks." Authentic self-action leaders are courageous and resolute in the face of such unsavory ingestions. They recognize that which must be sacrificed on the altars of their long-term welfare and then drink their medicine like good soldiers with an unwavering commitment to the cause.
Hyrum's discretion, borne of experience-based wisdom, trumped my well-intentioned, but ultimately naïve zealotry borne of youthful over-exuberance. And today I am glad of it. In the words of a famous Garth Brooks' song: "Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers." In hindsight, I have come to see that Hyrum's rejection, along with many other experiences like it, turned out to be some of God's greatest gifts to me.
Instead of money, Hyrum gave me endorsement quotes and good advice. He even invited me down to his ranch for a weekend so I could "pick his brain." The experience did not disappoint! Rather than "giving me a fish" that would feed me for a day, he "taught me how to fish" so that I might feed myself for a lifetime. Through his teachings and his example, he gave me everything I really needed, while wisely withholding that which would only benefit me in the short run—and would most likely hurt me in the long run.
I'm grateful for this lesson, and plan to pass it on to others as my own role wends its way increasingly over to the side of power, authority, freedom, and fortune in the future. In other words, don't come asking me for money! Like Hyrum, I most likely won't give it to you... but I will encourage you the buy the SAL Textbook (or read it for free online) instead, which, to the wise, will be worth far more than any amount of money I might cough up.
Hyrum's rejection provided a golden opportunity for me to further apply the very principles and practices I yearned to share with the world. Rather than retard my long-term progress, his wise declination actually accelerated it, lending greater gravitas to the message of Self-Action Leadership and further bolstering my credibility as its agent and messenger.
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| Elder Hyrum Wayne Smith and Elder Rex Buckley Jensen working together as missionaries in Great Britain circa 1963 |
Hyrum's life has blessed and inspired my own journey in countless ways. From my earliest memories of him, I always had a deep sense that he was a great man; and indeed he was—and is! Thank you, Uncle Hyrum, for everything you have given and taught me—knowingly or unknowingly. Your life's example has played a vital role in shaping my own life's unfolding narrative and destiny.
I am grateful for an uncle and father—whose friendship was a seedling of my mortal existence—who taught me correct principles and then afforded me the freedom to govern myself and chart my own path through life. Such liberty and opportunity, enriched by lessons gleaned from their respective precepts and examples, has been a cherished blessing in my life and career and helped me become who I am today. It is, in my view, one of the many proofs of Providence that has shone upon this extensive and expansive project from inception to completion.
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| The Covey/Smith section of my personal office library |
STEPHEN R. COVEY
While Hyrum and I share a blood relation, I may actually have more in common with FranklinCovey's other co-founder—Dr. Stephen R. Covey. This is because my natural aptitudes and diligently developed professional skill set more closely mirrors Stephen's than it does Hyrum's. In other words, I am much more of a philosopher, teacher, writer, and administrator than I am a businessman, salesperson, or entrepreneur.
In fact, had I been less like Stephen and more like Hyrum, Freedom Focused would undoubtedly have taken off much sooner than it has. As a long string of life and career failures attest, I was simply never cut out for SALES—a professional endeavor I have always despised, yet has been a continually recurring thorn in my side since grade school! And now I have to figure out how to deal with the parental burden of my own kids' grade school sales projects.
Ack!
Will the distasteful drama ever end?
Fortunately, at age 44, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am not a salesman. More importantly, I have come to realize that this is okay... and I cannot adequately express the joy, peace, relief, and satisfaction of finally arriving at this vital realization.
Things being what they are, I will remain content with the aptitudes and skillsets I was blessed to have and develop... especially if the SAL Textbook eventually mirrors the success of the 7 Habits!
But, I digress...
Many capable authors, teachers, and thinkers have helped pioneer the modern self-help movement. These experts include Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and Napoleon Hill. More recent figures include: Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Dr. Phil, and others who have made a name for themselves and grown rich undertaking similar work.
What place has Covey earned among the pantheon of self-help gurus?
The answer to this question is subject to history and opinion. In my analysis and view, Carnegie is the Father of the field and Covey is its more recent godfather.
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| My personal copy of the 7 Habits, which I read through in 2001 at BYU. |
Covey's 7 Habits profoundly influenced my life and had a marked influence on my career direction.
The lesser-known subtitle of Covey's classic is: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. As I hungrily consumed The 7 Habits, I became enamored with and enthralled by a growing realization of the personal power I possessed internally to change my own thoughts, speech, and behavior to develop habits that would enrich my life and lead me to personal and professional happiness, success, fulfilment, and inner peace over the long-run.
This broadening recognition of my freedom and potential to consciously design, purposefully direct, and intentionally shape my own life's journey and narrative resonated deeply in my mind, heart, and spirit. I took particular interest in Habits One, Two, and Three, which focus on PERSONAL LEADERSHIP, at a time in my life when I desperately needed to lead myself through a series of deep and difficult personal, professional, and relational deficiencies, obstacles, and trials.
Covey's teachings illuminated the personal inadequacies and character flaws that had been plaguing my life and were thwarting my success in several key life arenas. At the same time, it created a vision of my possibilities and enlivened my desire to overcome my weaknesses, achieve personal growth, and then teach others to do the same.
Quite simply, his work altered the course of my life and led directly to my quest to formulate, organize, compose, revise, and polish the SAL Textbook. This was the moment I found my life's calling. From that point onward, I knew my mission was to produce a comprehensive personal leadership handbook that would serve future generations as ably and ubiquitously as the 7 Habits had served previous ones.
After I had finished reading the 7 Habits in the summer of 2001, I began developing the SAL material just a little over two years later, in the fall of 2003. Exactly 20 years later, I'm still traveling the exact same journey and my ultimate goal remains the same. Although, as you can imagine, this comprehensive and holistic 7th Edition is light years ahead of the First Edition published back in 2006 as a one-volume, relatively brief personal leadership guide written specifically for a teenage audience.
It was (and still is) an audacious ambition and an incredibly challenging and time-consuming undertaking that has been fraught with anxieties, frustrations, disappointments, ignorings, rejections, and just about every other kind of difficulty, obstacle, and failure imaginable. Nevertheless, it has also proven to be an unspeakably satisfying, rewarding, and fulfilling journey, as well as a personal duty from which I dared not shrink.
Once I had been touched by the power and profundity of Covey's principles and practices, I became consumed with the meaningfulness and importance of promoting a Pedagogy of Personal Leadership and Character Development throughout my nation and world.
From this point on, there was no going back!
For better or for worse, I have been on an obsessive-compulsive mission ever since. I assume it is for the better, and take comfort in a comment my church Mission President made to me at the end of my missionary service in March 2001. Said he: "You know, Jordan, OCD has not been all bad for you."
Aided by Covey's words and similar voices echoing down through the ages, and the driving—albeit sometimes naïve—ambitions of youth, I zealously went to work. This tremendously challenging journey has produced an existential cornucopia of achievements, blessings, insights, elation and euphoria, and most importantly—personal growth—that has flooded my life and made me a very wealthy man, speaking personally, conjugally, familially, and existentially, more so than financially; although I've been blessed in that area of my life as well, thanks to my intelligent and talented wife's successful career in the energy industry.
I say "this time around" because I previously sought Dr. Covey's endorsement of my first book—I Am Sovereign: The Power of Personal Leadership—published back in 2006; but he rejected my invitation. More precisely, his screening committee dumped my book before it ever made it to Covey's desk.
Covey's rejection, like Hyrum's, was a bitter and painful pill to swallow. Indeed, it cut me to the core. But, rather than discourage me, it drove me upward and onward, making me more determined than ever to succeed in my quest to follow in his footsteps and someday make an even bigger impact—something I've always believed was not only possible, but inevitable, mainly because chronologically speaking, I hold the "pole position" alongside the racetrack of history, which affords me the privilege of "Standing on his Shoulders" by building on his work... an advantage others will eventually have over me as well.
Like the "hard knock" lessons I learned from Hyrum, I would not alter either experience even if I had the power to do so. In fact, I am almost as thankful for what Hyrum and Stephen didn't give me as I am for what they did give me. Such experiences taught me that many of life's greatest blessings arise not from monetary or other tangible assistance, but from the inspiration derived from the simple, yet powerful moral force of one's example, teachings, and legacy. Instead of giving me a few fish I would have quickly consumed, Hyrum and Stephen both—and mostly without knowing it—taught me how to fish. This comprehensive work displays the results of my "catches" thus far. Whatever its lingering weaknesses may be, I am proud of the harvest and grateful to my teachers.
As they look down upon me from Heaven above, I hope they will be proud of it too.
Dr. Covey passed away in 2012. In the years since I first studied the 7 Habits material, I have sometimes wished I could have spent more time with Stephen personally. Despite two chance meetings—neither of which he would have remembered—and a generous phone call on Christmas Eve, 2003, in response to a letter I had written to my hero desiring to meet and learn from him, I did not know him personally beyond second-degree familial and professional connections. Nevertheless, the ripples of his work have penetrated—and continue to reverberate powerfully throughout—my mind, heart, and soul in ways that proved providentially foundational to this work. For providing me with this essential stepping-stone in my personal life and career, I say in sincerity and truth: Thank You, Stephen!
After more than two decades of putting Stephen's teachings to work in my life on a daily basis, I continue to vouch unequivocally for their clarity, concision, cogency, and veracity. As I have worked with thousands of business professionals in hundreds of audiences all over the English-speaking world, I have quoted Covey and taught his material more than any other author or teacher. Indeed, few of my seminar attendees have left one of my trainings, regardless of the topic, without getting a sense of my passion for the work of Stephen R. Covey, or at least learning something from the brilliant material produced by him and his capable colleagues.
I am, and always will be, grateful to Dr. Stephen R. Covey for providing a vital substructure (theoretically and culturally speaking) to the superstructure that now stands in the form of the SAL Theory and Model. I publicly acknowledge the import and impact of his life's example on my own, as well as the profundity of his life's work, which touched millions—a work I am confident he continues vibrantly and successfully in another realm.
It is my express goal and intentional quest for SAL to serve the world in coming decades as capably, if not more so, as the 7 Habits did in such an unprecedented way throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
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| The M. Scott Peck section of my personal office library |
Unlike Hyrum W. Smith and Stephen R. Covey, I never met M. Scott Peck, nor was he ever aware of my existence during the time he spent in this world (1936-2005). Despite this absence of any personal connection, Peck's work has influenced me nearly as much as Smith's and Covey's.
Peck's magnum opus—The Road Less Traveled—published the year before I was born (1978), and other, similar books like Further Along the Road Less Traveled, The Road Less Traveled and Beyond, and People of the Lie, have influenced me more than any other books save the Holy Scriptures and perhaps Covey's 7 Habits and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.
Peck once described himself as a "CONTEMPLATIVE." That term resonated with me the moment I saw him use it, because that is exactly what I am. I suppose that's a big part of why I love solitude and enjoy writing at great length on philosophical and theological subjects that fascinate me—much like my fellow contemplatives, such as Covey and Peck.
Since we never knew each other personally, I can only speculate on what our relationship might have looked like had I been privileged to associate with him. From the many clues in his work, I think we are both very similar to and very different from each other all at the same time. He is unquestionably near the top of my list of people with whom I'd like to eventually meet in my next life. Until then, I can only ask God to pass along my gratitude for the positive impact his work has had on my life, my thinking, and my work. I wish further to posthumously pass along this same gratitude to his living posterity.
I quote a lot of different sources in the SAL Textbook; indeed, there are hundreds of references from a wide range of different authors and thinkers strewn throughout the work. Among these many voices, Peck (like Covey) is unquestionably one of the more common and recurring that you will come across as you work your way through the next thousand-or-so pages. I hope these introductions will inspire and motivate you to go back and read his own remarkable canon of work, beginning with his magnum opus... The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1978).
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| Click HERE to buy the 2nd Edition of this textbook on Self-Leadership |
Dr. Charles C. Manz is the father of the self-leadership field (forerunner of SAL) in academe. His pioneering scholarly publications on the subject date back to 1983—when I was only four (4) years old—the same year Hyrum W. Smith and his colleagues founded The Franklin Institute.
It is interesting (and surprising) to me that it took until the mid-1980s for universities to begin seriously addressing this vital subject as a topic of legitimate scholarly inquiry. The credit for this academic genesis and legitimization—as well as much of its subsequent proliferation—belongs to Dr. Manz.
Addressing self-leadership at the doctoral level would have been much more difficult without the trailblazing efforts of "Chuck" and his capable colleagues around the country. These colleagues include: Hank Sims, Jr. of the University of Maryland (retired), Chris P. Neck of Arizona State University, and Jeff D. Houghton of West Virginia University. The work of these scholars has provided a vital academic substructure to the superstructure of ideas I put forth in the SAL Theory and Model.
Charles Manz is an accomplished and distinguished scholar and educator. He is also a man of integrity and a generous human being. I will forever be indebted to him for his foundational academic work, and am honored he chose to endorse this work.
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| Dr. Chris Neck |
CHRISTOPHER P. NECK, Ph.D.
Second only to Charles Manz, Dr. Chris Neck is the top scholar in the academic field of self-leadership. I won't belabor his long list of teaching and publishing accomplishments here because his impressive bio is included with the foreword of this book, which he generously authored and which we will publish in next week's blog post.
Since January 2011—shortly before I began my doctoral dissertation, which led directly to the composition of the SAL Textbook—Chris Neck has been my closest friend, confidant, mentor, supporter, and cheerleader. Only my wife, Lina, sits higher in my Inner Circle.
I've never met anyone quite like Chris Neck, and I've lived long enough to realize that friendships like his don't come around very often in one's life or career, so when they do, they are worth cherishing, nurturing, protecting, and perpetuating.
From the numerous academic papers and other projects we have collaborated on to our shared love of college football, treadmill distance running, and the American South, I will forever cherish and guard my friendship with this humble man who is not only a capable scholar and prolific author, but a caring, generous, genuine, sincere, and truly GREAT human being.
Thank You, C, for believing in me like nobody else; and long before everybody else. Only my Dad and Mom can compare to you in this regard.
Geaux Tigers!
And Go Gators!
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Dr. Beaulieu served as Committee Chair for my 4-Volume, 1,149-page Doctoral Dissertation. Bless his heart for wading through such a tome! |
I am a firm believer that God occasionally places just the right person at just the right place at just the right time for a specific and important reason. If you are ready when He does, such a meeting is bound to change the course of your career and/or life for the better.
Dr. Beaulieu was just such a person for me.
Rodney and I first crossed paths in the summer of 2010 in Tucson, Arizona at one of Fielding Graduate University's National Sessions. I was one year into my doctoral studies and in need of a long-term Academic Mentor and Dissertation Chair. Rodney was an ideal person to fill this role, and I will forever be grateful we met when we did, and that he listened to me and took so much genuine interest in my work.
Dr. Beaulieu is a talented scholar and engaging educator. He is also an expert in the field of ACTION RESEARCH, a key component of the SAL Model. More importantly, he is a kind and sensitive human being who really cares about people—and especially his students. He served as a personal and academic advisor and advocate for me at a time when support for my work was not always readily forthcoming, and when prejudice against my religious beliefs and cultural and racial identifiers were being levied by some other professors with whom I had worked.
It is vital to note that Dr. Beaulieu is the one who originally coined the term, Self-Action Leadership, a moniker that not only perfectly describes and ideally suits this work, but that I personally have grown quite fond of.
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| With Rodney in Laguna Beach, California March 2019 |
I gratefully credit Rodney for being the chosen vessel through which this timely stroke of serendipitous sagacity was supernally struck, thereby birthing SAL as an important new derivative of self-leadership and action research theory.
Unlike many of my closest allies, colleagues, and friends, Rodney and I often disagree on cultural and political issues—which, contrary to popular belief, is actually okay! Because our background beliefs, experiences, and worldviews differ—sometimes significantly so—we have been able to learn from each other, challenge each other, and test out the practical possibilities of creating the kind of balanced alternative and Golden Mean that the SAL Philosophy is intended to animate in our desperately divided and deeply fractured society and culture. And for the most part, the experiment has worked; our friendship is proof!
I am grateful to Rodney for all of these things, and express my admiration, appreciation, and love to my capable colleague and dear friend.
Tune in next week to read the FOREWORD to the SAL Textbook, authored by the man, the myth, and the legend himself: Drumroll............. Dr. Christopher P. Neck.
—Dr. JJ
Author's Note: This is the 351st Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 167th consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
Click HERE for a compete listing of the other 350 FF Blog Articles
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL QUOTES
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL POEMS
Click HERE to access the FULL TEXT of Dr. JJ's Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection
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Tune in NEXT Wednesday for another article on a Self-Action Leadership related topic.
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