I Doubt It

I was listening to the radio the other day and the topic was what makes successful people successful?

They mentioned a lot of traits that you would expect a successful person to have. Single minded dedication to whatever they are interested in, intelligence, good business sense, innovative, good people skills, the willingness to work long hours and the belief that what they are doing is worthwhile. The two things that I found most interesting, was that they must also be very good at failure and have the ability to say no.

You have to be willing to fail in order to succeed. In fact, a lot of the most successful have failed time and time again. They were able to learn from their failures and try not to repeat them in the next endeavours. How do you not let failure get you down? What kind of positive dipshit would lose everything they owned and still be willing to do the same thing all over again? I guess that is one of the reasons that I haven’t had a lot of business success. Okay, no business success.

I knew a guy once that truly lived on the financial edge. He would contract to have a house built, and not pay anyone at all until finally the trades people would put liens on the house and of course stop working. By the time that happened, the house would be 95% complete and my friend would go in and do the finishing touches. He would then put it up for sale and pay off all of the trades from the profits. I don’t know all of the details of how this worked; I just knew that I got ulcers from just being his friend. He did this over and over again, and I imagine that he made more than a few dollars at it. I am pretty sure that he would hire different trades’ people each time though. The fact that he had the gift of gab and could sell sand to the Arabs didn’t hurt at all. I think he and his long suffering wife moved 12 times in eight years.

This idea of saying “No” being important to success has me intrigued. I have never been able to say no. I can hem and haw and put off an answer for a while, but I will eventually capitulate and agree to whatever I am asked. The reason is partly because I want to be the good guy and not disappoint anyone, which I surely would if I didn’t say yes. I do like to help people, but sometimes there is a confrontation between what would make me happy and what would make the askers happy.

The other reason that I am reluctant to say no is due to my friend Ken. Many years ago he was visiting from Ontario and tried to talk me into taking the next day off, but I had already taken a few days and told him no. Just a few weeks later I found out that he died in a motorcycle crash and I have never forgiven myself for not taking the time to just be with Ken. Ever since that time, I really have a hard time saying no and most of my friends know it. I don’t mind when friends ask me things, but it is the acquaintances that kind of irk me.

One of my wife’s favourite sayings is “NO is an acceptable answer to any given question”. We don’t like to hear NO, but sometimes you have to use it so that the important things in your life can get done.

I guess that I should start to use NO more often. I don’t suppose that I will become a wealthy powerful man, but it would be nice to say no without feeling guilty. I wonder if you can change after five decades plus? I doubt it.

Poppa

I was playing with my grandson Hurricane today and for no apparent reason he started to recite all of the names that he is known by. Counting “Hurricane” he had five other names that he is know by, and he is only four. I asked him if he knew what my name was and he said without any hesitation, “Your name is Poppa”. When he and his brother had left and after my obligatory nap, I started to think of all the names that I have been known by.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I imagine that the first name I was called would have been “It”. That was before mom and dad decided on Kenneth. It is funny how many people have names like Kenneth that are never really used except on formal occasions like when you break a window, or the principal is referring to your poor grades. I was “Son” when my dad was proud of me which wasn’t as often as I would have liked. Kenneth turned into Kenny and stayed that way for quite a while. I grew into it and quite frankly it wasn’t a really unique name that mom and dad picked. In grade five there were five Kenny’s in the class and we were each put in a different row so the teacher could just ask the question to Kenny 3 or if she wanted the wrong answer she would ask Kenny 5.

I am not sure when I became Ken (never to my mom) but I guess it was in high school. I was also referred to a “Harrison” and the odd time as “asshole”. It is a funny thing that very good friends, the kind that probably know you better than you know yourself will often just use your last name or nothing at all. To my good friends I am “Buddy”, “Hey” and “You”. Sometimes I will go weeks without anyone saying my name, and I am often surprised when I hear it.

I picked up more than a few nicknames when I was working. I have been “The Black Diamond Kid” because I lived in Black Diamond. That was later shortened to “Diamond”, because letter carriers are inherently lazy and that saved three words. I was “Toronto” because one day someone was talking about something I did or said and referred to me as “The guy from Toronto with the beard.” That one stuck the longest I think. In Kitchener I was called “Hat” because I …well…wore a hat all the time. I never said that they were clever names.

Once I worked with a guy that called me Dave for three months. I knew who he was talking about, so I tried out “Dave” for a while until someone blew my cover. It was nice being someone else. For the last thirty years, I have been dad. During that time I have also been Co-ordinator Ken, Coach, Scouter Ken, and Secretary Ken and the name “Asshole” has popped up from time to time on a more or less regular basis.

When I have internal talks with myself I am almost always Ken, but the odd time I am asshole as well. We have many names as we walk through this life, and we answer to them all depending on where in our life line we find ourselves at that moment. I have forgotten some of the names that I have had, and I am sure they will pop into my mind tomorrow, when it is too late to get into the blog.

Of all the names that I have gone by, the one that gives me the most joy is the last one, “Poppa”.