Life Matters

Persistence, Resiliency and Luck

Larry Barkan — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:35:20 +0000

Does life sometimes occur to you as though each day you’re rolling a rock up a hill? Then, each evening while you sleep the rock rolls back down so that, in the morning, you have to roll that rock uphill all over again.

If so, you probably sympathize with Sisyphus in Greek mythology who was punished by the Gods for daring to escape from the Underworld. Sisyphus was forced to roll a rock up a hill and watch it fall back down for all eternity.

You may sometimes want to echo Macbeth’s sentiments: “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.”

And yet:

There is a school in Tiffin, Ohio named Heidelberg University, enrollment 1200 that every year plays a football game against the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio with an enrollment of 2200.

Between 2004 and 2007, Heidelberg had been outscored, 187-0, in just three games played against Mount Union. Three games!

But in 2007, Heidelberg had something to celebrate. They became the only team in their conference to score points against Mount Union’s first-team defense. The score of that 2007 game? 62-3.

Since that “triumph,” the scores against Mount Union have been getting marginally closer: 49-0, 44-14, 45-7.

According to a New York Times story about the team, as they prepared for the 2011 game, the players were euphoric. “Where else would you rather be?” wide receiver Mario Escalante shouted during practice.

“Nowhere but here!” his teammates yelled back.

On October 16^th, Heidelberg lost 56-7.

Talk about rolling a rock up a hill for all eternity.

I was reminded of the movie Starman in which Jeff Bridges plays an alien from another planet marooned on earth. He is befriended by a woman who helps him rendezvous with a ship on its way to rescue him. During the journey, Bridges says to the woman, “Shall I tell you what I admire most about your species? You are at your best when things are at there worst.”

I heard a classical violinist speaking the other day about his incessant pursuit of perfection. He likened his pursuit to climbing a series of staircases. When he reaches the top step of one staircase, he noted, he is merely at the bottom step of the next. And yet he keeps rolling his rock.

In their book “Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All,” Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen note that, when we flip a coin, the ratio of heads to tails evens out over time, but that we have to be willing to be resilient enough to endure the bad luck long enough to eventually get to the good luck. As they note, “Luck favors the persistent, but you can persist only if you survive.”

Or, as William Faulkner said so eloquently in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.”

Finally, Michael Lewis, author of several books, two of which have been made into movies (“The Blind Slide” and “Moneyball”) has a new book out called “Boomerang” about the current financial crisis.

While most of the book presents a fairly pessimistic view of the future, Lewis concludes the book by noting that, “As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off.”

We just have to keep on rolling our rocks.

Find Your “Why?”

Larry Barkan — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:55:02 +0000

What you do and how you do it is not nearly as important as why you do it. Check out this great “Ted Talk” by Simon Sinek.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

If You Build It, He Will Come

Larry Barkan — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:14:20 +0000

I’m sure you’ve seen or, certainly, know of the movie, “Field Of Dreams” with its famous tag line that I’ve used as the title of this article.

The film is often referred to as the cinematic version of the best selling book and DVD program, “The Secret” with its emphasis on focusing intently on what we want in our lives and the power of our beliefs.

I was reminded of the power of our beliefs in an unexpected place the other day. I was listening to the National Public Radio program “Car Talk” which, as you probably know, is a show where people call in to get car advice from the hosts, two brothers named Tom and Ray Magliozzi who often refer to themselves as “The Tappet Brothers.”

A caller asked which additive, when put in the gas tank, works best at improving gas mileage. Without hesitation, Tom and Ray said that none of them actually work. But, they then added, paradoxically, that putting the additive in your gas tank usually does improve gas mileage for a time.

I thought I was in the midst of the Zen Koan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping.” How can an additive both work and not work?

Tom and Ray explained that, while the additive doesn’t work, we are so desirous of making it work that, without necessarily realizing it, we drive more carefully. We slow down. We make fewer jack rabbit starts. We turn the motor off instead of letting it idle. In other words, we want to believe that it works and we act to confirm our belief

The reason the additive eventually fails is because we revert to our old driving habits.

Now back to “Field Of Dreams.” People who are disappointed that their dreams remain unfulfilled even though they meditated, visualized and prayed, may be focusing more attention on “He will come” than on “If you build it.”

Without actually altering driving habits, the additive wouldn’t reduce gas mileage at all. Without actually fighting to get up that hill, “The Little Engine That Could” never could have made it no matter how much thinking went into it. Without actually building the base ball field, the players would have no place to show up no matter how much Ray Kinsella (the protagonist played by Kevin Costner) may have wished for it.

Consider the movie: Ray devoted a considerable amount of time to plowing up an entire field of corn worth (at the time of the 1989 film), $2,200 per acre, installing lights for night games and creating the base ball infield and outfield. He researched the life of Terence Mann, a writer Ray admired in the 1960s. Ray drove from Dyersville, Iowa where the ball field is located to Boston where Ray finds Terence Mann to Chisholm, Minnesota to find Doc Graham (a character whom Ray thinks is supposed to return with him to Dyersville) and back home to Iowa. This is a distance of 3,107 miles that would have taken 52 hours in driving time alone (thank you Rand McNally mileage calculator), not including the time spent in the destination cities.

Malcolm Gladwell might have included Ray Kinisella in his book “Outliers.” In that book, Gladwell writes about people who have become successful pursuing their dreams (lawyers, doctors, The Beatles and Bill Gates among others) and he notes that there was one thing they all had in common. According to Gladwell, every one of these people worked for at least 10,000 hours (about three year’s worth of 10-hour days, 7 days a week) to achieve their success.

There’s something to notice about “The Little Engine That Could,” “The Secret” the “Car Talk” show I referenced and “Field Of Dreams.” As much as we would like to “wish” our desires into existence, it takes concentrated action (not just concentrated thinking) to make them happen (according to “The Secret” website, the secret “has been passed down through the ages,” so, obviously, it took untold effort to get it to us).

You may have heard the story of the man who couldn’t understand why he never won the lottery. After all, he had meditated for an hour every day, visualizing what he would do with the money once he won. Then someone pointed out to him that no matter how much he visualized, he would still have to buy a ticket.

No matter how much visualizing one may do, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

As we all know, visualization without action is an hallucination.

The “Secret” To Long Term Relationships

Larry Barkan — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:05:11 +0000

Did you see the recent HBO documentary about former Beatle George Harrison called “Living In The Material World?” The documentary was directed by Martin Scorcese and produced by Olivia Harrison, George’s widow to whom he had been married for 23 years.

In the documentary, Olivia is asked, “What is the secret to a long marriage?” After a short pause, she smiled slightly and said, “Don’t get divorced.”

I’ve been married for 38 years and I can tell you that is the best advice anyone can give to those who are wondering how to maintain a long term relationship.

As you know, any relationship of any duration will have ups, downs and in betweens. Like a roller coaster ride, the difference between those who stay together and those who don’t is that those who stay together have decided to not get off the ride while the ride is in progress.

I also ask you to consider that we choose our lives and then forget that we were the ones doing the choosing. Instead, we blame the person we’re in relationship with for the condition of our lives. Then we end the relationship and enter a new relationship in which we recreate the conditions of the old relationship.

The only way we could create a new relationship is if we were new. After all, we’re the only common denominator in all of our relationships. Just as we continue to believe that money will buy happiness, we are sure that some other grass is always greener.

As my friend Sherri Bresn noted in a recent email, “We build our lives around patterns of feelings, beliefs and behaviors. We then repeat those behaviors over and over because then we do not have to think so much about what we are doing… habits die hard.”

A friend of mine is considering divorce because his wife doesn’t like to do the things he likes to do. Of course, the things he likes to do (rock climbing, hiking and biking), he likes to do alone. His main complaint is that his wife won’t do the things with him that he likes to do alone.

It was easy for me to see the paradox in my friend’s behavior, but it’s not so easy to see my own blind spots. That’s why it’s important to listen to the feedback we receive and especially to the feedback about ourselves that we disagree with.

None of this is to suggest that one should stay in a relationship no matter what. I simply intend to point out that our perception of a relationship depends on our point of view about that relationship. Sometimes, we think our point of view is the truth.

Points of view can change. Relationships end when points of view are mistaken for the truth.

The “secret” to a long term relationship is to give up being right and making the other person wrong for being exactly as you want him/her to be.

Resiliency For Tough Times

Larry Barkan — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:48:59 +0000

Resiliency is “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” It’s something we can all use more of, especially in these tough times. It’s good to be reminded, as Robert Schuller wrote as the title of one his books, “Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do.”

There are two movies I recommend you watch that provide inspirational lessons in resiliency. Both these movies are based on true stories.

The first is 127 Hours about Aron Ralston. You may not know his name but you certainly know the gist of his story.

Ralston was exploring the very narrow Bluejohn Canyon in Utah. In many places, he could only get through by walking sideways or crawling under and over boulders.

At one point, a boulder that was lodged between the canyon walls blocked his path. There wasn’t much room beneath the boulder, so Aron climbed over it. As he did so, the boulder slipped, trapping his right arm between the wall and the boulder. 5 days later, out of food and water, Aron cut off his right forearm to free himself.

How can someone be so cool, especially when one’s life is at stake? I lose my cool when I have to wait in line, when the Internet goes down or when I have to wait longer than I think I should for a table in a restaurant.

Certainly Aron experienced times of terror and despair, but he never let panic overwhelm him. In short, he demonstrated the toughness that is the hallmark of resiliency (if you’re interested in the true story, watch the Dateline television show that accompanies Aron back to the very canyon where he almost died:

The second movie I recommend is Apollo 13 with the famous line uttered by Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks), “Houston, we have a problem.”

In reality, however, that’s not what Lovell said. The actual flight transcripts indicate that he really said, “Houston, we had a problem.” It occurred to me that the difference between “have” and “had” is what resiliency is all about. It’s what got Ralston out of that canyon and the crew of Apollo 13 home alive. That one word represents a significant transformation in thinking.

We have a problem suggests being stuck in the past. We had a problem indicates that Lovell has already moved past the event and is concerning himself with the next problem that this past problem has presented him with. He is staying in the present moment, dealing as creatively as he can with life as it comes to him.

You see, by the time we recognize that we have a problem, the problem has already passed. We now have another problem which, when solved, will simply lead to another problem in a never ending series.

Both Aron Ralston and the crew of Apollo 13 didn’t have a problem. They had a problem. Now they’ve got another one. And once that one is solved, there will be another. Each solved problem is simply the doorway to another. That is the nature of life in these movies. That is the nature of life.

Resiliency is the willingness (and it requires will) to look for creative solutions to one’s predicament rather than bemoaning the predicament itself. Resiliency requires staying present to life as it presents itself and confronting the challenge in front of us, not being stuck with the problems behind us.

There’s another scene in Apollo 13 that captures this distinction.

Lovell’s fellow astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert get into a shouting match, blaming one another for the situation they are in. Lovell (at least in the movie if not in reality) stops their argument by admonishing, “We’re not doing this, gentlemen. We’re not going to go bouncing off the walls for ten minutes, ’cause we’re just going to end up back here with the same problems!”

Being resilient requires transforming our thinking from “have a problem” to “had a problem.” It is the recognition that our lives are nothing but a series of “had” problems. Resiliency is dealing with these as they come and the recognition that “bouncing off the walls for ten minutes,” will merely leave us in the same place complaining about our fate. In fact, it’s the “bouncing off the walls” that makes it impossible to see creative solutions.

How “Casualties of War” and Steve Jobs Changed My Life

Larry Barkan — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:33:32 +0000

Have you seen the movie “Casualties Of War?” Based on a true story, the film challenges us to consider the choices we make in life.

Michael J. Fox plays Max Eriksson, a member of a squad of 6 men out on patrol during the Vietnam War. Sean Penn plays Sergeant Tony Meserve the leader of the squad.

The squad has, lately, seen a lot of combat and Meserve decides that they are entitled to some “recreation.” While on their next patrol, the squad (in spite of Eriksson’s protests and his refusal to participate) kidnaps and rapes a Vietnamese girl. Eriksson ultimately reports his comrades to the authorities who, rather than taking immediate action, are at first indifferent and then openly hostile towards Eriksson.

Learning that Eriksson has revealed details of the rape to his superiors, one of the members of the squad confronts him with the question as to why he would turn them in. After all, he says, we may die at any moment in the war. What difference does it make what we do?

Eriksson’s turns this thinking on its head by declaring that precisely because they may die at any moment the choices they make at every moment are critically important.

This choice between these two views of the world is actually one we make every day although we may not always be present to it. Some believe that it doesn’t make any difference what we do since few of us will be remembered for very long after we die for what we did or who we were. Others believe that our actions have a profound impact on current and future generations whether we are personally remembered or not.

Steve Jobs had something to say about this when he gave the commencement address at Stanford University in 2005. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer the year before he gave this talk (the same cancer that has now caused him to step down from his day to day responsibilities at Apple) and he ended his remarks with a reflection on mortality.

Like every commencement speaker before him, Jobs called on the graduates to be true to themselves because “time is limited.” Jobs added that, “I can now say this with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept”

Jobs admonished the graduates to ask themselves a question: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something” (you can view his talk on youtube at ).

I was impacted by Jobs’ comments and, as a result, I’ve taken on a new practice.

Every morning, I create my schedule for the day on my computer screen and, usually, I’m in a hurry to complete this planning and get to work.

Now, however, just before I create my schedule, I pause and take a moment to notice the very obvious fact that I’m looking at a blank page and that whatever I put on that schedule represents the contribution I’m going to make to life that day. This may sound grandiose, but it’s exactly the thought I have.

Some activities I put on that schedule will be dictated by the demands of others while some activities will be chosen by me. But in either case, my approach to those activities will either make a difference or will just be another “to do” to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible.

I get to choose. Will what I’m about to do make any difference or will it not?

As the Grail Knight advises in the movie, Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom, “choose wisely.”

Good advice.

Make A Difference Right Here and Right Now

Larry Barkan — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 18:25:01 +0000

The other day, I had lunch with a friend at a restaurant near the state Capitol building in Olympia, Washington and, afterwards, decided to visit the nearby library. I was searching through the library’s computer catalog when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Can you help me find the children’s books?” I turned to see that the speaker was an adorable girl of about 7 who, standing beside me, was the same height as I was sitting down. She clutched a book tightly to her chest as though it might be snatched away at any moment. Her voice had the plaintive quality of a child looking for her mommy instead of a book.

I don’t know why she had chosen me to ask for help. In fact, I was one of the worst people for her to ask since this was a library I was visiting for the first time. But I desperately wanted to help her.

I swiveled in my chair and saw a librarian seated behind a desk no more than 10 feet away.

“I don’t know where the children’s section is,” I said. “But that lady over there can help you.” I pointed to the librarian and watched as the girl walked tentatively over and stood beside the librarian without speaking, waiting to be noticed. I was about to walk over when the librarian saw the girl, heard her request and escorted her to the children’s section. Satisfied that the girl had been helped, I returned to the computer catalog.

I was surprised at how good I felt about doing something to make a difference for that girl.

This encounter reminded me of the time my wife Carol and I were returning from Flagstaff, Arizona to our home in the little town of Strawberry about 60 miles from Flagstaff and 2 hours north of Phoenix.

It was raining hard as we approached Strawberry and I slowed to about 35 miles an hour because of the slick highway pavement. Suddenly, we saw a little dog that looked like some variety of Terrier, dripping water off its fur and sniffing the grass by the opposite side of the road from where we were driving.

We made a u-turn, pulled up beside the dog and Carol opened the passenger side door. To our surprise, without hesitation, the dog jumped into Carol’s lap as though relieved to be out of the rain.

We drove home and, once inside, inspected the dog’s collar and called the owner who couldn’t have been more grateful or relieved. She and a friend had been camping all day and had become separated from their dog. After searching for hours, they gave up and drove home to Phoenix, devastated that they had been forced to desert their dog.

The next day, they drove up to reclaim the dog and brought us flowers, a picture of the dog and their thanks, thanks, thanks.

Here’s the reason I’m relaying these stories: In my life, I’ve given money to organizations representing people I’ll never meet and marched for causes on behalf of people who have no idea who I am (nor I they). I had only a slight sense that I was making a difference.

But when I helped that little girl and rescued that dog, there was no question about the difference I was making. I will remember those two encounters (and a few others like them) for the rest of my life.

While still doing what I can to help people who aren’t in my daily life, I realize that I’ve been more concerned about the people I will never meet than the people I meet every day. I’ve been grumpy when I could have been smiling. Complaining when I could have been grateful. Being busy when a few minutes conversation could have made a big difference.

I’m going to create more memories like I now have about that little girl and that little dog by living inside the question, “How can I help?”

Overcome Your Fear Of Failure

Larry Barkan — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:18:35 +0000

When it comes to dealing with our fears of failing, sticks and stones may break our bones but words will really destroy us.

I broke my leg when I was 17 and it healed before I turned 18. I’ve had no adverse effects from that break.

On the other hand, what we say to ourselves can destroy our ability to achieve our goals and we may believe what we say to ourselves forever.

The fear of failure is not a thing. It is not like a heavy, marble table that we can just move out of the way. We just think that it is.

What really stops us, from being bold, from really stepping out and going beyond our comfort zones, is that we think of fear of failure as a thing and things are hard to change. Tables are things. Our fear of failure is not a thing. It is nothing (no thing). You can’t overcome something that doesn’t exist.

The fear of failure exists completely in our minds. We say we’re fearful and that’s what we experience. We say we’re excited and that’s what we experience.

Imagine, for example, you’re about to pick up the phone and call someone for a date. You may notice that your heart is beating wildly, your palms are sweating and your muscles are tense. This is real fear, you may think.

Or is it? Actually, we would experience the same exact physiological response if we were excited. After all, whether being on a roller coaster is fearful or exciting for us depends on what we tell ourselves about the experience.

Recently, a friend told me that he had always wanted to start his own business, but he was afraid of failing. How does he know it’s fear and not excitement?

The other day, I spoke to the Board of a nonprofit organization that was looking for ways to raise half a million dollars when, up until then, they had never raised more than 50,000. In order to do that, the members of the Board were going to have to be a lot bolder in their requests. They were going to have to call people they had never called before and they were going to have to ask those people for more money than they had ever asked before.

However several members of the Board told me they were afraid to do so. How do they know it’s fear and not excitement?

People often asked me how for advice about writing a book. They would love to write a book, they often say, but they are fearful of doing so. How do they know it’s fear and not excitement?

Fear of failure is an entirely human construct that is brought into existence when we label what we’re feeling as fear. Fear doesn’t exist anywhere outside of our language. We call it fear and it is so. After all, “in the beginning was The Word.”

This is not to suggest that there aren’t real fears out there. Put a gun to my head and, believe me, I won’t claim I’m excited.

So what to do? I’m going to use making a phone call to someone you’re fearful of talking to as an example:

1. Don’t think. Don’t plan. Don’t strategize. Don’t try to change your thoughts.

Those thoughts are just thoughts. They aren’t tables. Don’t try to move them.

2. Pick up the phone.

3. Press the numbers on the phone that will connect you with the person you want to talk to

4. Make your request of this person

5. Notice if you got what you wanted.

6. If you did, congratulate yourself

7. If you didn’t, get coaching to figure out what to do next.

Don’t try to control you fear. That which we resist persists. Don’t try to change your fear. That would be treating it like a table that can be moved. Just let your fear be and get into action.

You will never “heal” your fear as a broken bone will heal. Your fear isn’t real and that’s why you can’t “heal” it. Give up expecting that your fear will, somehow, disappear and just get into action.

Time Management: Track Your Time To Produce Results

Larry Barkan — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:51:28 +0000

What’s an area of life that is important to you but one in which you aren’t producing the results you would like to produce? You might, for example, want more money, better relationships (or an intimate relationship) or a more satisfying career.

Now ask yourself this question: How much time do you actually devote to achieving your results? Not how much time you think you spend, but how much time you actually spend. If you’re unsure, I encourage you to keep a time log for two weeks to track the reality of how you use your time.

Keeping a time log is simple but requires discipline. On a piece of paper (or a computer) note the time when you start an activity and the time when it ends. Something that works for me when I am at my desk is to start an egg timer when I begin an activity and note how much time has passed when I conclude that activity.

If your day is full of interruptions, you’ll need to carry your time log with you and be especially diligent. And be sure to maintain the log in your personal life as well as at work.

At the end of two weeks, simply add the amount of time you were engaged in your various activities. It will become obvious to you that you are producing results in the areas where you are devoting your time and not producing results where you aren’t.

To get what you want in life, you have to take the actions consistent with getting what you want. This seems obvious, but is it? Here’s an example that suggests we sometimes delude ourselves into not seeing the obvious.

I was at a seminar the other day and a man (“Ralph”) stood up to talk about how ashamed he was that the amount of money he was making was insufficient to pay his bills and provide for his family. He repeatedly described himself as a failure.

The seminar leader asked Ralph how much money he wanted to make. He told Ralph that he didn’t have to reveal that amount, but he should think of a specific number. After a few moments of thinking, Ralph said he had that number in mind.

The seminar leader than asked Ralph how many hours per week he had to work to earn that amount. Ralph responded that he needed to work at least 40 hours.

Then the seminar leader asked, “How many hours did you work last week?”

Ralph took a while to consider his answer and then, in a soft voice that had me straining to hear he answered, “3.”

We laughed and Ralph laughed. The message was clear: We may complain about the circumstances of our lives, but we may not be taking the actions necessary to change those circumstances.

In fact, every time we find ourselves complaining, consider that the complaint may be what we’re using in place of acting to change those circumstances.

How much time do you actually devote in reality to taking actions consistent with making more money? How much time do you actually devote in reality to improving your relationships or getting a relationship? How much time do you actually devote in reality to developing yourself in your career?

Your time log will give you the answer to those questions. Consider the possibility that there is a one to one correlation between actions and results.

I’ve taken on the practice of tracking the number of conversations I have daily to promote my business and I’ve noticed that the more conversations I have, the more business I get.

Consider the possibility that we are not failures but rather failures in performing the actions that will produce results.

Your time log will tell you where you are failing in your performance. Take more actions consistent to producing the results you say you want and you will have those results.

Time Management: What We Say Is What We Will Get

Larry Barkan — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:53:02 +0000

Have you ever said, “I’m overwhelmed?” Consider the possibility that you feel “overwhelmed” because you say you are.

In reality, there’s no such thing as “overwhelm.” You can show me the items on your to do list. But you can’t show me overwhelm.

Rather than having “too much to do,” we simply have those things we’re doing and those things we are not doing. Nothing in that description contains being “overwhelmed.” Simply put, “overwhelmed” occurs when we call what we have to do “overwhelming.”

If you doubt this, consider a dog. Imagine a dog saying, “My goodness. I have to walk, sniff, eat, poop and guard the house all day long. I’m so stressed and exhausted. It’s just overwhelming.”

Yet this is exactly what we do. We look at our to do list, decide that we have “too much to do” and call that overwhelming. We don’t have “too much to do.” We have exactly what there is to do and nothing more. Some of it we will do and some of it we won’t. In reality, we will never have enough time to complete everything. In reality, we will always have exactly the amount of time that we have.

I know this may sound strange. But consider that changing our perception of time may involve nothing more than changing from saying, “I’m overwhelmed” to “I have these things to do.”

In a similar context, I have a friend who complained that his boss had “stolen” his time because a meeting that was scheduled for 30 minutes went on for almost two hours. What actually happened, of course, is that the meeting lasted two hours. No theft was involved.

I know that “being overwhelmed” or thinking that your time was “stolen” seem as real as the computer on which you are reading this. But, in reality, there’s no such thing as either “overwhelm” or “stolen time.” We create those experiences through our language.

So be careful what you say. You will get it.