While waiting in a physical-distancing line I began musing about memorable incidents that taught me lessons which have stayed with me down through the years. Here are some that stood out.
LISTENING IS MORE THAN HEARING
When I was working for TransCanadaPipeLines back in the 50s, I thought I was being very efficient by continuing to work on whatever I was doing while others talked to me at my desk. Then one day a co-worker was telling me about a problem she was having that she thought I might be able to help her with. I continued drafting a letter. Suddenly she exclaimed, “You’re not listening!” I told her I was, and thought I’d proven it by repeating her problem almost verbatim. “But,” she countered, “your eyes weren’t listening.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF TIMING
I’d never recorded a radio commercial, but there I was sitting in front of a microphone in a claustrophobic recording booth about to record five of them. I did the first one and the engineer, Don Costello, said, “Okay, next,” as he did for each of the remaining spots. When I finished the last one he said, “Listen to the first one, Lyman, and then we’ll do it over.” He played it for me and it was truly awful. When I asked him why we didn’t do it over right away, he explained, “Had I criticized the first one right after you’d done it, we’d be re-doing five now, not just one.”
HUMILITY
Dale Carnegie liked to tell the story about a man who smugly and arrogantly strutted up to the podium, clearly intending to show off his superiority. After his talk failed miserably and garnered practically no applause, he dejectedly and humbly walked down the aisle and out of the auditorium. Mr. Carnegie observed that had the man approached the podium the way he left it, he might have left it the way he approached it.
ENTHUSIASM
In 1972 I travelled across Canada and the U.S. giving talks explaining the complete overhaul of the Canadian income tax system. The first half dozen or so presentations went well, I enjoyed giving them and the audiences were very receptive. But then I got bored giving the same talk over and over and one day noticed that the audience seemed bored too. While thinking about this on my way to the next city, I remembered two important things about enthusiasm. Starting with the next presentation both the audience and I began enjoying the talks again. The two things are: act enthusiastic and you’ll become enthusiastic; and, enthusiasm is extremely contagious.
MANAGING ANGER
I don’t remember what I’d done or said, but my grade-four teacher, Marie McGuigan, had deposited me in front of principal Mabel O’Brien’s desk to meet my fate. Mabel just sat there and stared at me. After what seemed like a very long time, but was probably only a couple of minutes, I ventured, “What’s going to happen to me?” “I don’t know yet,” she replied, “I have to wait until I get over being mad at you.”
AN INTERESTING TAKE ON HAPPINESS
Back in the mid-60s I was playing poker with friends at the Legion in Morell, P.E.I. Everyone but Al Baker and I had either gone to the bar for a refill or to the washroom to get rid of the last one. Notwithstanding that Al was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome, and a very nice man, he was a life-long bachelor. I asked him why he never got married. “Well,” he said, “anybody I ever wanted didn’t want me. And I always figured I was better off wanting something I didn’t have than having something I didn’t want.”
AN EARLY INTRODUCTION TO THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTITUDE
Of the thousands of radio commercials I heard as a kid, one that still stands out loud and clear in my memory was for a product called Carter’s little liver pills. Even as a kid I mused about whether the adjective “little” was intended to modify “pills” or “liver.” But the reason I remember the commercial so well was its fiendishly clever tagline: “If life’s not worth living, it may be the liver.”
ANOTHER ON ATTITUDE
One day in early 1968, my late partner, Ed Marchant (who had recently moved to Toronto from Winnipeg) and I were looking out a window in our downtown office tower when he asked me what the population of the greater Toronto area was. I told him it must be at least two million. “Good,” Ed smiled, “I only have to get fifty cents from each one of them.”