What Matters Most: January 2012

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Uncertainty and Risk

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

Uncertainty and risk are two things most people try to eliminate from their lives, but I hope to explain why in order to really live you must accept some level of uncertainty and risk in your life. I spent 35 years in the insurance business dealing with uncertainty and risk, but that is not what I’m talking about. Insurance after all is just a way, with the payment of a monetary premium, to arrange to transfer your uncertainty and risk to some large insurance company. And the only way they have of taking care of you is with money. Does any amount of money replace a life, or a home?

But, while I’m on the topic of insurance, and I do think you should buy it, let me also mention that Risk Management is actually more valuable than insurance, because by analyzing what your risks actually are, and making changes to prevent accidents and problems from developing in the first place, you can keep a lot of the uncertainties from happening. That’s way better than just getting paid money if they do.

It’s the personal uncertainties and risks of life that I want to talk about. Most people as I said just try to eliminate any uncertainty and risk from their personal lives, but that can lead to a very dull existence.

The days of our lives are all we really have in this world, and we ought to make as many of them between birth and death as memorable as we can. The ones we remember most vividly are the days that were full of uncertainty and risk, and what we did to overcome it with success in spite of anything and everything. Let me illustrated with a few examples of how uncertainty and risk are actually good for you.

I think of the time when I learned to fly an airplane, and especially my first solo flight. Talk about risk and uncertainty that was it. You know it’s coming, but you don’t know when. Then one day the instructor calmly gets out of the airplane and tells you to take it up for three circles around the airport and three landings all by yourself. That’s not the time to be afraid, to back out, or to say you are not ready yet, so you do it. You overcome your uncertainty and you don’t think about the risk, and in return you gain a skill and the feeling deep inside your soul that you can do anything you set your mind to accomplish. And that is one of life’s most valuable lessons.

Another great example is the two month trip I took to Europe with a friend back in 1979. We bought a VW Diesel Rabbit and took delivery at the airport in Brussels, Belgium, the day we arrived on our flight from Atlanta. We signed the papers in the airport’s parking garage, loaded our bags and headed out without any reservations for hotels, or even a fixed itinerary for where we would spend the next 60 days. The result of that uncertainty and risk was the most wonderful trip of my life. Experiences I will never forget as we did things that tourist never get to do. We never had a reservation, but always found a delightful and interesting place to sleep each night.

Our cheapest hotel room was at the Hotel Iran in Madrid, Spain, just a block from Plaza Mayor for only $7.50 per night. That’s only $3.75 each. It was in Madrid that I saw my first and only bullfight. Our last night in Monte Carlo we gambled at the casino with the last of our French Francs and almost didn’t have enough to pay our bill to the nice French lady at the B & B before heading off to Italy. In Rome we wanted to find a place near the Spanish Steps area, but have you ever driven yourself into Rome? We hadn’t either, but we made it, and found a parking garage just a block away where we stored our car while we toured Rome for five days on foot.

When everything in your life is certain it shuts down your thinking and creativity. And it is thinking new thoughts, asking new questions, and meeting new people, that allow you to create the new experiences that add to the richness of the days of your life.

These two quotes explain why you also need some risk in your life. From Anais Nin, “And the day comes when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.” And from Eudora Welty, “How can you go out on a limb if you don’t know your own tree?”

What Matters Most…….Never fear uncertainty and risk in your life. Learn to deal with it and in the doing you will discover a most wonderful adventure.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

THINK / What's Next

What Matters Most…Commentary by Jim High

Right after I graduated from Mississippi State University several of my college fraternity buddies were hired by IBM. I went home to take over the operation of our family’s insurance agency due to my Father’s illness. But my friends and I shared one thing in common, IBM’s famous one word slogan – THINK.

I truly thought it was the best slogan I had ever heard, and in those early days of television everyone heard, or rather saw, the single word, THINK, at the end of every IBM commercial. Only one word, but it said volumes about what IBM as a company was all about. And for me it helped me to stay on track to accomplish the enormous task in front of me. Twenty two years old, my Father with cancer and unable to get out of bed, trying to learn, operate, manage and maintain a customer base that included the City of Tupelo, both the city and county school systems, the largest bank in town at that time, as well as the insurance program for the North Mississippi Medical Center.

After the death of my Father, I also became the provider for my family that consisted of my Mother, Grandmother, brother and sister, as well as the two ladies, and several sub-agents that worked for the agency, so you can understand how important that word –THINK – became to me. I even cut it out of magazine ads and taped it up in my office.

You see most every problem or challenge you have in life can be handled if you allow yourself to THINK, because it is acting without thinking that causes all the problems. It worked. The agency grew and prospered, and so did IBM. I always wondered why they dropped that slogan. I’ve never dropped thinking about solutions.

Not too long ago one of the top rated TV shows was West Wing staring Martin Sheen as President Bartlett. It was on for several years and I watched every episode. President Bartlett was a President we could all rally around and he must have followed the slogan – THINK – because he always did the right thing, which I’ll admit is easy if you are just following a script, but at least the script writer was thinking.

President Bartlett had a famous phrase he said at least once every episode – “What’s Next.” I always thought it was a great way to live your life, to accomplish your goals, to get things done. “What’s Next” – says I’m finished with that, let’s move on. It was the moving on to “What’s Next” that made the show exciting. They solved the problems of the country and then moved on. They never sat and rest on their laurels. They never worried over the past, or worse lived there. “What’s Next” says let’s go forward. So I would suggest that you think about what’s next in your life, your business, your religious beliefs, your family, your health, and every other area of your life.

Let me apply some of this philosophy to some of Tupelo’s most pressing problems at the current moment realizing that if we – THINK – about them, we can solve them all, and then asking “What’s Next” moves our city forward.

Let’s be realistic and honest when we think about how the Tupelo Public School System lost its excellence. Let’s fix the problems where ever they are, inside or outside of the school system, and then ask what’s next, so we can continue to improve because nothing is ever perfect.

Does the Major Thoroughfare Program have its eyes set on what’s next?

As wonderful as it is, the new Toyota plant at Blue Springs is almost at full employment of 2,000, and will soon be making 600 Corollas a day. CDF, What’s Next?

We have, after six years, gotten the results of the railroad study. We still have the problem, and it is getting worse. What’s Next?

Soon Tupelo will have a new up-to-date modern Aquatic Center. What’s Next?

What Matters Most…..….you get the idea! If we just THINK, all problems are solvable, and if we always ask, “What’s Next,” we will always be moving forward and not backwards. You might want to write these two ideas down as words to live by and post them on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror, or where ever you post things you never want to forget.

THINK / What’s Next