Tom McMahon

How To Succeed

Tips from cartoonist Mike Lynch:

First off, talent is cheap. I can walk into any art school and see lots of people better than me. Most of those art students will not succeed. This is because talent has little to do with success. ...

Your talent may help, but persistence is key. If you want to draw single panel magazine gag cartoons, draw 20 every week, throw away the weak ones and mail the rest of them out. Do this every week.

When I started I knew NOBODY. No editors, no other cartoonists. And I didn't know what I was doing. I got addresses from the magazines I looked at in the library and the bookstore. I took the addresses from the masthead of the magazine. It took me 6 months, but I began selling.

The Merchant's Daughter

From this collection:

Many hundreds of years ago in a small Italian town, a merchant had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to the moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the merchant's beautiful daughter so he proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo the merchant' debt if he could marry the merchant's daughter. Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified by the proposal. The cunning money lender suggested that they let providence decide the matter.

The moneylender told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty bag. The girl would then have to pick one pebble from the bag. If she picked the black pebble, she would become the moneylender's wife and her father's debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white pebble she need not marry him and her father's debt would still be forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail.

They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the merchant's garden. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick her pebble from the bag.

The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles. "Oh, how clumsy of me," she said. "But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked." Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had picked the white one. And since the moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one.

A Winner Does Not Complain

A life lesson from Ted Nugent:

It would be easy for me to complain that the music industry is not fair or that I believe the industry is full of scoundrels and liars. Instead of wasting valuable time lamenting and complaining about these obstacles, my modus operandi has, and will continue to be, to play my guitar louder, sexier, more ferocious and more often. I simply won’t go away.

Life isn’t fair, just or impartial. The road to success or victory is tough, demanding and obstructed with any number of moral and ethical hurdles. Sucker punches are legal. When you get hit from behind and knocked down, the mark of a mature, confident person is to spring back up, dusts himself off and get back in the arena. A winner does not complain.

Why, Yes, I Can!

From big-time fashion model Elyse Sewell:

On the first day at every new agency, each model must fill out a form describing her skills. There's a row of boxes, and she checks "yes" or "no." Is she willing to model lingerie? Fur? Cigarettes? Can she dance? Windsurf? Ride bicycles, motorbikes, horses? Swim? Waterski?

Every shrewd model knows that the answer to all these questions, regardless of the skills she actually possesses, is "yes." It's vanishingly unlikely that we'll ever be called upon to really motorbike, only to fashion motorbike. Nobody's ever going to strap a Valentino on our back and waterskis on our feet and drag us off the pier. The real question being asked is, "Are you game to pretend like you're doing all this stuff for the sake of getting the shot?"

Yes, I am. Yes. Yes. Yes. Why, yes, I can surf and sing and ballet dance! All at once, in fur lingerie, if you so desire.

The World Is A Great Liar

Peggy Noonan on the Tim Russert coverage last weekend:

The beautiful thing about the coverage was that it offered extremely important information to those age 15 or 25 or 30 who may not have been told how to operate in the world beyond "Go succeed." I'm not sure we tell the young as much as we ought, as clearly as we ought, what it is the world admires, and what it is they want to emulate.

In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That's what it really admires. That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, "The thing about Joe was he was rich." We say, if we can, "The thing about Joe was he took care of people." . . .

After Tim's death, the entire television media for four days told you the keys to a life well lived, the things you actually need to live life well, and without which it won't be good. Among them: taking care of those you love and letting them know they're loved, which involves self-sacrifice; holding firm to God, to your religious faith, no matter how high you rise or low you fall. This involves guts, and self-discipline, and active attention to developing and refining a conscience to whose promptings you can respond. Honoring your calling or profession by trying to do within it honorable work, which takes hard effort, and a willingness to master the ethics of your field. And enjoying life. This can be hard in America, where sometimes people are rather grim in their determination to get and to have. "Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to," said Ronald Reagan.

A Question For You: Would You Rather Die At Age 58 At The Top Of Your Game Like Tim Russert, Or Live To Be 100, Way After Your Prime When Everyone Has Forgotten You?

Obviously, the ideal for most of us would be somewhere in the middle. But if you had to pick one extreme or the other, which one would you pick, and why?

Every Time You Spend A Dollar, You Sacrifice A Bit Of Your Future

Via The Fourth Checkraise, an excerpt from the Unclutterer:

Five years ago, I believed the above sentence was foolishness. I was 24 years old, working at a high paying job, and about to get married to a wonderful woman. I had just spent almost ten thousand dollars on a wedding ring and an exorbitant honeymoon in Europe, and I was actively shopping for a new vehicle because, well, my current ride just wasn’t quite good enough.

Roll forward three years. I had $17,000 in credit card debt and literally not enough money to pay my bills. A good chunk of the debt incurred for that honeymoon still sat on the credit cards. My wife, son, and I lived together in a tiny apartment, trying to figure out what we were going to do next.

Everywhere I looked around me in that apartment, I saw stuff I didn’t need. Video game consoles piled high under the television, along with a small mountain of games for the consoles. Over a thousand DVDs. A gigantic television set that dwarfed our living room, looking almost comically out of place. A huge collection of Magic: the Gathering cards. So many books that half of our child’s bedroom consisted of bookshelves. Two nearly-new cars sitting outside.

And yet I felt empty inside. I held my child close, thinking about all of the things I wanted to give to him, but instead I had chosen to spend all of my money on stuff

If You Want A Hot Cup Of Tea, You Must First Empty Your Cup

Conservatives want a hot, strong cup of tea, not some tepid warmed-over weak brew. But that's just one application. More here.

Happiness Is Like A Buffet

A short excerpt from Brian Tracy:

Happiness in life is like a buffet. If 100 people went to a buffet and each put food on their plate in the quantity and mix that each felt would be most pleasing to him, every plate would be different. Even a husband and wife would go up to the buffet and come back with plates that looked completely different. Happiness is the same way. Each person requires a particular combination of those ingredients to feel the very best about himself or herself.

Note: Brian Tracy used the word "smorgasbord", for which I substituted "buffet". When I was a kid it was always called a smorgasbord, now it seems everybody calls it a buffet. Do your kids even know what a smorgasbord is?

Coach Bear Bryant: Have You Called Your Mamma Today? I Sure Wish I Could Call Mine.

An excerpt from the 2007 commencement address at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by Thomas L. Friedman:

Well, I’ve tried to frighten you, tried to inspire you.  Now let me appeal to your sentimental side for just one moment with a message that I include in every graduation address I give.  It’s a very simple message: Call your mother.  When you were just in elementary school, there was a legendary football coach at the University of Alabama named Bear Bryant and, late in his career after his mother died, Bell South Telephone Company asked Bear Bryant to do a TV commercial.  As best I can piece together from the news reports, the commercial was supposed to be very simple, just a little music and Coach Bear Bryant saying in his tough coach’s voice into the camera, “Have you called your mamma today?”  On the day of the filming, though, when it came time for Coach Bryant to recite his simple line, he decided to ad lib something.  His mother had recently died.  He looked into the camera and said, “Have you called your mamma today?  I sure wish I could call mine.”  That was how the commercial ran and it got a massive audience response.  My own father died when I was 19.  He never got to see me do what I love.  I sure wish I could call him.  My mom, though, is 87 years old and lives in a home for people with dementia.  She doesn’t remember so well anymore and hasn’t for quite some time.  But even as her memory failed, for years she remembered that my column ran twice a week in the New York Times.  She didn’t quite remember the days, though, so every day she went through the paper and if she found my column, she photocopied it and passed it out to the other dementia patients in her nursing home.  Now, they didn’t know my column from the crossword puzzle but, never mind, if you don’t think that was important to me to know that my mom was still passing around my column even to people who could no longer read it, well then, you don’t know what’s important.  Your parents love you more than you will ever know so if you take one message away from this talk, take this one: Call your mother.  Regularly.  And your father.  You will always be glad you did.