Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life (11 page)

        I have yet to find an unbiased television news channel anywhere in the world. One time, I saw the same news story presented three different ways by the same network in three regions, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Same story, same channel, but each interpretation was massaged to appeal to its audience.

        A news story flashed behind me (I always sit with my back to hotel and restaurant televisions if I can), and like a cat spotting a stray mouse, his eyes locked onto the ticker tagline. Whatever it was, it made his blood boil, and he made some comments about the state of society and what we are becoming. I stopped him, and asked him to look around the lounge. I asked how many
people were arguing or fighting. When he admitted there were none, I asked him how many people were holding hands, cuddling, smiling, or laughing? The answer was everyone. That is our real world. He got the point, but before long his attention snapped back to a new ticker tagline.

        It is good to remind yourself that the world is not the place of disappointment, hate, and crime portrayed by the triffids. If you are one of those people obsessed with certain daytime movie channels, where all men supposedly hate women and want to hurt them, switch channels now. You can only watch a woman being physically attacked and held hostage so many times before you start making it a point to keep one hand on the pepper spray whenever a guy approaches. I have lived in man-ville for more than forty years, and I have met many more men terrified of women than the other way around!

        The romantic comedy
Love Actually
has a charming introduction that makes a great point about the world around us being one of love. Voyeuristically, the camera watches people as they exit the customs area in an airport, to be greeted by friends and family. All we see are expressions of utter joy. That is the real world. No one is creeping around in fear of being victimized.

        The film begins with a voiceover from Hugh Grant’s character commenting that whenever he gets gloomy with the state of the world, he thinks about the arrivals terminal at Heathrow Airport and the pure uncomplicated love felt as friends and families welcome their arriving loved ones. Grant’s voiceover also relates that all the known messages left by the people who died on the 9/11 planes were messages of love and not hate. The film then tells ten interrelated love stories. If the state
of the world as portrayed by what you see on television has you in a depressed state, I recommend you watch this movie, then spend a few hours at an airport arrivals area.

        In an airport or hotel, I take special notice of the people around me. I see laughter, love, and people caring for one another. There is an inordinate amount of hugging going on. Next time you travel, look around and see how people are behaving. That is our real world, not the one you see on a television screen.

        
Start today to be selective about what you watch and listen to. As much as you can, start to separate yourself from the complainers. If nothing else, remember the one subtle change in behavior is to no longer be
against
things you don’t want in your life but to be
for
things you do want. That has made a huge difference in my life of mentality.

W
HEN I WAS TWELVE
, I joined the state-run, comprehensive high school. It was five miles from my village, but the bus trip lasted more than an hour because it stopped at a dozen mountain hamlets. The first day passed uneventfully until the return ride home. Suddenly, I was yanked out of my seat by a dozen brutal hands and dragged to the back of the bus. A gang of bullies, all several years older than me and a good deal bigger, held me down while other kids stripped me half naked and wrote obscenities in ballpoint pen on my torso, arms, and legs.

As bullying goes, it was humiliating but relatively harmless. What shocked me, however, was that as a heavy knee crushed my head into the worn fabric of a seat and I was forced to stare down the center aisle of the bus, I saw a dozen adults, who had spent the day shopping in the town and used the bus for free, sitting rigidly while doing their best to pretend they couldn’t hear or see anything. Sharp pens being dragged across vulnerable skin are painful, and they must have been able to hear me as I struggled to free myself. Among my fellow travelers were people from my village and half a dozen kids I thought were my friends. No one moved. Even the bus driver, who could see all the commotion in his rearview mirror, did nothing.

When there was no more room to write on my skin, I was allowed to return to my seat. I tuned out the chanting and laughter coming from behind. When the bus pulled up to our stop, I walked the last mile home with my sister as if nothing had happened despite the fact that several of the bullies were still jeering around me.

At home, I told my parents that the first day had gone well and then ran upstairs to the bathroom. We were poor, and I knew how hard it had been for them to afford the school uniform. I feared the bullies had torn my shirt and that I would get into big trouble for it. Fortunately, there was only minor damage. It was 1972, and Audrey was very ill at this point. The last thing our family needed was something more to worry about.

Like most kids who are victims of bullying, I felt the fault lay with me. I had been bullied at my previous two schools. In Liverpool, I was often in trouble at home for losing items of school uniform like a school blazer, cap, tie, and even a shoe. Older boys from the “posh” school stole them from me, but I was too ashamed to admit it to my parents. This time the tormenting felt systematic and more menacing than before. I believed something weak, ugly, or low about me must have caused their tribal behavior.

I stripped and tried to wash off the ink, but it was at least two weeks before the graffiti was completely gone. We did not have a shower set up in the house, and I was only able to erase the marks from my arms and stomach. As I stood in front of the mirror, I had two thoughts. The first, illogically, was about how neat the handwriting and artwork were, considering the difficulty of the bone-shaking bus ride. The second was the recurring image of everyone else working hard at looking the other way, and how united they were in their persecution, and how much like an outcast I felt.

I know now that I was targeted for two reasons. First, we were an English family living in Wales at a time when “foreigners”
were not welcome. Although Wales shares a close political and social history with the rest of Great Britain, it has retained a distinct cultural identity and enjoys a degree of separate government. We had moved there four years earlier and arrived in a village where generations of the same families had always lived. The locals rarely traveled more than a few miles, and although they could speak English as well as their native tongue, they refused to do so around us. Being considered foreign, and coming from a city considered working class and with a reputation for petty crime, we were unwelcome.

In 1972, the television blared out nightly news about richer English families “invading” Wales to buy up weekend or vacation homes. The increased demand raised prices until they were well out of reach for young, native couples. Images of angry mobs torching recently purchased “outsider” homes made for compulsive viewing on the nightly bulletins. Who can tear their eyes away from newsreel of a burning house or a forest fire? A fringe political party increased the tension with their calls for the English to be ousted, Wales to be an independent nation, and their distinct and ancient language to be first choice.

It was sectarian racism, and I was targeted by the bullies on the bus with the same fervor as the television news had glorified. The fact that my family lived in an abandoned farmhouse that was barely fit for any human habitation was irrelevant to my tormentors. Their unguarded mentalities absorbed the images on television, and their habitual reaction was to act out their version of lynching on kids like me.

Second, being poor was difficult to disguise. Having odd-sized shoes of different styles on each foot was a bit of a giveaway. To make matters worse, on a Monday morning, the class teacher handed out food stamps for free school lunches to the kids whose parents were receiving welfare support. The half a dozen of us who made the long walk up to her desk under the
eyes of our classmates might as well have had “untouchable” written in white chalk on the backs of our black blazers. For the simple reason that nothing unites people more than a common dislike, poor kids are also usually the victims of bullying.

My parents had received a welfare subsidy for the purchase of school uniforms, which only ran to two shirts, one tie, one blazer, a pair of trousers, and one pair of shoes. It was sufficient for most of the school year, but that first winter, the water pipes to our farmhouse froze. It was impossible to bathe properly, and we mashed snow in the bath to make water for cleaning our teeth and for Harry’s shaving.

During the day at school, I was soccer mad. I ran around the playground like crazy, kicking at a tennis ball, which was the only ball I had to play with, until the school bell rang. I reluctantly returned to lessons, red-faced and sweaty. After a few days of this, and without the ability to wash my skin or clothes at home, I must have smelled like old kippers. Before long, someone taunted me about it. I reacted angrily, got in a fight, and that was like flicking a switch that united everyone else against me. Even those girls and boys who had been friendly up until then joined in the like-minded taunting.

After a few days, I learned to keep bathing materials in my locker at school. When no teachers were watching the physical education area, I ran to the changing rooms and showered quickly. I learned to play soccer with a naked torso even in the freezing weather.
Skins
we called it, and all the poor kids were first to volunteer to play on the skins team, regardless of the weather.

Kids can be cruel and geniuses at hiding things from their parents. Despite my only having the washing problem for a short time and having genuine reasons for it, I lived for years with the knowledge that the kids behind me in class or walking the corridors were making fun of me by pinching their noses
and making gagging noises. Girls shunned me as if I were a leper. I remember many nights staring into the bathroom mirror under a bare lamp bulb to find what it was about me that made me so abhorrent to them.

I was not alone. Other “untouchables” were targeted for other reasons, and we just had to grin and bear it. For a while, I let the taunts impact my self-esteem, and my schoolwork deteriorated. Before that first winter, I had been the top male student. Within a few months, I had fallen to twentieth out of thirty. Below me were most of the other untouchables, all of us systematically bullied and shunned by the rest of our classmates. Candy and allowances were stolen. My blazer was ripped off my back and urinated on, and then I was forced to put it back on. When I could, I fought back. I usually won a one-on-one fistfight, but that seemed only to strengthen the group bonded against me. I felt ashamed and sure that something about me deserved the punishment.

One night in 1974, the phone rang at home. It was a rare event because the phone bill was usually unpaid, and most of the time we were without a working line. My father assumed the role of answering the phone, and we tuned into the tone of his voice. This call was clearly bad news. To my surprise, he called me to the hallway and said the call was for me. It was the headmaster, and he solemnly informed me that a classmate, Simon, one of the untouchables, had committed suicide with his father’s hunting rifle. He was just thirteen, and I was stunned. The headmaster probed me to see if I had any idea why he would have done this, and I realized that he thought I was one of Simon’s tormentors. Someone must have suggested it, and because we were poor and “foreign,” I was a good fit. I was horrified but politely answered his questions.

Simon’s death had another profound effect on me. He had been a quiet, soulful boy and immature compared to his peers. Whether bullying played a role in his death, no one could say
for certain, but I was determined not to let anyone get under my skin that way. Fighting back against my tormentors had not helped, so I chose to simply keep out of everyone’s way.

At that age, I was a voracious reader. The town library became a sanctuary for me, and it was a place where I was treated as an equal and where my status in society and shabby clothes went unnoticed. None of the bullies were ever likely to cause me trouble there. At lunchtimes and on Saturdays, whenever I was not playing soccer, I would spend hours in the library reference department, where I discovered a whole section of biographies of famous and self-made men and women. The first one hooked me, and after that I became an addict.

The librarians got to know me and my taste in books and suggested many an inspiring read. I do not remember all their names, but their dedication and help has always been appreciated. With the launch of this book, I am donating a free copy to every library in the United States. Hopefully,
Three Simple Steps
will end up in the hands of a kid like I was and be an inspiration to take control of his or her destiny.

If you are a kid reading this sentence right now, understand that you are full of unlimited potential. No one can determine your path but you, and everything you want is possible. Learn to control your mentality, and you will succeed. In a bizarre way, being an outcast can teach you the power of individualism, and that can be the foundation of a self-made life. If you are being bullied, consider reading biographies of successful people such as Ranulph Fiennes so you can learn how others turned their situations into what made them successful.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is an adventurer and holder of several endurance records. He served in the Army for eight years including a period on counter-insurgency service while attached to the army of the Sultanate of Oman. He later undertook numerous expeditions and was the first person to visit both the
North and South Poles by surface means and the first to cross Antarctica on foot. In May 2009, at the age of 65, he climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. According to the
Guinness Book of World Records
, he is the world’s greatest living explorer. One would assume that he would have been first to be recruited to any boy’s gang. As a child, however, this “man’s man” struggled at the hands of bullies:

Other famous people who have described the torment of bullying and how they overcame it include Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Phelps, Pierce Brosnan, Christina Aguilera, Tom Cruise, Kristen Stewart, Winona Ryder, and Sandra Bullock. They are all
individuals
who learned the power of controlling their mentalities to become successful.

Although the library became my safe haven, I was fascinated to read about the lives of people who had far more to overcome than I did. I was inspired by their unshakeable belief in their individualism and how they refused to conform to the common thinking of their time. Most of them described mental and physical tricks that they used to shut out the world that screamed at them, and many of the men and women in the books shared one technique in particular. Then I saw it being used on television, and I gave it a go myself.

In the mid-1970s, I enjoyed watching golf and tennis tournaments on TV. I think it was the isolation of the player and the fact that it is one person against the opponent, the course, the crowd, and the critics that kept my attention on those particular sports. I loved watching sports stars who were unmoved by the hostility in the crowds around them. Men like Björn Borg and Jack Nicklaus were heroes to me. Sevvy Ballesteros had turned professional at just sixteen years old. Now, here was a kid half Jack Nicklaus’s age and only a year older than me, playing alongside him with the same implacable calm.

After a successful round, the interviewer asked Ballesteros how he coped with the pressure of playing with such icons and with the raucous crowd that followed them. Politely, he explained that he came from a family of gifted golfers, and he had been taught a technique whereby he imagined a thick glass jar descending from the sky and covering him completely. Inside his glass jar, he said, he was able to shut out the outside world, stay centered, and achieve anything.

The interviewer seemed uninterested and went on to ask more mundane tournament-related questions. I literally jumped out of my chair with excitement. Although it used modernized imagery, his technique was the same one I had read about in many biographies. Some called it a deflection spell; others called it a mental shield.