5:15
When you have an opportunity to get ahead in life, you are held back by your neediness.
Be determined, discerning, but do not be desperate. – Challen
“Even a fool seems wise when he says nothing” – Proverbs
I am human, and it is helpful to remember that we are all human – Challen
“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose your common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much…”
– an excerpt from “IF” by Rudyard Kipling
Let’s get on with part 3 of 3 in this series about my crossing paths with Michael Savage…
San Francisco skyline. Image source: tt83x.deviantart.com
This is when it gets hard, to expose how needy I was at the time when through divine intervention, I happen to get the ear, albeit briefly, of one of the most influential people in the media.
I call it Abuse of (email) Privilege, that’s a take off on Dr. Savage’s first novel Abuse of Power.
Having a connection via email and having gained favor by having been a supportive listener, I sought to pursue developing a correspondence with Michael Savage.
In pursuing what I thought I wanted, I didn’t receive, but I got what I actually needed and that was a wake up call which I will describe later.
Keep in mind, this is before I studied personal development, and after I had spent so many years starved of healthy leadership role models in my engineering work. I was practicing medicine part-time, yet I still had a feeling of being unfulfilled in the direction of my professional life.
As part of filling in the void of working isolated in an indefinite life in a cubicle, I often listened to Savage’s show. I could listen on my IPhone and catch the latest news, views and his passionate deliveries over the directions of many aspects of life and the world. I don’t listen to much network news, so Savage was like a link to the world.
In radio and other media when you listen to an effective speaker voicing their opinions over time, a phenomena can occur if you are not grounded, and that is, you could start believing that the other person knows you even though they don’t know anything about you as an individual. That doesn’t mean that the central figure doesn’t care about people or doesn’t understands your general plight but it is humanly impossible for one human, from his vantage point in communicating to millions to complete that crucial circuit of connection as you would experience in a one-on-one.
That doesn’t mean there is no real relationship, the relationship is very real, it’s just not what it seems like and therefore, stay grounded.
Me giving you that advise will only be as effective as your level of personal development and self-confidence will take you.
Should you have the opportunity to develop a relationship with someone who you perceive as substantially more influential, I cannot tell you a simple recipe on how to approach them, since everyone has their individual needs and desires. Though what I can say is, if you manage to interact with them, the differences in your mindset, your philosophy, of who you are and what you bring to the relationship will manifest its self pretty quick.
If there is an obvious reason for your relationship, I would strongly suggest you stand around that flagpole for as long as necessary, taking care not to venture too far away because that is the other person’s frame of reference for who you are. For instance, they don’t know what you ate for breakfast yesterday or that your toothaches or that you are late paying your auto insurance and don’t expect them to actually care, if you get what I mean.
Another thing is, email is convenient, but it can really suffer as a way of communicating. The subtlety and inflections are largely erased by the plain text of it all, unless you’ve already established a good rapport.
Have you ever had one of those embarrassing experiences when you are writing someone of importance an email, and when you don’t get something back you’re wondering what the other person is thinking and so you write another longer email to address the variety of possibilities that didn’t exist before you wrote the last email. Reminds me of bad dating technique.
Ouch, that’s makes me cringe even now.
If you are familiar with Savage’s show, you know he sometimes talks about his email style. I think he bring’s this up because he has a disarming way of communicating at first and has received criticism from others he has communicated with. Sometimes with ALL CAPS and very brief, if not blunt.
Nevertheless, after our meeting at his event, I was captivated by any response.
Savage’s history of being in health and medicine and then transforming his life at the age of around 50 by becoming influential in radio fascinates me still. I was lost and about the same age when he made his major life change. Yet what began as a simple and polite e-mail exchange with him soon was burdened by my seeking advice on life matters and the vicious cycle of my longer emails as I mentioned earlier.
The following week listening to his show, after the July 3rd 2011 event, was very powerful for me. I was hyper-focused like I had never been, hanging on every word Savage spoke on air. It was as though he was reaching out to me personally, more than any other time I had listened to his voice.
He was particularly passionate about what he was covering that week and then he said something that hit me. It’s something that he has probably said before in jest with his listeners, but it spoke to me directly like nothing else, I can only paraphrase now but I am stamped with the impression his powerful words made,
“What are you doing listening to me, hanging on my every word, when you should be getting a life for your own?”
This blew me away. I was dumfounded in the truth. How that could actually come from a man whose profession is geared towards listenership … it just blew me away.
Shocked, I knew I needed to run with this advice. I took those words as being directly communicated to me personally. I know I needed to march, but it was up to me to begin the process of figuring it out.
***
In future posts, I will continue to document my journey in the quest to understand leadership and how the events of my past needed to be resolved before I could truly begin to move forward. Some experiences I have blogged on in the past, but now you have this critical part of the puzzle in my timeline and how Michael Savage played an important role.
P.S. To give Savage a fair shake, since then, I have had reason to ask him simple e-mailed questions, few and far between, and he is helpful with his answers.
If you’ve received value from this experience, please LIKE COMMENT SHARE.
Savage Post part 1 or 3 The Surprise Invitation
Savage Post part 2 of 3 In the meat locker with Mike
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7:54 first draft
8:08 1st proofreading
8:48 images, tagged 2nd proof, publish
I’ll see you… on the next page
Challen Yee