Creating the Future of Your Choice: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Empowerment

By John J. Perry

This self-paced workbook will help you create the future of your choice. You can use it to structure your thoughts, images, and actions in ways that are likely to maximize the chances that your dreams will be realized.

It will give you a structure for envisioning your desired future and writing an inspiring vision statement. It will help you determine whether or not you have enough personal energy to fuel your journey, scan the landscape ahead to identify obstacles, and identify and nurture relationships with those who will be important to your success. Finally, it will help you develop a plan for turning your vision into reality and find ways to strengthen and sustain your will to succeed at executing your plan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493144310

John J. Perry

John J. Perry, founder of Human Productivity Systems (HPS), is a consultant specializing in organization and leadership development. Since 1986, he has been helping organizations and individuals create the future of their choice by harnessing and focusing human energy. He is an inspirational speaker and facilitator whose engaging style helps his message resonate with people at all organizational levels and in a wide variety of circumstances. Perry has a BS degree in mathematics from Florida A&M Uni¬versity and an MBA degree in management decision systems from the University of Southern Califor¬nia. For more than twenty-two years prior to becom¬ing an indepen¬dent consul¬tant, he was employed by NASA and held positions in several disci¬plines, from aerospace engi¬neering to internal management systems consult¬ing.

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Copyright © 2013 by John J. Perry.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 11/25/2013

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue:   A Conversation with My Teacher

Chapter One:   Introduction—Creating the Future of Your Choice

Chapter Two:   Vision: Our Image of the Future

Chapter Three:   Energy: Fuel for the Journey

Chapter Four:   Opportunities: Survey of the Landscape Ahead

Chapter Five:   Plans: Maps to the Destination

Chapter Six:   Partnerships: Joining Hands

Chapter Seven:   The Will to Succeed: Moving Forward

Epilogue:   The Legacy of My Teachers

Appendix:   The Job-Person-Environment Assessment

To Austine, my loving wife, whose more than fifty years of unyielding encouragement and support have made possible almost everything I have done. She is a partner in the noblest sense of the word.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Jean Monte, a published author and poet, who had faith in my ability to complete this project. She edited the manuscript and made it much better than I could ever have done without her able and affirming assistance.

To my family, friends, clients, and colleagues, whose generous sharing of their journeys and stories taught me more about empowerment and the promise of our existence than I could ever have learned otherwise.

PROLOGUE

A Conversation with My Teacher

A few years ago, in a conversation with my father, he explained to me how I inherited my passion for all things related to the future. He and my mother were born and reared in rural southeast Alabama. Even though they had moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in the late 1930s, the family farm and all that it meant still lived in my father. Therefore, he seized every opportunity to return to his homeland. Whenever I visited them in Jacksonville, they took advantage of my willingness—in fact, my eagerness—to take them back to Alabama to visit their friends and relatives. It was on one such trip, about 250 miles each way, that this conversation took place.

On our way back to Jacksonville from Alabama, my mother was in the backseat, reading, as she often did, and my father sat in front with me as I drove. He was usually a very quiet man, so when he spoke, it was important to pay attention to what he had to say. I had learned this lesson growing up around him.

The Statement

I don’t remember what we were talking about. However, he made what at the time appeared to me to be an outrageous statement. You know, John, it wasn’t hard raising a family during the ’40s and ’50s. I responded, What? He repeated himself, It wasn’t hard raising a family during the ’40s and ’50s. I thought he was hallucinating or delirious. Did he realize what he was saying?

I was interested in his rationale for such an outrageous statement, which he had even dared to repeat. I reminded him that I had grown up in his house, and I had observed the many challenges and indignities he and my mother had faced during that time. After all, they were blacks raising a family in the urban south during a very difficult era in our nation’s history.

How It Was

I decided it might be useful to show my dad that my memory was good enough to recall specific incidents that would bring him back to the real world. The first memory I had of racism was when I was maybe five or six years old. I went with him to a well-known department store. What made that visit stand out in my mind was the fact that he stood patiently, waiting until all the white people in the area had been helped before anyone even acknowledged our presence. It seemed to me as if we didn’t exist or were invisible to the salesperson and other customers. The thing I found remarkable, even then, was the fact that he never complained, even after we left the store. He never said a harsh word about the treatment he had received from the salesperson nor about the fact that others who came into the store long after we had arrived were served before we were acknowledged in any way.

I knew that if the memory of that incident didn’t bring him back, another one would. When we were growing up, it was customary to have insurance policies on everybody in the household, and my parents believed in that custom. In those days, the premiums were small because the value of the policies was small, sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars. The premiums were not mailed to the insurance company’s office but were collected at the door by insurance men, all of whom were white and usually young. When they came to collect the weekly or monthly premium, they called my parents by their first name, yet they insisted on being addressed as Mister and Sir. I found this disturbing because my parents were much older than these men, and they should have been the ones addressed with the titles of respect. This became a source of considerable resentment for my sisters and me as we grew older because we knew this was not right. Yet my dad never complained.

Never Losing Sight

After relating these incidents, I was sure he would say, "John, I guess you’re right… it was difficult. I never thought about incidents like that. But he stuck by his guns. He said, Those things were just nuisances. They didn’t make it hard to raise you young ’uns."

I was incredulous. I asked him to tell me why it wasn’t difficult, given those circumstances. He replied, It wasn’t hard because I never lost sight of what I was trying to do with my life and for y’all. Those were just potholes in the road, and I knew that if I let them bother me, I might lose sight of what I had to do.

He was also smart enough to know that protesting too strongly about anything during those times could have led to his untimely demise. That certainly wouldn’t have served his vision well at all.

My Father’s Vision

My father and mother shared a vision of all five of their children having the opportunity to go to college, which they believed strongly would be our ticket to an abundant life. This was remarkable because nobody in either of their families had ever been to college. My mother was particularly committed to this vision because she had resented the fact that she had had to leave school after the sixth grade. This was necessary during that time because as the oldest child, she was expected to be available during the day to help take care of her younger siblings.

My father had to leave school after only the third grade because he was big enough to work in the fields. He never expressed as much resentment as my mother did, but he was just as strongly committed to making sure that we had opportunities for education that they never had. This was a shared vision and a true partnership in every respect. Despite their lack of formal education, they were gifted parents who were totally dedicated to helping their children build a solid foundation for life. You see, no price was too high for them to pay to ensure our future. NO price!

My Father’s Influence on My Work

I don’t believe that my dad ever felt powerless, even under the worst circumstances, because he refused to confer his power upon others. He was always free and powerful in his own mind. He used his power to pursue his vision with purpose and resolve. He set that example for us every day of his life.

I hope you find what follows to be informative and maybe even inspiring on occasion. It is also my hope that you continue to empower yourself as an integral part of creating the future of your choice for yourself.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction—Creating the Future of Your Choice

It is safe to say that the example my father set throughout my life established the foundation on which I built my belief that I could choose to be powerful and in charge of my own future, no matter my circumstances.

The Concept of the Four Cs

Many years ago, I was told, There’s real beauty in simplicity. At the time, it seemed like an odd statement. However, I took it to heart and tried to apply it to my consulting life, which appeared to be becoming more complex with each project. My dilemma was that I was having difficulty explaining the importance and value of my services in simple terms.

Over the next few years and many experiments, I decided that there is a simple way to explain how we manage our life. The result was the development of an approach that I call the Concept of the Four Cs. In essence, I deduced that there are four words that begin with the letter C that govern our life:

Chance. This is the first of the four, and it means that all of us, without exception, arrive in this life by chance. This does not mean that we were accidents or that somebody rolled the dice and we showed up. It means that none of us had anything to do with being born. Our parents decided if, when, where, etc., we would be born, and we had no role in that decision.

Circumstances. Each of us was born into and grew up within certain situations or circumstances. This means that our home, locale, family situation, number of siblings, etc., were unique to us, characterize our upbringing, and represent the journey we traveled to get to the present. They include all the people and things that affect our lives in both positive and negative ways. It is clear that the journeys we traveled have affected the persons we have become.

The past. The chance of our birth and the circumstances of our life determine our past. We can tell our story by using these first two Cs. Bahá’u’lláh, the father of the Baha’i faith, has a wonderful quote entitled The Potential of Man and the Importance of Education:

Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.

The first sentence says that each of us is precious, and the gems of inestimable value can be found in the stories we have to tell about the journey we traveled to get to the present. However, the second sentence says that the only way we can find those gems is to listen to one another’s stories as learners and not as judges. That is, we must hear what another is sharing with us, and without judgment. If we do this, we will always find something precious about another, something worthy of our respect. By the same token, if we allow that which is precious about us to