 |
| Romney family photo from here |
After BYU, Romney went on to earn law and MBA degrees from Harvard. By the time he gave this speech, he had experienced quite a lot of
success in the business world—even though it was before he rescued the Winter
Olympics, and rescued Massachusetts from overwhelming debt as their governor,
and before either run for president.
For those who didn’t know who Romney was while he was
running (or came to know him late in the process), I thought this was worth sharing.
He talks about success in life, and how you measure it. I offer a few excerpts:
How will it seem to you 20 and 30 and 40 years on? What bases
will you have chosen to conquer? What games will you have played? Will your
life have been a success?
To be honest, these questions were very troubling to me as I
sat where you are sitting today. Virtually every speaker said something to the
effect that life’s success was in my control. They quoted authors like Napoleon
Hill, who wrote Think and Grow Rich.
Success, they said, was up to me—how I prepared and worked, how I thought, how
I created and followed a mission statement, or how I put it all together would
ensure the success they knew I wanted.
Now, 30 years on, I have come to a very different conclusion.
The worldly success stories I have seen result from a blend of factors: yes,
the choices you make and control but also the mental equipment you were born
with, more than a fair measure of serendipity, and, where He does choose to intervene,
the will of our loving Father. I am not convinced that it’s all up to you. Nor
do I believe that if you live righteously, your stock will rise in value, you’ll
get a promotion, you’ll win an election, or you’ll get your research published.
He tells the story of a cousin who trained for the Olympics
but got the flu during the Olympic trials and thus failed to qualify. And
another story is of a friend who bounced around from business to business and
ended up at eBay with holdings over $1 Billion, which may, looking back, appear
to be a planned path. He goes on to say,
There’s an element of unpredictability, of uncertainty, of lottery,
if you will, in the world that has been created for us. If you judge your life’s
success by the world’s standards, you may be elated or you may be gravely
disappointed.
So what standards does this inarguably successful man use
for his life? Love, family, service, and devotion.
A consultant once helped Bain principals identify their core
values. He asked them each to think of five or six people they most admired and
respected, whether living or historical. Romney listed these:
I chose the Master, Joseph Smith [founder of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830, Romney’s religion, and mine],
Abraham Lincoln, and my mother, father, and wife.
They then had to write down five or six attributes they
thought of connected to each person. And the result was to show that, whatever
they listed most frequently would identify their core values.
If they did not live in integrity with their core values,
they would experience stress, ill health, and regret. But if they did live in
harmony with these identified values, they would experience what they would
eventually identify as success and fulfillment. The Bain leaders, it turned
out, shared core values already, but had not all identified them. So they went
from seeming to work at odds to working in a united direction—which incidentally
led to company success.
But the good thing was that success in living according to
these values did not depend on others—others’ opinions, others’ votes, others’
willingness to offer opportunities. Romney says it’s more about successful
living, rather than financial or worldly determined success. Examples:
On my father’s 80th birthday, I asked him what had
brought him the most satisfaction in his life, what his greatest accomplishment
was. He had been a three-term governor, United States Cabinet member,
presidential candidate, CEO, multimillionaire, and prominent Church leader. His
answer was immediate: “My relationship with your mother and with my children
and grandchildren is my greatest accomplishment and satisfaction.”
Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, voiced the same truth
in an interview on the Today Show.
She explained that being a mother was her life’s greatest accomplishment.
Both lived a life of fulfillment and success, not because of
their worldly endeavors but in spite of them. They lived in harmony with values
unaffected by the vagaries of markets or elections or praise.
He warns that living with integrity to your core values will
be challenging. The world will seem at cross purposes.
Unless you purposefully hold fast to living first by your
innermost values, … you will read too much into your worldly successes and,
perhaps just as dangerously, read too much into your worldly setbacks.
Romney suggests that if you focus on the right things, you
can actually control your success:
It is empowering, invigorating, and emancipating to live for
the success you can control yourself, to live for your most deeply seated
values and convictions.
This next anecdote about his father, told, remember, in
1999, is interesting to read at this point in history:
 |
| young Mitt Romney with his father, George Romney photo from here |
I remember my father’s reaction in 1964 when running for governor.
[Romney didn’t actually run for President
until 1968, briefly, but in 1964 he worked in the primaries against Goldwater,
whose views on civil rights were a point of friction, among others.]
President Johnson had swamped Goldwater, and my dad’s pollsters confidently
predicted that he’d be pulled under [in
his gubernatorial campaign] by the Democratic landslide. I was devastated.
What would my friends at school think? My dad would be a loser. I looked at
him. He looked calm—even relieved. Winning or losing wasn’t what was important,
he told me. He had done what he felt was right by running in the first place
and by speaking out on issues he cared about. The people’s votes didn’t affect
that. [He was reelected as governor in a
Democrat state, against the odds.]
If there is one thing verified by everyone who has known
Mitt Romney over time, it is that he lives his values. He loves his wife and
family. He serves whenever and wherever he sees the need—not just the easy way
by donating money, but by giving his personal time and attention. And he seems
to gain energy the more he serves. And tied with that is his devotion to God,
which is evidenced in how he lives his religion.
The presidential run was not a personal failure. He did what
he believed God was asking him to do; that was what he had control of. That was
what he cared about. And what next? Enjoying his family. Serving where he sees
the need. Offering help to our nation where it can be given.
It is my opinion that we have not had such a good man—brilliant,
well prepared for the challenges we face, but also generous, giving, and
devoted to God—run for US President since possibly George Washington.
Rush Limbaugh gave a similar opinion last week, and then pointed out that
the media managed to take this sterling character and portray him as uncaring,
out of touch with regular Americans, and lacking in the basic values most of us
share. It took lies, repeated lies, and exclusion of truth to create that
negative image. Discussion of this media malpractice can come another day, but
let me repeat this verse:
Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put
darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and
sweet for bitter!—Isaiah 5:20
And then let me point out that valuing love within family, generously
offering service, and turning to God for direction are civilizing principles. We
have very little control over what the world (or even other voters in our own
nation) will do. But we can control what we personally do. As Joshua of old
said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).
No comments:
Post a Comment