A Lawyer Works for No Charge

My sister and I unsuccessfully tried to get a guardianship for our mother Beverly.  She did end up with a Harvard lawyer with power-of-attorney that refuses all our requests and suggestions.

We get quarterly statements from our mother’s lawyer, Ladd Leavins, with her checking and Morgan Stanley accounts.  Mr. Leavins eliminated copies of the checks from the last round of statements after we made an issue of our mother having been taken for $1500 by an employee of the Sunrise retirement facility.  Even with reduced information, there are gaping holes in the quality of service he is providing our mother.

My sister works as a contract programmer on business databases.  She has an MBA and is a CPA.  She was the intellectual and moral lead on our efforts to safeguard our mother’s health and investments.  Her is her most recent email to Mr. Leavins:

Hi Ladd,

I previously asked you to have Beverly’s funds put in a no-load S&P index fund. You refused to do so. Instead, you and Robert Zorich decided that Mr Zorich should actively manage the account and take aout 2% in commissions.

I informed you that Mr Zorich would not be able to out-perform the market. You ignored this.

So had did Mr Zorich do in 2013 with Beverly’s money? Morgan Stanley commissions were $13,508.21. To my surprise, there was a positive return of $34,661.23 or 5.17%.

The S&P 500 had its best year in 16 years with a return of 32.39%. Had Beverly’s funds been invested in a fund with a 1% expense ratio, she would have seen a return of $199,395.20. I checked on several major no-load S&P funds and their return rates for 2013 were just over 32%.

Beverly would have earned $164,733.97  more had you done as I asked. I have attached the detailed information.

You make a big deal out of working for Beverly for free. Beverly did not pay you in 2013, but you and Mr Zorich cost her about $165K. And due to the compounding rate of return in investments, the cost would increase as years go by, because she can’t earn money on the $165K.

This is disgraceful. Shame on you Ladd for costing an elderly woman with dementia $165K. How would you feel if it were your mother?

I am grateful for my sister’s continued advocacy for our mother’s financial interests.  Mr. Leavins is 65 years old.  Hopefully he will retire soon and stop providing our mother with free legal advice costing her hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Pancake Breakfast and Moisture Festival

The Eastside Intergroup’s Fellowship and Pancake Breakfast was well attended with 200+ at the Bellevue Four Square church.  John and Victor from the 9:30 morning meeting sat with us.  The raffle had about a dozen prizes.   In a bizarre statistical twist one woman won four of the prizes.  She kindly gave two away to newcomers with less than 30 days, Lea got two coffee cups with a small Melitta fresh ground coffee funnel and filters.  It was good to see old friends and many others in recovery.

We also went to the 10:30 PM Moisture Festival event at the Broadway Performance Hall on the Seattle Central (formerly Community) College campus.  It was an entertaining vaudeville/burlesque show with striptease acts going down to pasties and panties.  Based on last night’s show, I doubt the performers make a living from their acts.  They definitely loved performing their acts to an enthusiastic audience.   It was an entertaining show with 18 performers including the MC. The grand finale was a striptease done with a bed and fake money being tossed in the air while another woman sang an erotic song about money and happiness.   The songstress was my favorite performer.

I am grateful we attended both events, that we are blessed with quality affordable events in our community and for Lea’s companionship.  It is nice to have a friend to do things with.

A Useful Consistency

It is my goal to write Gratitude blog post and go to a meeting every day.  On Friday, we went to a meeting at the regular mid-morning time and then met with our sponsors at Crossroads.  I usually write my post by midnight.  It was 3:30 AM when I started my post.  Late is far and away better than never.

My alcoholic mind would love to convince me that skipping a day now and then would be okay with no major downside.  Using that logic, I went from swimming almost every day to once in the last month.  My new plan for swimming is to go twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I will do my best to make that happen.

I have been blessed with much insight and personal growth in the last year.  One promising result will be to transform myself from being a victim filled with excessive self-pity into taking ownership and being responsible for my happiness and well-being.  All I have to do is take right action to consistently overcome my self-sabotaging behaviors.

Five of us had an intense discussion at Crossroads today.  It was couched in terms of relapse, sobriety and being powerless over alcohol.  The true gist of the discussion was about the responsibilities of being honest, open and willing to take right action.

I am grateful for my recently-found consistency with daily meetings and Gratitude blog posts along with love and support from my friends—even when it is a bit confrontational.

A Midweek Walk at Bell Square

Leslee and I had a half-dozen years of walking around Bell Square before our Sunday night meeting for maybe 40 times/year. That has fallen off tremendously in the last two years due to my relapse, giving Lea rides to the meetings and now Leslee driving Ginny to the meeting.

We met at the mall for a walk tonight.  It was wonderfully pleasant to be walking around a relatively empty Bell Square.  We had a lot of catching up to do.  Leslee volunteers on the 4^th Thursday of the month to help serve food at the Union Gospel Mission.   Turns out that is graduation night for men going through a year-long cook training program.  She said it is great to watch them put a little pomp & circumstance into recognizing their successful completion of the training program.

It is clear that I need to find a project/mission//outlook/volunteer opportunity to not merely participate in, but become emotionally committed to that involves working directly with others.  It is tempting to do computer stuff but that would be more escapism that I am already doing too much off.  I need to interact more with others in a one-on-one environment.

I am grateful for the convenient location of Bell Square a mile from my home, my fantastic friendship with Leslee, the clarity of knowing I need to work with others and for having gone swimming today.

Getting Right-Sized

The AA 12x12 describes letting instincts far exceed their intended purpose by willfully demanding they supply us with more satisfaction or pleasure than is possible as a measure of our character defects or sins.  When two or more of those instincts are in collision, we need to get right-sized.  Alcoholics have been described as ego-maniacs with low self-esteem.

In my case, my instincts for prestige (popularity) is in collision with my desire to isolate at home.   I want to be popular without having people bug me with phone calls, invitations and such.  This is an egregious example conflicting my desires and serves to clearly illustrate how I set myself up for failure by wanting two outcomes that are mutually exclusive.  It gives me an excuse to never be happy, full of self-pity and set myself up as a victim of circumstances instead of taking responsibility for my life, mental and physical health..

While I am still far from right-sized, I know that discussing these instincts in collision with god and others will at least relieve me to the burden of being as sick as that secret.  I definitely need help from powers greater than myself to have these and other shortcomings removed.

I am grateful for this spiritual program of action, my higher power and my friends in the fellowship of the spirit as I trudge the road of happy destinies.

A Full and Thankful Heart

I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one’s heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know.  As Bill Sees It, p. 37

I believe that we in Alcoholics Anonymous are fortunate in that we are constantly reminded of the need to be grateful and of how important gratitude is to our sobriety. I am truly grateful for the sobriety God has given me through the A.A. program and am glad I can give back what was given to me freely. I am grateful not only for sobriety, but for the quality of life my sobriety has brought. God has been gracious enough to give me sober days and a life blessed with peace and contentment, as well as the ability to give and receive love, and the opportunity to serve others—in our Fellowship, my family and my community. For all of this, I have “a full and thankful heart"  

From the book Daily Reflections

One thing an alcoholic mind always wants is more.  Today I appreciate the love that I do have from others to me and from me to others.  Of course my mind tells me it wants more…but today I am able to enoy what I do have instead of being filled with the endless self-pity of having volunteered to be the eternal victim.

I am grateful for learning how to love and be loved with healthier boundaries so that I don’t get sucked into the emotional blackhole of insatiable neediness today.

Landslide on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River 20 miles East of Arlington

Two of my friends have homes on the north fork of the Stilly river.  There was a huge landslide there last week that was 1500 feet long and 4400 feet wide creating a dam on the river 30 to 40 feet deep.  One weekends at her house on a hill 2 miles downriver from the mudslide and the shares a family cabin 2 miles upriver from the slide.  Both are safe.

While the final tally is not complete, probably at least 20 people were killed in the mudslide.  Most of them lived in a cluster of houses across the river from where the slide started.

I am grateful that my friends are okay, that more people were not hurt and that the river has started a reasonably stable channel through the mudslide as opposed to a dam blowout.

Living Conveniently Close to a Major Airport

I drove Greg to SeaTac Airport to his new job in Chicago this morning.  In light traffic, it is only 15-20 minutes to SeaTac from my apartment.  He was hired on Friday and starts work on Monday.  The amount of technology to make that happen is mind-boggling.  He found the job on the web via a technical recruiter due to his knowledge of AutoCad.  His hotel and plane ticket were paid for by real-time credit card payments.  He called me on his cell phone while traveling west by commuter train (the El?  Googling reveals it is the Metra now).  I answered the call on one of five cordless handsets in my apartment working off a single base unit.

I am grateful the miracles of modern technology that make the world a smaller place to travel in distance, time and energy.

Celebrating Progress With Greg and Others

My good friend and sometimes sponsee Greg got a new job in Chicago.  He is flying out tomorrow morning.   We went to Whole Foods tonight to celebrate in quiet style at the salad bar.  Greg’s friend TM has a quality 5 months sober for the first time in years.  John will have a year on Tuesday.  It was nice to celebrate the progress of friends in recovery.  Between the four of us we have been going to 12-step meetings for 75 years and one of us almost has a year.

It could be (mis)construed that AA does not work based on our limited sobriety.  That would be ignoring the facts that we are alive, not locked up and sober today.  Greg, TM and John all have jobs.  I am functionally retired.  That is a lot better than any of the alternatives.

It was nice to be able to take people out to dinner and fellowship.  We gave John a card and a fruit basket, since he can’t eat processed foods, to celebrate his year of sobriety.  Lea made a carrot cake for Greg.

Our lives did not come close to working out how any of us planned on it going when we were little kids.  Alcoholism and addiction took us down all too many dead-ends.  The good news is that we are sober and working on doing the best we can today.  It is peculiar going out with alcoholics like us, we don’t talk about long-term plans anymore.  Our conversations are a lot like my Gratitude blog posts, a reflection on how our day went, maybe a story from the past and some hope for the future.

On the other hand, Michelle had vacillated between living here and on the streets of Seattle in the Jungle for the best part of the last year.  She has been living on the streets since December when she was going to go out with a friend for an evening and never came back.   She called today to let me know that she has spent a month in jail and is now signed up to go through the CCAP program for two months.  I hope it works out for her.  She sounded mighty sad and lonely talking to her on the phone today.   Her chaos is too much for me to handle at this time.

I am grateful for the fellowship we shared tonight over a meal.  It is good to watch formerly homeless derelicts triumph over adversity and make happy fulfilling lives for themselves.  It is a miracle to see and participate in.  It is also good to not be homeless and enmeshed in the criminal justice system—that rarely works out well.

Meeting at the Mall - the 7th Step

Every Friday, 3 to 6 of us meet at Crossroads Mall for fellowship and recovery.  We talk about our week, a tiny bit on news of the world and then read & discuss something from AA’s 12x12.  Today we read the first half of the 7^th Step which is where we humbly ask god to remove our shortcomings.

Some of my desires have serious cognitive dissonance.  For example, I want to have lots of friends and be popular, yet want to live like a hermit in isolation.  Those mutually exclusive instincts run amuck guarantee that I will not get what I want.  I don’t know how many need to be removed for me to find a way to have what I want and want what I have.  I am sure it is more than I can handle on my own.

Finding humility has been tough for me.  Part of the problem is overcoming my fears of letting others into my life.  Clearly I can’t live without others.  Now I need to acquire ways to live better with them.

I am grateful for increased humility and god’s help in removing my shortcomings.  Progress, not perfection.

Grateful to Not Be Them…

Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in the Ukraine this week and then had an vote to see if the Crimean’s approved.  An astounding 92% of the voters were in favor of becoming Russian ASAP!  A Malaysian plane went off course by thousands of miles two weeks ago and has yet to be found.  An Afghan police station was attacked earlier today leaving at least 18 people dead.  Turkey blocked Twitter access on their internet.  The drought in California is knocking farmers into dry irrigation ditches.

I am grateful to be in Bellevue with running water, electricity, no danger of being invaded by foreign militaries, not lost at sea, and a snowpack that is about 105% of normal.  There are a lot of experiences out there that I don’t want to endure.  I might not have done much today, but I definitely don’t want any part of those hardships.

A Unique mid-Morning Meeting

Lea and I have been attending the 9:30 AM meeting at the local Alano Club for over a year.  It is a unusual meeting with a dozen or score of people in generally early sobriety finding a way to stay sober (or at least keep coming back) with lots of support for newcomers by newcomers.  Members are encouraged to attend other meetings to learn about getting longer term sobriety, but it is a great place to start for those new to AA or for those of us that have struggled to stay sober.

Today we talked about the power of prayer.  The reading discussed about the only people that don’t believe in prayer are the scoffers that failed to persevere in trying to pray.  The sharing was universal in support of member’s experiences with prayer.  I certainly left feeling better and good about the meeting in general.   One lady was at her first meeting—ever—with 8 months of white knuckle sobriety.

On Monday,  the person with the most time in sobriety had 27 days although there was maybe decades of meeting attendance by a dozen members.  That could easily sound terrible until one considers that at least we kept coming back which is a lot better than what happens to most alcoholics that have gone to meetings and then relapsed.  It was especially poignant to here from a mother and her adult son that were both in early recovery.  The son did not know what his sobriety date was although he stopped drinking almost a year ago before spending 8 months in jail. She shared tears of joy with her renewed miracle of recovery after having first gotten sober 20 years ago and then going back out.  It was heartwarming to see a family reunited so quickly.

I am grateful for our newcomers meeting that is so well structured and supportive of those of us in early sobriety.  Instead of sucking to be new again, we get to celebrate being sober together.  That is a lot better than any of the possible alternatives available elsewhere today.

Ivar’s 109th Anniversary

Ivar’s restaurants had a 109^th Anniversary two-for-one dinner special last night.  Greg, Lea and I went to Ivar’s Acres of Clams on the Seattle Waterfront.  We got a window seat way out west over the water.  The view was mostly of the Colman ferry dock on a cloudy damp evening.   It would have been great to catch a gorgeous sunset over the Olympic mountains with a full moon rising.  The food was plentiful and delicious with more clams than we could eat.  We had a great time. 

I am grateful for random special occasions with friends at great prices.

Bora Bora of 1983 vs 2014 aka Building a Memory Palace in a Reef

In 1983, my mom and dad took me to Bora Bora during the Christmas break from school.  It was the centerpiece of the best three weeks of traveling in my life.  I spent a four days in Las Vegas with my friend Kevin from UC Santa Barbara. After doing laundry and a night’s sleep, I meet my parents at LAX.   We flew non-stop to Tahiti, caught a jump-job to Bora Bora and stayed for ten days in a tropical paradise.  After coming home and doing more laundry, I drove to North Lake Tahoe to join Kevin’s family for 3 days of skiing.

There are too many wonderful moments in that three week period along with a few scary ones such as running low on gas while driving through a ghost town in the Mojave desert on a gravel highway.

My reason for reflecting on Bora Bora was I was going use it as the basis for my Great Spirit reef and so went to Google Maps to refresh my memory.  OMG!  It had gone from being 3 hotels on a small island to having the entire circumference and much of the outer reef lined with wall-to-wall hotels.  I am certainly grateful for having gone 31 years ago instead of, say, last Christmas.  It would be like going Waikiki without the tourist sites.

The Hotel Bora Bora presumably is no more.  30-some years ago, they were the first to build over-the-water bungalows.  My best guess is that is now the Intercontinental Bora Bora Hotel on Matira Point.  There is a webstub here saying the Hotel Bora Bora is closed for reconstruction.

I will use the Bora Bora of my memory and imagination to build a cross between a memory palace and my Great Spirit reef.  It will be a warm inviting safe place to store happy memories, live in the present moment and contemplate future plans.

I am grateful for being at least moderately well-traveled and educated.  None of my friends have been to Bora Bora and only a few of them knew about the memory palace concept.  It is a god-given gift to have seen unspoiled natural beauty like Bora Bora and to have tools to help me retain what is left of my now dwindling memories.  This was the best vacation I ever went on with both my parents.  The three of us rarely traveled (well) together.

Letting Go of Shame and Guilt

Fear has ruled my life.  One of the many ways that happened was by allowing shame and guilt from the judgment and condemnation of others to overwhelm any healthy sense of self that I might have had.  I lived in fear of what they might say dreading conflict with sense that there were only degrees of losing.  Today I have ceased fighting anyone and anything.  I no longer have to live as a victim in a prison of my own self-pity.

I am grateful for a stronger connection with a loving supportive higher power that does not condemn me for my mistakes and only wants me to succeed at being the best Kevin I can be.

Learning To Ask For Help

I get two emails of the thought for the day variety. Here is this mornings from the Hazelden foundation which serves as both a rehabilitation facility and a rehab press publisher.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. 
--George Bernard Shaw

In order to get well, we have to admit that we alone are powerless over our disease. We need other people to help us.

This is hard for us to do. We aren't used to needing anyone or asking for help. We all pushed people away.

We know now that our way never worked, and that we need help. There will always be someone who will help lead us along the path toward the health and serenity we want. But to ask for this help takes both courage and humility. We gain support from this risk, and also new strength, fellowship, and wisdom. Each time we take the chance to ask for help, we are exercising control over our lives.

Today let me remember I am not alone by asking another for something I need.

From the book: Our Best Days by Nancy Hull-Mast

Asking for help is both easy and hard for me.   As a guy in a wheelchair, I have always found it easy to ask a stranger to get something off the top shelf for me at a grocery store.  Being vulnerable to exposing profound emotional problems that are literally life and death for me with friends and my support network has been impossible at times.  I am getting better at asking for help.  Many times I don’t even need to ask for help, I just need to talk about my issues (that are not necessarily a problem) with another person.  I am fantastically better than how it used to be, but it is still much harder than it needs to be.

I am grateful for the progress I have made in learning how to ask for help and talk with others about my thoughts and feelings that I used to have to keep to myself.  Today I am only as sick as my secrets.

Overcoming Fear and Learning to Love Myself

In working my 12-step program over the years, I created a thought-experiment about god.  I would go through a given day turning over my worries to my higher power (HP) while continuing to take action by doing the next indicated thing versus other days when I would do all my own worrying being paralyzed by fear while doing a limited amount (at best) of right action.  Invariably my days went better when I acted with faith in an HP while doing the footwork.  Never once did a worrying day work out better for me.

One friend has suggested that I need a bigger god.  Since I percieve my HP at the great spirit that moves through all things, that seems like a plenty powerful enough HP for my needs.   What I clearly do need is a better connection with my HP.  It is as if I have been getting my spiritual connection from an oxygen tank hose used by people with emphysema.   That leads to my running low on spiritual connectivity.

I am working on a new connection with my HP that is more like swimming in a warm tropical reef with buoyant calm waters filled with much beauty.  I will be safe and protected with little danger and much to enjoy as I swim in my HP’s love for me.

One of my great shortcomings is not loving myself.  With greater faith and trust in my HP, I will do a better job of loving myself.  That will manifest itself with improved self-care, less self-destructive behavior and greater love for my fellow man.

I am grateful for my improving connection with a higher power of my understanding basking in his love for me while enjoying a great life to the reasonable best of my abilities.

                                                                   

Alanon

Alanon has helped family members of alcoholics and addicts since before anyone ever even thought of the name Alcoholics Anonymous back when Bill and Lois first began having meetings in their home on Clinton Street in New York City.

My sister, like all other sober people in my life, wants to help me not relapse again.   Her proposed method if I did not take a specific action backfired by raising my defences, causing  hurt, and leading this alcoholic mind to spending a sleepless thinking how I could show her she was wrong by smoking more crack.

I am grateful for the help that Alanon has yielded to friends and family members of alcoholics.  It takes some of the senselessness out of the insanity of addiction and also results in a much higher sobriety rate for their loved ones in AA.  

One Year of Methadone

My roommate Lea has been on methadone for one year today.  She is doing fantastically better than how it used to be a year or more ago while still far from recovered enough to put together a functional life.

Trip math reveals 52 weeks x 6 trips/week is 312 trips to the clinic.  The clinic is usually closed on bank holidays.  She took the bus on a couple of snow days.   Call it 300 trips.  We almost always went to a meeting after she got her dose at the clinic.  Fortunately for us, the clinic is a short ten minute drive and the Alano club is on the way home.  It works out extremely well to get us to a morning meeting six days a week.

Helping Lea is the best thing I have done in my life in terms of putting myself out there to help another human being.  Decades ago, I started three charities in an effort to “save the world”.  That was not nearly as gratifying as I thought it would be.  I have learned in AA that I get to save the world one person at a time.

I don’t know how it will end for me or Lea.  Clearly I am a better person for having made the effort.  There was lots of practice getting both moral and morale support from my friends.  I could not have done this without them.  It has helped me to be grateful for what I have including a living income, good friends, my recovery and compassion for others.

I am grateful for the happiness and serenity that I have been blessed with as a result of making a huge commitment helping someone else better their life.  I am a much better person than I was a year ago.

Progress not Perfection

I have been trying to get and stay sober since going to inpatient rehab in May of 1999. Once I had almost 5 years  and then I had almost 7 years.  Twice I had almost a year.  For the vast majority of the last 15 years, I have been clean and sober.   For most people in 12-step programs, the obsession to use gets lifted from them.  That has not been my experience.

Over the years, I have done a lot of AA service work by volunteering at the local prison, being on the board of the local intergroup office, and doing outreach work at the district level.  That was all well and good, but it did not keep me sober.

I am an intensely private introvert.  What I have not done was share my life and time with others in a one-on-one type situation.  I am going to work on doing that in the future.  It is my best idea for what I need to do to stay sober and have the obsession to use lifted from me.

I am grateful for what recovery I do have, the love and support of my sister and my friends and that I still have faith that I can find long-term sobriety by doing a better job of working my 12-step program.  (I would not be surprised if someday science proves the primary killer of alcoholics and addicts was a lack of hope and faith.)

Relapse and Recovery

Relapsed on crack cocaine for 3 days last week.  Now I have 5 days sobriety.  It sucks to have so little control over my actions that I can’t stay sober.

I am grateful to be sober today.

A Good Book on a Rainy Day

I love reading books on my Kindle.  The vast majority of the books I read are free.  Baen Books had a great deal on downloading sci-fi via file download and a USB cable from my PC to the Kindle.  Now the King County library also has an extremely awesome system for downloading books to my Kindle via wi-fi.

It is weird not have covers on the books, I rarely remember the title or the small b&w cover.  It can be a challenge to remember the authors that I like and what books I have read and not read.  The easiest method for me is to find an author I like and read all their books.  Then I am done until they come out with a new book.

I am grateful for free electronic downloads, my Kindle, the KCLS and wi-fi.  I am three-fourths of the way through to the sweet-spot of a Mercedes Lackey book set in 16^th century Venice.  Time to go read! 

A Quiet Night at Home

Lea had 90 days clean this morning.  She went back to her last crackhouse this afternoon to get high.  I hope she finds what she needs to help her better work the program so she can stay sober.  While smoking crack sounds like a terrible idea to most people, that is what crack addicts do.  It is abnormal for us to stay sober.

It is said that dumb people don’t learn from their mistakes, normal people learn from their mistakes and wise men learn from the mistakes of others.  Thanks to the miracle of recovery, I have a lot more wisdom today than I ever had before in my life. 

Every day I have the obsession to smoke crack.  AA members talk about having the obsession removed ranging in time from immediately to soon to years later.  It would be great if that happened to me right now.  That is beyond my power to change.  What I can do is work the program and strive to become happily entangled in the fellowship so that I am in the middle of the lifeboat instead of precariously clinging to the side while dangling my legs in shark-infested waters.

Lea is making some effort to work the program.  She goes to a meeting every day, she has a sponsor that she meets with, and she is doing service work as the secretary of a meeting.  What she is not doing is anything beyond that such as coffee with friends, reaching out to others or trying to carry the message.  She has some profound health care problems—just like many others in recovery. 

All alcoholics and addicts have a strong sense of learned helplessness early in recovery.  Admitted we are powerless over alcohol is the first half of the first step.  Lea has big streak of that powerlessness in her psyche.  While I also had that in a big way, it was not nearly as bad as what she has.  It is like how a beaten dog cringes.  It takes a lot of time, love and good treatment to get past that cringing behavior.  It can be done with enough time and strong motivation.  I hope she can find the time and motivation to work her way through her learned helplessness/being powerless.

It feels a little peculiar, but I am actually a bit optimistic about her relapse.  Her present course was unsustainable.  She will either get better or worse.  I hope she gets better.  If she gets worse she will either leave or be pushed out.  No matter what, I am more determined than ever to stay sober one day at a time.

I am grateful for my sobriety and for having acquired more wisdom to learn from the mistakes and successes of others.