Jim Whitt, Contributing Editor

Do You Have the Right Stuff?

The most famous astronaut who never was is Chuck Yeager, who gained fame as the central character in Thomas Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff. Even though Yeager was a top test pilot and trained many astronauts, he was passed over by NASA because of his lack of formal education.

After Wolfe’s book was turned into a movie, Chuck Yeager became an instant celebrity. He became so popular that AC/Delco used him to pitch car parts and batteries on television. Yet he never became enamored with celebrity. “Fame? I don’t pay any attention to it,” he said in an interview. Yeager possesses a rarely found sense of humility in our obsessed-with-celebrity popular culture ­— he describes himself as a “typical Air Force pilot.”

Many of those who acquire celebrity status have planned their entire lives to achieve it. But not Chuck Yeager. “I never planned my life,” he said. “I just went with the flow.” Yeager enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941 and started out as a mechanic. He then became a fighter pilot and shot down a dozen enemy aircraft in Europe during World War II. His flying and analytical skills led him to become a test pilot after the war. Yeager sees value in all of the roles he’s played, whether it was working on a plane or flying one. “If a guy does his mission, he’s a good guy,” says Yeager. “And I just want to be one of those.”

Not everyone who works in front of a camera is a celebrity. One such person is a guy you’ve seen a jillion times on television and in the movies. He is a familiar face with a not so familiar name, Gailard Sartain. His roles have included playing the corrupt sheriff in Mississippi Burning and The Big Bopper in The Buddy Holly Story. He was a regular on Hee Haw for 20 years. But I’ll always remember him as Mazeppa Pompazoidi, the role that launched his career.

When I was in high school, my friends and I spent many Saturday nights glued to the television watching Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi and The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting. If you think the name is weird, you should have seen the show. As Mazeppa, Sartain hosted the late night movie on a Tulsa TV station. The movies were forgettable but Mazeppa and his cast of characters were memorable. They performed zany comedy skits sandwiched in between the movie and the commercials. The show had a cult following and proved to be a showcase for the talents of Sartain and another cast member who has gone on to a successful film career — Gary Busey.

Sartain is so unimpressed with Hollywood that he returned to live in Tulsa. Like Yeager, he didn’t plan his life, he just went with the flow. He was working as a cameraman to pay the bills while going to school to get his master’s degree. That was when the inspiration for Mazeppa struck. He and some friends convinced the station to let them produce the show. It was the beginning of his show business career, and some 30 years and 60 movies later, he’s still at it.

So what does it take to build a long and successful career in acting? Sartain had this to say in a recent interview, “If you are not good in school, then the motion picture industry and television is a good place for you.” If I had known that, I would have headed to Hollywood right out of high school! I can imagine all of you parents cringing as you read this. And you’ll make sure your kids never see this, or when they come home with a report card filled with Ds and Fs they’ll simply tell you they’re destined to become the next Mel Gibson or Julia Roberts.

Before you throw the baby out with the bathwater I think Mazeppa makes a good point. Just because you have weaknesses in some areas doesn’t mean you don’t possess strengths in others. Sartain and Yeager would never be mistaken for Albert Einstein, but academia wasn’t their strong suit. And by the way, Einstein struggled in school himself. It was only after he came up with his theory of relativity that people realized he was a genius. The lesson to be learned here is don’t focus on your weaknesses, focus on your strengths. In an article entitled Grow Your Qualities; Don’t Change Your Faults, sales development specialist Todd Natenberg offers this advice, “Grow your qualities. Don’t change your faults. People can’t change. They can only grow.”

All of us are uniquely qualified and equipped to excel in some field (or fields) of endeavor. The trick is to figure that out. How do you do it? First, we have to know what our mission is, as Chuck Yeager puts it. What is your purpose in life? That sets you on the path to reaching your full potential. I’ve written a book to take you through that process — The Transformational Power of Purpose: Finding & Fulfilling Your Purpose in Life. You can find it on our Web site.

When you are on purpose you do what comes naturally to you. Your career path evolves as you learn to go with the flow. When you’re “in flow” you engage your natural talents and abilities, which enables you to maximize your potential. The best way to describe it is it feels right. You discover that you have “the right stuff.”

“Wealth, notoriety, place and power are no measure of success,” wrote the famous British author H.G. Wells. “The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have been and what we might have done on the one hand and the thing we made and the thing we made ourselves on the other.” In other words, the true measure of success is not what we do compared with others or how successful we might appear compared to the standards defined by popular culture, but how close we come to reaching our full potential.

Being on purpose allows you to be truly successful. You stop measuring success by how much money you make, how many accolades you receive, what kind of car you drive, what kind of house you live in or what position you occupy in your career or in society. You stop comparing you to others and you start comparing you to you. Are you fulfilling your purpose? Are you capitalizing on your strengths? Are you in the flow? How close are you coming to reaching your full potential? Your answers to these questions will determine your true measure of success.

You’re designed to be you. You don’t need to change. You just need to grow. When you’re fulfilling your purpose in life you’ll discover talents and abilities you never knew you possessed. Then you can focus on what you are instead of what you are not.

Please e-mail comments to Jim Whitt at jim@whittenterprises.com.

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