Sometimes you just know. Zack Fishman knew. He was standing in a futures trading pit at the Chicago Board of Trade last July, about a half-hour into his Wednesday morning. As he did many days after the Sept. 11 terrorism, Fishman was thinking about his independent portfolio, which was deep into airline and aeronautical industry stocks.
Fishman turned to a fellow trader and pit competitor from Goldman Sachs.
“How would you like to buy everything in my portfolio?” asked Fishman, a 44-year-old father of two grade schoolers.
“Yeah, sure, if it means we can get you out of the pit [as a competitor],” said the other trader, who promptly called his boss.
The boss came down to the trading floor. He asked Fishman, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to open up a chess business teaching kids how to play,” Fishman said.
“Wow, that sounds great,” said the Goldman Sachs boss. “We’ll [buy the portfolio] from you Friday.”
Life can change from Wednesday to the weekend. Or it can take years to discover the “breakthrough step” toward a more fulfilling life.
These days, more people are urgently inspecting their future and the purpose of their lives. They are looking to make the right changes. Sept. 11 is a big part of that, and so is the current uncertainty about conflict with Iraq. “We have seen significant jump in clients during January and February” who are assessing the meaning of their lives, said Nancy Molitor, a faculty member at Northwestern University Medical School and Wilmette-based psychologist speaking for herself and members of the Illinois Psychological Association.
“People are very concerned about the impending war and heightened security,” she said.
Maryann Troiani coaches a wide range of people about making changes in their lives. She also is a motivational speaker and author. Her phone has been practically ringing off its base station during the last eight months.
“There is definitely a renewed interest among people who want to take control of their lives,” said Troiani, who with her husband, Michael Mercer, operates the Mercer Group in Barrington.
Just how we wrest back control is where the breakthrough step enters a stagnant life situation, otherwise called a rut, slump, grind or the same old same old.
But chances are that when you reach that breakthrough step, you will likely sense it even if you don’t fully recognize it at the time.
Barbara Fears is a 44-year-old Naperville woman who was laid off from Lucent Technologies in October. But losing her management job of providing phone service packages to businesses was not her breakthrough step.
Heeding an inner voice
A better choice was a flash of a thought she experienced five years ago while driving to work one day. She “heard” an inner voice say, “You have five years left at Lucent.”
Maybe her breakthrough step was deciding to enroll in the Garrett Theological Seminary master’s program in Evanston on the Northwestern University campus–despite having to make an 80-mile round trip twice a week for classes.
She started in September 2001, more than a year before being laid off her Lucent job.
“That year my grandmother died,” said Fears recently at the seminary before a class. “It turns out my grandfather, who was a minister, had left me some money for my education.
“We discovered it long after my undergraduate degree [from the University of Kansas],but the money became available just as I decided to attend Garrett.”
There were other “indicators” for Fears to realize she deep down wanted to become a theology professor or Methodist minister or both.
“I just didn’t understand them at the time,” Fears said.
She revealed some of those indicators: attending her first play as an 8-year-old and loving that “gifted people could express themselves and their talents”; being mentored by a 6th-grade teacher who recognized Fears’ eagerness to share knowledge with others and made the Kansas City, Mo., schoolgirl a mentor to a 1st grader; at 17, learning what it meant to get a PhD degree then deciding on the spot to get one someday.
After Fears finishes work on a master’s degree, she will be applying to PhD programs at Garrett and other schools. She plans to teach at either churches or universities, maybe both at the same time.
Reason to smile
“People have been telling me for 10 years I should be in the ministry [including several pastors],” said Fears, who is smiling frequently these days. “I’m finally catching up with myself.”
Sometimes the breakthrough step shows up in the silliest of places to challenge the most serious of expectations.
“I sang `Happy Birthday’ to a boy at a [sports theme] restaurant just for fun on my waitressing job,” recalled Lindsie Reitz, a 24-year-old Chicagoan. “The boy’s father came up to me and wondered if I sang professionally.”
Reitz laughed. No, she said, her experience was limited to waitress crooning and singing with her mom while cleaning the house on Saturday afternoons.
Turns out the boy’s father had a friend who owned a recording studio in Oak Park. He wanted to take her there to maybe work on a demo tape. Reitz did what any responsible, attractive female would do in the situation. She looked squarely at the man’s wife, who nodded and smiled, assuring Reitz that the offer was legitimate.
Reitz cut a demo tape and started studying with a vocal teacher “to find out how to sing like myself.”
She stayed with it for a couple of years during nights and weekends while working a day job as an assistant for an options trading firm at the Board of Trade.
She was well-liked at the firm. Her bosses thought she showed great potential as a trader. Yet the same bosses encouraged her “to follow your dreams” even when it meant Reitz compressed her workweek into four 10-hour days Monday through Thursday so she could sing at late-night gigs on Thursday nights without having to arise at 5:30 a.m. for a Friday workday.
“It was like having three extra dads,” Reitz recalled.
Making the break
The demo tape attracted interest and a contract offer from a small independent label in New York. Reitz gave notice at the trading firm in July 2001 to pursue the contract and her music.
The contract didn’t pan out, but her musical dream is thriving. She played Saturday night at Life’s Too Short in Chicago (there’s an appropriate name) and has appeared on about a dozen bills in the last year, including a performance at the Double Door.
“That was my goal for 2002, appearing at the Double Door,” said Reitz, who books all of her own dates for her band. “For 2003, I want to play at the Metro.”
Reitz played flute in junior high but put it aside as a three-sport athlete at Richards High School in the south suburbs.
During the summer of 2001, her boyfriend lent her his guitar. She taught herself how to play by sitting on the covered toilet seat in her tiny studio-apartment bathroom so she could see her fingers in the mirror on the back of the door and without looking down.
Just before Sept. 11, Reitz’s boyfriend split and took his guitar. On the morning of Sept. 11, a friend phoned and told Reitz to turn on the television.
“We all had such a terrible day,” Reitz said. “I sat there realizing I had all these thoughts going through my head and no guitar to play. I was bummed out for days and just wanted to get my feelings out.”
A dear friend bought Reitz a new guitar. “You have it in you to make it and I don’t want to see you slow down,” said the pal–someone worthy of the title of breakthrough companion.
Reitz started writing songs–including her “Life Brings” number she mostly composed while waiting in her vocal teacher’s kitchen–and started booking dates in late 2001.
“I’m thankful the songs [she performs on stage] are all mine,” Reitz said.
A solid foundation
For his part, Fishman wanted to come out “whole” from the transaction with Goldman Sachs. In the bargain, he shored up much more than his financial stability.
As a trader, “I wasn’t too pleasant to be around,” said Fishman, an entirely pleasant man who easily jokes with the kids he teaches.
“The stress was dehumanizing me,” Fishman said. “I would watch my wife’s and children’s mouths move as they talked to me but was worrying constantly about my portfolio.”
Within a week of selling his portfolio, Fishman had started Chess Education Partners. He now works with three public schools in Hinsdale and one Chicago Public School; several public and private schools are on board for this fall.
On weekday mornings, instead of rushing off to the Board of Trade he spends 45 minutes studying chess problems with his son, Joey, 11, and the whole family eats breakfast together.
Barbara Fears said most everyone, including outplacement advisers she consulted when leaving Lucent, assume she is financially set. In there somewhere is the assumption that radical life change is easier with a fat bank account–far from the case–but Fears said the assumption is just flat-out false.
“Everybody thinks I have money,” said Fears, who rents an apartment in Naperville and hopes to move to student housing at the seminary next fall.
She is hoping to land a research position, scholarship or grant to help fund her graduate work. “I’m not nearly as comfortable as people think, though I won’t go homeless or hungry. I just act self-assured because I trust the simple fact if you pursue your passion, money will come.
“Prosperity is more than financial. I keep telling my friends and former co-workers that there is more to life than getting dial tones on people’s phones.”
But we can listen for the messages in our lives. Those friends and co-workers saw Fears’ passion and breakthrough step approaching, even if it took her longer to recognize it.
“I don’t want to just occupy time and space,” Fears said right before she stood up to attend class. “I want to make a difference. You never know who I might touch.”
Don’t let money be a roadblock to a new life
Making a significant change in your life is easier with the right support.
Po Bronson, author of the current best seller “What Should I Do with My Life?” (Random House, $24.95), interviewed hundreds of Americans about his title question.
One common denominator is it helps people “to hear it’s not crazy that you want to change your life.”
Bronson said each of us should reassess who is in our inner circle of advisers. It might be time to “replace some of the people at the table,” he said.
Another important move: Be yourself.
“Lots of people turn off their voice [by sticking to a daily routine that is more rut than reverie],” said Bronson, author of two successful novels. “We can make the mistake of half-listening to what’s inside of us.”
Paying full attention can motivate changes, but a breakthrough step might seem next to impossible by glancing at bank account.
Don’t let money stop you, said author and financial adviser Stephen M. Pollan.
Among all of the the general barriers to what Pollan calls “your second act,” money is actually the easiest to overcome. That’s because we can control a good portion of what we spend.
One of the most influential choices is deciding what percentage of income to spend on housing. Reducing this amount can go a long way toward financing your life change, said Pollan.
In his new book “Second Acts: Creating the Life You Really Want, Building the Career You Truly Desire” (HarperResource, $22.95), Pollan offers detailed plans for increasing income and reducing expenses.
To increase personal revenue, he recommends these possible strategies: Ask for a raise, take a part-time job, increase your rates, collect your inheritance early, convert assets to cash (and live up to your New Year’s resolution to clear the clutter from your life), rent your home when you travel and reassess your investment accounts (no matter how modest).
Plus, Pollan suggests the conversion of assets into revenue streams while still alive, a process he described in his bestseller “Die Broke” (HarperBusiness, $15) to avoid the burden of estate tax for heirs and live your dreams more readily.
Remember that each strategy needs your breakthrough step to be the goal.
Asking a relative for a loan to pay off a car so you can trade up for a bigger car is not the same as using the car sale proceeds to pay for certification courses as a real estate broker, for instance.
Decreasing expenses can be easier or harder depending on your personality type.
Some ideas from Pollan focus on bigger savings rather than pennies here or a few dollars there: Refinance your mortgage (again), consolidate your consumer debt (he specifically recommends www.lowcards.com for possible services and Quicken software for background information), relocate to lower your cost of living, lease rather than buy your car, trim homeowners/auto/life insurance policies (prudently) and hire experts who can help with a property-tax appeal or saving on income tax.
To simply get a jumpstart on a new path, such as finding the funds to pay for a class, Pollan said look no farther than your cash spending during a typical week or month. He writes that “most people can’t account for almost 60 percent of the cash they spend.”
You might be surprised how close your breakthrough step might be.
–Bob Condor
Test your readiness to make a change
Too many people interpret dissatisfaction in their lives as negative, if you ask Maryann Troiani. She coaches people on making major changes in their lives.
“I use the term ‘inspirational dissatisfaction’ to explain how people can use the energy of uneasiness as a springboard,” said Troiani, co-founder of the Mercer Group in Barrington and author of the book “Spontaneous Optimism” (Castlegate, $14.95).
Troiani asks clients a series of questions when they propose wanting to make radical changes. First question:
Are you an optimist or pessimist?
Optimistic people are more willing to make a leap in their lives, said Troiani.
“Pessimistic people tend to blame their unhappy situations on bosses or family members, anyone but themselves,” said Troiani. “Optimistic people take responsibility for their vision. They have radar up and working when what they are doing in life doesn’t send them in the direction of their dreams.”
What’s important to you?
A gut-check question. Answering it honestly might make it difficult to keep following the daily routine.
How would you feel in a year or five years if you don’t make changes in your life?
Brings out the visionary in you. Most people find it easier to imagine the worst-case scenario.
What would you like in your life right now?
Time is a resource you can control.
— B.C.
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To reach Zack Fishman, Barbara Fears or Lindsie Reitz or to comment on this story, e-mail Bob Condor at bcondor@tribune.com.
A call to your calling.
During 2003, the Q section will take a yearlong look at how we can change our lives for the better. You will read inspiring stories about people who have found their callings in life.
Plus, we will cover more “nuts and bolts” of making career and other life changes such as how to get started and what experts to consult.
But most of all, we want to hear from you. How have you changed your life for the better?
What stops you from chasing your dreams?
How can we help each other make the the right kinds of changes?
E-mail us at Q@tribune.com and put “breakthrough” in the subject line.
