Gerry Beemiller
GRADUATE PROFILE
Gerry Beemiller is a self-made, successful business executive. He is stimulated by his work, happily married, has beautiful children,lives on a hundred-acre ranch in a house that he designed, drives a Mercedes, and is a respected leader in his community. Gerry, CEO of a Silicon Valley company that represents electronics manufacturers in the marketplace, has all the symbols of success. He also has the experience of success-he knows that he makes a difference. Because of the stand Gerry has taken about his purpose in life, he seeks opportunities to be successful by contributing to others rather than merely accumulating wealth.
Participating in the Lifespring trainings in 1979 began to shift Gerry's stance about himself.Gerry remembers,"I still look back on the course as having a profound effect on my life. I experienced some ideas of myself that I've never had an opportunity to experience before and saw possibilities for myself that I had never seen. I don't know any other way to do it. Although it can be really challenging at times, it can certainly be rewarding as well."
Gerry's recent project was the second annual Silicon Valley Charity Ball which he created.
The Charity Ball first occurred to Gerry when he and his wife threw a party for their friends, mostly other electronics industry executives. One of those friends pointed to all of the Mercedes,Jaguars, and Rolls Royces pulling in and asked why he hadn't seen all those people at local fund-raising events. This got Gerry thinking, and soon led to his creating the Silicon Valley Charity Ball. “I had to admit that we were not contributing at those events and we weren't seeking opportunities to give. I started thinking about how I could improve the image of the Silicon Valley business community,which, except for a few like the Hewlett and Packard families, isn't known for its philanthropic efforts. I wanted to provide an opportunity for the people who work and live in the valley to give something back to the community in which we have prospered.
“The first year we raised $90,000 for local charities.This year, we raised $220,000. Now my vision is to raise $1 million in one night in Santa Clara County, which has never been done before. I think that within two or three years we'll do that. Now I'm trying to get people to buy into this vision of raising $1 million in one night.
“In the training I got to see that I live in a ‘can do’ world and most everyone else lives in an ‘I can't' world. Before the training, friends would tell me that their relationship with me was a difficult relationship.I was not very sympathetic to friends who would try to sell me their excuses about why they couldn't do things-I wouldn't buy their limiting stories. After the training, I am still clear that you either have the results or you have the reasons why not, but I also see that making people wrong doesn't work. Telling the truth is vital, and now that I am more conscious about how I tell it, I am more effective at supporting my friends.
“I'm also a lot better at clearing myself when I get confused or off purpose. We all get stuck.My ability to rebound quickly and get back on track again has saved me a lot of stress and wasted time.I can stay in a funk for months or weeks at a time, or I can stay in it for only hours or minutes. Since the training I have managed my moods and handled my mistakes more responsibly.
"I laugh more at myself and I get a kick out of things I do. I don't take myself as seriously. And I don't take other people's feedback about me as seriously.If someone says something about me now,I can more easily understand why they would feel that way. No one likes negative feedback, and the ability to deal with it is a good thing You can be defensive, but that doesn't resolve anything. I take responsibility for the way they feel as opposed to saying,‘Well, you're full of it.' It isn't false for them-it really is the way they feel. I take it upon myself to improve the relationship. I came to a kind of awareness about why people say what they say about me through the experiences I had in the training.
“I did a lot of soul-searching in the training. Questions like,‘Why am I on the planet?' ‘What's my purpose in life?' ‘What is success, really?' I got clear that one of my purposes is to be a good father and example to my children. After my first wife and I divorced, my two kids were in Arizona and I was in California. I used to talk to them on the phone and visit them often. I was a pretty decent absentee father; however, the direct experience of raising my kids on a daily basis was different than visiting Phoenix once a month and calling two or three times a week. I really cheated myself out of the experience of being a full-time father. Now,I am remarried and my wife and I have two terrific kids.They are a very special part of my life.
“The courses had a profound effect on my relationship with my own parents. I let go of a lot of the anxieties that I had about that relationship. After the training I shared with them some of the things that had been bothering me for almost forty years. We all cried together at breakfast one morning. When we talk on the phone to each other now oftentimes we say 'I love you.' We never said that before That relationship improved dramatically largely,or solely,because during and after the trainings I got some things out of the way that had been bothering me for thirty-odd years.
“The Basic Course was the single, biggest thing I did to improve my communication skills, allowing me to listen and speak at a different level than I was capable of beforehand. I had taken negotiating courses, management courses,and so forth,before. Then,what Lifespring did was enable me to internalize all the concepts. It caused me to communicate far more effectively than I had before. I was listening better and I was communicating from a deeper place inside myself.
“The training was a real eye-opener. I had a joyous experience of myself. The processes were enlightening.I started realizing that I had a lot of good inside of me, but that my methods weren't necessarily consistent with what I was feeling inside. Since the training, my life has been about bringing my actions in line with what I feel is genuinely important."