The System is Unforgiving

Play by the Rules and Win

Allen F Maxwell

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781631955891
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Toma de decisiones

Allen Maxwell's The System is Unforgiving presents 15 rules that anyone can apply to their current situation for success.

PART I

From the Streets of Philly to the Fields of Baxley

1 ~ THE RULES OF THE SYSTEM

What kept me alive and striving in my life was the identification and adherence to the fifteen Rules of the System as listed below. I built many of these rules before I was even 30 years old, so I am speaking to the young that if you play your cards right, you can set yourself up for life. If you are older, or in middle-age like me, then you get to reflect, reform and move forward with a greater wisdom than you ever knew you had before.

Take my Rules of the System as your own, or make your own set of Rules, but either way, let the life you have lived, and the systems you have navigated and are currently navigating, inform you of your compass. You cannot go wrong even if situations or people go haywire on you in your ascension in life. You will have the rules to fall back on and course correct you in all scenarios big and small.

The 15 Rules of the System

1. Seek, identify, and appreciate your mentors. They have been put in your life to push you to greatness.
2. Stay focused on the objective and continuously re-evaluate your game plan.
3. Constantly survey the environment to ensure every day you see where you are at.
4. Never become pompous or arrogant. Adversity is not the enemy; stay humble.
5. It is not important to always win; let others win.
6. Own your mistakes but don’t take the fall for others.
7. Never be too demanding.
8. Be flexible to change but stand your ground ethically.
9. Stay close to your circle, which should be extremely small (1 or 2).
10. Be discerning about whom you trust with your ambitions.
11. Don’t take anything personally. This is a waste of your time.
12. Don’t let the haters distract you from your objectives.
13. Cut ties quickly if someone is not aligned with your vision.
14. Always have rainy-day money.
15. In marriage, effective communication is paramount.

If you apply these Rules of the System to your life, regardless of the kinds of people or the landscape, the results will be positive. My personal life experiences best illustrate my development and application of the rules, and therefore I share them wholeheartedly with you, holding back few details. Culture, race, creed, or color do not come into context when navigating the system. This is one of the first hurdles for you to overcome or it will hold you back.

Imagine what you can accomplish if you continue to apply rules to your life you have learned from each experience. That is working the system. After reading this book, I encourage you to create your own set of Rules of the System. If you do so, you can have anything you want in life. I have everything I want because I continued to learn, establish, and apply my rules. You must keep moving forward in the system of life, and not second guessing yourself along the way. You can identity the players in the schematic quickly and put into play the actions you need to take to get you through any sticky situation, or towards a greater understanding. One of the core elements of understanding and navigating life’s system is the people. Identifying quickly who are the power figures, the enemies, and the allies helps you to navigate scenarios and situations quickly. Once core players have been identified, you can figure out how to be accepted into the arena where goals are shared. Identify your objectives continually while working in a particular environment. Each environment is a smaller system in the bigger system of life. Your awareness is on you. Know who you are and what you want to be. Are you looking for higher wages or being put in a trusted leadership position? The key is to understand your objective. You must begin with the end in mind. You must know the end state you are trying to achieve to recognize the key figures to focus on to get you through that particular system.

Should you choose to use my teachings and experiences as a platform to achieve success, be mindful who you share your education with. As you are implementing my knowledge to navigate conflict or adversity, you may assume someone is on your team, only to find out they are an adversary. Therefore, you must hold the Rules of the System close to the vest to deflect that person from taking you down. If you share your methods with the wrong people, they may try and use them against you.

Now that you understand life is a system, and that the application of rules will ensure more awareness of your navigation, I take you into my evolution. You can compare and contrast the players in my world to yours. While my story is a wild ride, understand what I am truly showing you are the systems. They exist in many contexts and environments. They start as early as your formative years, and mine started on the streets of Philly.

2 ~ CHILDHOOD TO ADULTHOOD

I lived in Philly and Georgia during my formative years. I had a choice to conform with the lower standards of the folks in my class or recognize I didn’t belong in the place in which I was being raised. I bumped around a lot in the dark as most young people do, but in reflection I see I was more aware than I gave myself credit for. I started my learning in a system that kept cheap booze available, ensured plenty of drugs were on the street and people were killing each other claiming territories that didn’t belong to them. Heck, most were renting to live in the neighborhoods. This system was every man for himself and God for us all as your only saving grace.

At eleven years old in Philly, I knew nothing better than my harsh environment. I didn’t understand there was another way to live. I didn’t know that inside me existed the desire for something different. Parents went to work, you went to school and every day, you got into a fight to earn respect, or some other mischief. That was the way of my world then. Life was dictated by living in the inner city. In our neighborhood, the police didn’t patrol much or respond to incidents quickly. The fire department was also slow to respond. We were in an economically depressed, high crime neighborhood that was very violent. So, the city system used their resources in areas that were “deserving” (places that could thrive and make the city and system look good) as opposed to the areas that were unappreciative. I didn’t know I was living in this way until I left.

Most people go through life not knowing they are a product of their environment. They assume they can’t get out. So they start to integrate themselves into dangerous or faulty systems like dealing drugs or membership in a gang. You can save yourself by an awareness of how some things happening around you are not just consequences but are intentional. You are identified by others as a certain type of person and judged. If you fit the mold of the stereotype, then you are selected to do whatever the assignment for that environment. In this illustration, it may appear as happenstance, but know the system is inviting you into the circle. There is no such thing as luck, so if you are aware you want to leave an environment, preparation and opportunity should meet. The people you need to rise you up will appear and you can be guided through the process of learning how to better navigate the system you’re in. In Georgia, circa 1970, the south was very racial and segregated. As a black person, you made choices, although they weren’t obvious to you. There was civil unrest. You did not know the scope of the negative impact of making wrong choices. When my family moved to Georgia, I was still in junior high school. In this school there was a white principal, and there was a black principal. If you were sent to the white principal, it was because you had exceeded the black principal’s authority. This meant your punishment would now be even more severe. However, the black principal wasn’t there to guide you and to give you support; he was merely there to keep you in the mental system the South represents. Why do I say that? I remember a time when I was sitting in my sixth-grade science class and my teacher was talking about Louisiana State University (LSU). Here I am, a kid from Philly and I had no idea what LSU was about at this time in my life. So, I said to the science teacher, “Ma’am I thought this was a science class. What does LSU have to do with science?” And she said, “Black boy get out of my classroom and see the principal.”

I was bewildered. Why do I have to go see the black principal? When I showed up at his office and told him what happened, he said to me, “Boy, I don’t know why you brought your black Yankee butt down here anyway.”

Now I was really confused, I didn’t know why this man was identifying me as black, and I had no idea what a Yankee was. In that moment, I knew no one in this environment was really there to help me. It was all about conforming, severe punishment, and being put in my place. That was my first exposure to the difference between Philly and Georgia. I now had awareness of two systems that were systematically designed to hold black people down—to hold me down, regardless of my identification with race.

In Baxley, Georgia, the black people lived on one side of town and shopped at a certain grocery store. All the black people were only allowed to say certain things to certain people without repercussions. It wasn’t like you would get publicly beaten, but you would be systematically ostracized if you didn’t follow the rules.

The Police Department knew all the bad kids. So, whenever a petty crime happened, a store was broken into, or something was stolen from someone’s farm, the police would go to the known bad kid’s house and wait for them. In some cases, they would take them to jail and give them very harsh jail times, especially if you stole something. Funny as it was, if you committed a black-on-black murder, you received only weekend jail time. But if you stole something from one of the stores or on someone’s property, you could get up with twenty or thirty years in jail. I had a cousin who stabbed an African American man multiple times and killed him. My cousin received only weekend jail for a year, whereas the kids who lived down the road from us received five years for stealing some food. That’s when I knew there was a process happening around me, and the black race was not benefiting from it.

The culmination of my observations as a young black person came down to this theory: If you had awareness of the system you were in, you could take one of two actions: Complain about unfairness and mistreatment, or learn how to be trusted among your white counterparts. What does it mean to be trusted? When asked to do a job, do it well without complaining. Maybe the first time your pay might not be what you think it should be, but instead of complaining, you accepted it and kept moving. The next time this white person calls upon you, you did not hesitate to support the request. You were considered and accepted as a member, and now you will be given a little more responsibility, maybe a little more pay and authority over other black people. For this you should be thankful and never complain.

The next go-around, this person starts to like you and tells his friend about you and what a good worker you are with completing assigned projects. Now you begin to earn a reputation as a good worker who shares the same ideas and direction the boss/employer wants to go. More responsibility is given, and more trust is shared. This action continues until you have risen to the supervisory position you desired, and your payment will be greater than expected for your actions.

While I wish the black and white divide didn’t exist in my up-bringing, I am grateful for the situation because it gave me various tools and rules to use with authority.

In Georgia, I was existing under conditions beyond my control but making the most of them by observing the pecking orders and social hierarchy. In your circumstances or environment, should you feel oppressed in any way, make notes of how people are rewarded and demoted. In each level of life, you will see there are different standards to the rewards system. In my teenage years, I started seeing why certain people were selected to do jobs and other were not. I learned there are perpetrators who pretended to be in the know. As an example, certain people lived above their means to look like they were a mover and shaker, but in reality, they were not. Because of my new exposure and lack of clear understand of what was happening, this puzzled me. I used to say to my older siblings I had a theory based on my observations of things happening around me. My theory was exactly my observation of people living above their means who were just showing off and couldn’t afford the image they were projecting. I was right, as I learned later.

I learned early in life how you must never compromise your integrity. And if situations dictate that you do, sidestep it at all costs because if you go along to get along, the system will turn on you quickly. And you ask why? If someone in your environment knows you’re willing to compromise your integrity at any cost, they will choose you and you will lose power in the system. This was not an overnight learning process; the system of life takes years of maturity, but you must always be open and willing to recognize understand and change.

Train yourself to be mindful of what you say and to whom you say it, and keep your eyes and ears open. I did this in my youth, but you can start at any age and in any system. This advice is critical because you will be given the rules for the system. You have to be open-minded and able to hear what’s being said. In most cases, I believe it’s imperative you to listen to what’s not being said. This might sound like a lot, but it really isn’t. It’s just that you have to have the instinct to know what your goals are, and your goals obviously will change along the way. Your goals change because you mature, and you grow and you understand you can achieve more based on your exposure to the systems that surround you, but you have to be able to see them. Most people miss opportunities because of either their pride, their cultural upbringing, or their lack of understanding of life. I love talking to people who say they do not eat a certain food as an example, and they say it ignorantly because they’ve never been hungry enough to eat whatever they see in front of them. But this simple lesson costs people the opportunity to be involved in very successful systems because they shut it down before it even embraces them.

When I entered the Navy, events seemed to have no rhyme or reason as to how they fit into the overall picture. In this bigger system, I quickly learned I was just a number. Navy rules are a little bit different than the Marine Corps rules. The Marines are on the ground in a potential hand-to-hand situation; therefore, their rules have to be different. Their system is far more critical than the Navy’s system because they are in a hand-to-hand combat situation. The Marines have little or no time for errors. Their errors are life-threatening; therefore, the rules of their system have to be strictly followed. As I learned earlier in the Navy, and as I was maturing, I had to be taught the severity of a system that was more about sustained performance than physical action. The Navy system was built on mental strength and problem-solving.

As a young man, I still was opinionated. Several trying circumstances revealed to me how playing into “the drama” does not bode well for one’s best interests. Therefore, I started to practice more of an observer role. A level of equanimity infused itself into the state of mind in which I would develop rules for the system. With clarity, rather than being hot-headed, I was able to focus and store knowledge for a later date. As the years progressed and environments changed, even when faced with formidable threats, I built on my rules to navigate the system with calm observation. My practice of building equanimity continues today as we are always in the classroom of life, no matter how accomplished you look on paper.

Follow along in my journey through my childhood to adulthood and the Navy to see where in my life experiences and observations I built the rules to navigate the various systems. You can think back to what system you grew up in, and see where you may have formed ideals that no longer serve you. Then identify where you are headed now, and see if you are developing a strong foundation to go after the life of your dreams.

3 ~ PHILLY: DO NOT ACCEPT THE BEGINNING AS THE END

As a young kid born in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which was a very economically depressed area, I learned early, on my own, how to survive the streets. While my father put the food on the table, he was mainly hanging out in the streets with his friends, having girlfriends, and leaving my mother to take care of all seven children. The only time he thought parenting was necessary was to inflict corporal punishment. It didn’t matter to him what the reasons were. If mom told him we needed a whooping, then I believe he took great joy in administering that butt-whooping. As the youngest of seven, I quickly learned what not to do from my older siblings. Watching my siblings totally miss the presence of the system was unbelievable. They blindly moved about life making the same mistakes and blaming the system for their unawareness. My brother hanging out in the streets with friends should have been aware of the birds of a feather antic, but he wasn’t. The system dictates that individuals like the ones he was hanging out would get treated as problem children. It didn’t matter if this was true or not; that’s the way the group was going to be handled. I am grateful to have been born last in the birth order as the observer. Watching my siblings make those mistakes was a foundational life lesson that paved the way for my exploration of systems. Seeing the trouble they caused themselves and my parents, I was able to bypass that destiny.

My mom and dad were too busy working to show me the ropes of life. My dad was a trash collector for the city and my mom a housekeeper. To be more specific, it was mostly my mom trying to ensure all the bills were paid, school clothes were bought, and the house was in order. My dad was pretty useless in the equation.

The streets were tough. You had to fight to protect yourself at an early age or you would get bullied. Not like today’s bullying. There was no cyberbullying on Facebook or Snapchat or any of these social media platforms. It was straightforward physical and verbal bullying in your face, and the volume and extent of it was predicated on the neighborhood you lived in.

Back then in the 1960s, the gang in Philly you belonged to was determined by the neighborhood you lived in or the street you lived on. So, for example, we lived on Willard Street, but I went to school on Tioga Avenue. Willard Street was in the 21st and Westmoreland Street gang territory and Tioga Avenue was in the 15th and Venango Street gang territory. So, each day going to school you were in the other gang’s territory. You had to learn how to get along with other gang members and their environment. So, keep in mind, we’re talking about elementary school and gangs. That’s crazy, but that was the life of the inner city. Many times, I had to run home through a series of alleys to stay off the streets so I wouldn’t be seen. In many cases, I built friendships with some of my classmates who lived in that area and offered a small level of protection from other gang members. It was all about recognition and acceptance.

While my children growing up were not exposed to the dangers of street life, they were still challenged by shooters and abusers in their schools. They were not molested, but they heard about it happening all around. In the 1960s, no one talked about anything like school shootings or abuse. I was just in street survival mode. Your exposure to strife and conflict at an early age was a normal happenstance. There was always the risk of getting shot, and sexual abuse was happening, but parents were less conscious about preventing it. Luckily, the level of hoodlum for my friends and I was below criminal since we were so young. There was some joy in ...