the gary halbert letter

the boron letters - chapter 2

wednesday, 6:57 p.m.

dear bond,

today i crossed some sort of invisible mental line. it happened when i went for my initial meeting with the people who run the camp here and found out that they are total jerks. what happened as a result of that is that instead of being down and depressed i just got tougher. perhaps i’ll write more about my new “get tough” attitude in a later letter but for now i want to get right back to this road work business.

you know bond, i can’t stress how strong i feel that doing an hour’s worth of road work is perhaps the number one most valuable habit you can cultivate. you see, if you start your day this way, it will get you off to a great start and vastly improve the rest of your day since it will drain off a lot of tension and anxiety and, in general, it will clear out your mind so you can think better all day long!

plus, after you get into it, it will make you feel great!

so anyway, here are some other good health habits that i think you should get into right away.

fasting - you are, in my opinion, too young to go on any extended fasts but i really think it would be good for you to fast one (1) full day each week.

currently, i am fasting every saturday. and, i intend to keep fasting one day a week (at least) for the rest of my life. when you fast, you begin to normalize your body functions and also, you develop a certain self-discipline that will help you in most other areas of your life. i intend to write a lot more about fasting later on but, for right now, i just want to encourage you to begin immediately to fast one day every week.

here are some tips. first of all, i suggest you do not tell other people what you are doing. most people don’t understand fasting and all you will get from them on this subject is a lot of ignorant babble. secondly, i feel that you should do very little (or no) athletic exercise on the days that you fast. you see, your “fast day” is the day you set aside to give your mind and body a rest. you don’t have to stay in bed all day or anything like that but you really should take it easy both physically and mentally.

what i do on my fast days is sort of kick back and read and putter around and, also, i have found it a good time to take care of those nagging little chores and errands that seem to accumulate during the rest of the week.

in other words, i think you should do road work every morning to more or less “order your day” and fast every week in order to “order your week”.

you know what, son? i am 46 years and one day old and the two things ihave written to you about so far are the most important things i have ever learned.

and just think. you can start right now before you are even 16 years old. god, what a head start you will have!

now, let’s go on. the next thing i want to talk to you about is your diet. first of all, i believe that everybody who says breakfast is the most important meal of the day is dead wrong. in my opinion all you should eat before lunch is a couple pieces of fruit. do you remember what i said to you in yesterday’s letter? i said you should eat a piece of fruit (preferably a banana) before you start your road work.

well, after your road work, in my judgement, what you should do is take a shower, clean up, and get dressed and get your day started. and then, some time after that, before lunch, you should eat another piece of fruit. actually, you should eat three pieces of fruit every day (except when you fast) and i think you can’t miss with a banana, an apple or an orange. this way, you will get your potassium, your vitamin (and something called pectin, all of which is very good for you!).

incidentally, i have read, and i believe it to be true, that fruit is the prize food of man. also, i believe that fruit is perhaps the number one food category that americans need to eat more of.

watch your mom. watch other people. how much fruit do they eat? very little i’ll bet, and they are missing out on something very, very important.

one reason, of course, is that fruit contains a lot of stuff that is good for you and, another reason is fruit, along with certain other foods, acts sort of like “nature’s broom” and helps keep you cleaned out and mobilating.

anyway, as i said yesterday, i’m just warming up right now and i intend to write more on all this at a later date. but for now, it would be an excellent idea if you would start eating three pieces of fruit everyday and start right after you get this letter.

you know bond, in addition to everything else, you are the best student i have ever had and it is a real joy to teach all these things to you. boy i sure wish my dad had been able to do this for me but that’s water over the dam.

but maybe we can start a tradition here. a new “halbert tradition” whereupon the father’s make it a point to pass down what they have learned to teach a new generation.

it would be nice.

okay, here’s more info on the subject of diet. what else should you eat? well, one thing is sure: you should definitely eat a big bowl of some “bran type” cereal. grapenuts is probably the best you can find in an ordinary grocery store and some health food stores have cereals that are even better.

by the way, remember yesterday when i asked you to get a copy of “the joy of running”? well, here are two other books you should look for: “the miracle of fasting” by paul bragg and “are you confused?” by paulo airola. many health food stores will probably carry both of these books.

by the way, i don’t want you to feel like you have to write to me as much as i am writing to you. i do want to hear from you (and often) but you are not writing a book like i am so no guilt trips are necessary.

let’s take a break and talk about something else. there’s an old tomcat around here at the camp named crackers. crackers is an arrogant cat. there is a lot of small game around here and crackers like to catch these little critters and plays with them.

for example, a week or so ago, i was doing my morning road work and i spotted crackers as i was coming down the backside of “the hill”. crackers had a little critter in his mouth that looks just like a baby chipmunk. these little guys are cute as hell and i have since (i’m getting tired) found out that they are, in reality, antelope ground squirrels.

anyway, crackers had this cute little creature in his mouth and he brought it over to me and then dropped it. the critter just laid there. then, after a little while, crackers would bat it around a little with his front paws. after a while, the critter began to stir and then it tried to run away. crackers caught it again in short order and began to repeat the whole process. what i mean is that he would carry it in his mouth and then drop it and then torment it until finally the poor thing had no fight left.

in other words, crackers just messed with this little squirrel until he tormented the life out of it. and then, after all this, do you know what else he would do? what he would do is pick up the squirrel again in his mouth and toss his head back and throw it up in the air and then bat it back and forth while it was in the air like he was playing handball with it.

whatever. in any case, when i told some other inmate about this he said, “yeah, but that stupid crackers is nothing but a stupid punk. he always takes trash from the other cats around here. there’s a black cat from over at the housing area that whips him all the time!”

what’s the point of all this? probably, there isn’t one but it reminds me of something i read once in an article in “the herald examiner” in which someone was quoted as saying:

“there is no justice. there is only power.”

that’s it for now.

i love you and good luck!

dad

	sincerely,
	gary c. halbert

in this second letter, pop begins by remarking on his new get-tough attitude and with all due respect, that is total bull. he was always tough. i have no illusions about my father and he was not tough in all situations and certainly had his fears as we all do, but in general he has always been tough.

he grew up in an economically depressed small town, served as an mp in germany and had five children by the time he was thirty. he got rich, went broke, got rich and blew it all again several times by this point in his life and squarely faced going to prison head on.

oh he carried fear for sure, but he always did what he had to and he faced some tough shit.

the hidden point he might make if he re-read the letter today might be how he hates mean people. mean people and cruelty were something he hated to his core and once he knew someone was scum, he developed a hard-core tough attitude towards that person.

this was an important survival skill for him and i. in life everyone must learn to deal with unnecessary grief from other people, but sometimes you are faced with a jerk with the balance of power in their favor and the only way to survive, especially with your pride intact, is to develop a mental toughness as a form of mental armor and it, once you do it, is always there when it is needed.

the people who ran boron didn’t inspire a new get-tough attitude in him. no, they simply inspired his toughness to surface.

on the subject of fasting, i did do it a few times shortly after receiving the letter, but i hate fasting. i never felt good after fasting and remember counting the last hours waiting until i could eat again.

it was him and his letters that inspired me to eat more fruit than most other people of my generation and all of his nutritional advice in the letters is spot on. after he passed, the medical examiner remarked that he was in great shape, other than being dead of course. he would have loved that comment. seriously though she did say he was in terrific shape other than his blocked artery and enlarged heart that seems to be hereditary in origin.

before we get far from the subject of fasting, he made what i believe to be the most overlooked lesson of the letter and that was when he wrote, “don’t tell anyone.”

my dad’s favorite saying was “nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason” and it served him well his whole life.

he did so many things that other people said couldn’t be done. this shouldn’t be an altruism where you never ever listen to reasonable people, but just because someone says you can’t do something or shouldn’t, doesn’t mean they are right, even if the whole world agrees with them.

most of the people in the world are nay sayers. they say it is too hard to quit smoking or it is too tough to get rich or you will never make it. when it comes to accomplishing things, others fail to even try. there is no benefit in dealing with people who have nothing but negative things to say. when that someone amounts to just about everyone, just keep it to yourself.

this reminds me of the australian doctor who discovered a non-surgical cure for ulcers. everyone in the scientific community agreed that no viruses or anything could live in the acidic conditions inside the human stomach. he spent a lot of time trying to convince other doctors he was right. finally, he ignored all of them and went about his research and proved that most ulcers are caused by organisms in the stomach. he actually had to treat and cure several people before the medical community would even pay attention to him. but he sure would have saved a lot of time by not bothering to argue and just finishing his work.

all people knew the world was flat and the sun revolved around it, and what happened when people offered up a different idea? they were punished for heresy and ridiculed by their colleagues.

no, sometimes there is no use wasting time and energy fighting established beliefs by arguing and it is better to just silently go about proving or accomplishing your goal.

gary c. halbert

proudly presents…

the

boron

letters

chapter 1

written and published by:

gary c. halbert t cherrywood publishing

3101 s.w. 34th ave. 905-467 t ocala, fl34474

phone: (305) 534-7577

© 2005 gary c. halbert

chapter 1

tuesday, 5:41 p.m.

june 12, 1984

dear bond,

this letter is going to be the first in a long series of letters in which i will attempt to communicate to you a lot of the important things i have learned in the last 46 years.

i am going to try to teach you what i have learned about selling by mail, getting and staying healthy, how to get along with people, and, in general, how to have a good life without getting yourself all screwed up. there will also be stuff about sex, drugs and rock and roll! i’m going to try to write to you every day of the week (except sunday) and spend about one hour on each letter. that way, by the time i get out of here we should have covered a lot of ground.

also, i intend to reread these letters myself after i am finished and use them as source material for a book i have wanted to write for a long time. the book, unless i come up with a better title, will be called:

how to be your own messiah

these letters will ramble around somewhat. i’m going to try to keep the flow going so i am not going to slow down to edit these letters and, therefore, don’t expect them to be as precisely written as my ads and other writings.

anyway, let’s get started. as you know, today is my birthday and, strange as it may seem, it hasn’t been a bad one under the circumstances. for one thing i got your birthday letter and the cards your mom sent me and, for another, today is the first day i was able to run “the hill” non-stop. being able to do that really made me feel good. the hill is a real son of a gun. it is very steep and, by my calculations, it is about 8/10 of a mile. i went around the hill 5 times for a total of 4 miles and, as i said, on one of those circuits (the third one), i did it running (actually it was more of a slow jog) non-stop.

you know what? when i came in here, just three weeks ago, it was hard for me just to walk once around that darn hill. and, before i am finished, i’ll bet you i can run around that hill ten times (8 miles) without stopping.

well, anyway, this all leads me to the first and most important thing i want to write about which is improving and maintaining your health and physical fitness. i’ll have a lot more to say about this subject later but today i just want to “warm up” a little bit and tell you a few good ideas that you can start using everyday. the first thing i want to talk about is “road work”. road work is walking, jogging and running. and, in my opinion, you should do about one hour of road work everyday of the week except sunday. i believe the best time to do your road work is right after you get out of bed.

in fact, in my opinion, the best groove to get into is get out of bed, (early) wash your face, brush your teeth, use the bathroom, etc., and then, eat a piece of fruit (i think a banana is the best) and then hit the street! that’s it. just get out that front door and start moving. walk, run, jog. keep moving for about 1/2 hour and then turn around and come back. you know, i really do believe this is the very best way in the world to start the day. it cleans you out, it settles you down and it gives you a nice glow that will stay with you throughout the day. it will also make you more clearheaded and improve the quality of your thinking. the benefits are enormous and, believe me, if you start doing this right away (like the day after you get this letter!) it won’t be long at all till you become positively addicted to your early morning workout.

by the way, this addiction is not just psychological. it is a real honest-to-god drug addiction. but don’t let that scare you. this is what’s known as a positive addiction. a positive addiction is simply being addicted to something (like exercise) that improves the quality of your life. a negative addiction, on the other hand, is being addicted to something (like cigarettes) that lowers the quality of your life. what happens when you do road work is that, after about forty minutes, your brain begins to secrete what some people refer to as “survival chemicals”. the names of these chemicals, as far as i know, are beta endorphins and norephinphrine. some people say these chemicals are 200 times stronger than morphine and, in my opinion, the feeling you get is sort of like a good drug high except that the “high” is not artificial and you become zestful rather than speedy and, unlike a drug high, this is a high that is good for you.

if i seem to be going on and on about this it is because it is so important and it is something you can do right away! and, actually, of everything i have learned about in my entire life, this stuff about doing road work the first thing in the morning is very close to being the most important thing of all.

so i really hope you get started on this morning road work program as soon as you get this letter and i also hope it becomes a habit for all the rest of your life.

i love you and good luck!

dad

p.s. please get me a copy of “the joy of running” by theodore kostrubala.

well, that’s it. you’ve just read chapter 1 of “the boron letters”. chapter 2 will follow in a few short days.

	sincerely,
	gary c. halbert

p.s. you want to do some of your friends a favor? have them read my book “the boron letters”… even if… they are not interested in marketing. why? because this book also deals with life… and… they will be able to benefit from these experiences.

peace.

this first letter is short yet contains far more than the reader probably sees and i would wager, that this first letter is most over looked or taken for granted.

the lesson on health he is teaching is crystal clear and it is not lost on me that he chose this topic first. his father died at the young age of 59 of heart failure and that spooked him just as my father’s death has spooked me. he did live ten years longer than his dad and it wasn’t due to modern medicine by any means. he was very hard on his body until he was middle age, but then he would fall in and out of work out phases.

at one point he was running up to 13 miles on the beach and ate only health food. unfortunately he had an arterial blockage that caused his death, but the me confirmed that other than that he was in great shape for his age.

i did try jogging and never liked it. the time it takes to get the endorphins running to the brain to make you feel high takes too long for me. it is also too hard on my knees.

we all love the high or endorphin rush we get from exercising for a long time and we all love that calm mellow glow we have when we are done, but i don’t look forward to the process of getting to that point.

for me, exercise should be fun from the get go and not a work out simply because if it is fun and therefore easier to find the motivation to do it and keep doing it.

i prefer non-competitive sports instead. there is very little equipment in sport chalet that i have not tried at one time or another and the only activity that really stuck with me is bicycling. it is easier for me because when i ride, it feels like exploring and not so much like exercise.

when he wrote the first letter, i was 15 and at that age all young men think they are invincible to what ails old people. i knew i would have to take better care of myself, but i thought it was something for later in life. it reminds me of a line in a song on the faces album. “i wish that i knew what i know now when i was younger.”

in fact, that song always reminds me of my pop. i imagine him telling my son about women’s ways (and then me correcting him).

anyway, there is a lesson he didn’t outright express in this first part of the letter. when he talks about how when he first got there it was hard just to walk around the hill and very soon he was running up it.

when i got my first mountain bike i decided to ride it to mullhulland dr. and basically that was a three-mile road that varied from around 3 degrees to at least 45 degrees in some spots.

the first day i went to conquer the hill i made it a whopping 1/8th of a mile. i decided to try again the next day only this time i vowed to get off and walk if i had to.

this time i took it slower and knowing this was going to be tough, i decided to try and peddle in a gear that seemed too easy.

well i am sure you can guess the end of this story. yes i made it all the way up on my second attempt and the moral isn’t just to not give up.

the moral of my dad’s workout story and mine is the same and it applies to all of life. try things at least twice. just the second attempt at anything hard will be much easier. not a little bit but by a lot. it is true of almost everything, not just sports.

all first attempts are sloppy and lame. most people will quit after their first experience with things that don’t go so well, but if you are like my pop and i, then you know that the first attempt is almost destined to fail and you will learn enough to get a better assessment of the whole picture and what it will really takes to attain a goal on your second attempt.

just that much more ambition will propel you ahead of 95% of everyone walking the earth.

the sad part is, we all already know this lesson, but we have to remind ourselves of it. anyone who ever learned to ride a bike remembers their first attempt to learn because it ended with blood. oops, anyone old enough not to have the advantage of today’s protective gear that is.

as people get older they start to decide whether they like stuff based on their first experience. maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks simply because, if he doesn’t get it the first time he gives up.

everyone wants to climb the mountain, but the big difference between those at the top and those still on the bottom is simply a matter of showing up tomorrow to give it just one more shot.

the other lesson he touches on is getting up early to do road work and that too has a business lesson and a very important lesson as well.

i think he wrote about this in his newsletter, but he used to teach people something i called “the four square lesson on life”. it was something he picked up from a great book called “the seven habits of highly effective people” by stephen covey. it is a great lesson and relates to the one in the story.

the lesson is this. everything you do can be categorized as either important or not important. also everything you do can be categorized as urgent or not urgent.

to make it easy to explain we will use a 4 square box:

as you can see the chart is divided into fourths or quartiles, which is what the q is for.

basically things that are found in q1 are urgent and important and would be things like getting a broken arm fixed.

things that are urgent but not important would be things like getting to the toy store before it closes.

we all decide what is important to each of us, but for the most part what is important but not urgent are things such as working out or getting a prostate exam.

the final category is hardly worth mentioning because it is neither urgent nor important and it has things like reading a classic novel. you do them if you want to, but if not, it doesn’t matter at all.

we all spend much of our day taking care of what falls into q1 and then q3. later, if there is time left over and depending on our mood we will relax and do things that would fall into q4 or maybe even take the time to do some of the things in q2.

winners in life and successful people spend a lot more time doing things that fall into q2 than most people.

if you take the time to think about it, everything you do in q2 helps avoid having to do so much in q1. if you spend a lot of time working out you should spend less time at the doctor’s office. if you take care of things that are important before they become urgent, then the only things that become urgent will be beyond your control or unimportant.

at the end of the letter he talks about getting it done early because he knows that it is something that falls into q2. the point is we all have to deal with what is important and urgent. however, early in the morning is the only time most of us can avoid dealing with regular chores long enough to take care of things categorized in q2.

once the world wakes up and the e-mail messages, text messages and phone calls start your time will quickly get consumed with things that are urgent.

the rule is the same for business. take care of important things first and early before you lose the chance. if you have a marketing campaign to test, the earlier the better. if you are writing copy for an ad, do it early before the phone starts ringing.

if i had to guess, i’d say 90% of all successful people get up early and most of the other ten percent stay up late for the same reason. while everyone sleeps or watches the boob tube they can get stuff done without being interrupted.

copyright © gary c. halbert. all rights reserved. it may seem obvious that each generation should do better than the next, but these days that seems to mean money and opportunity alone. very few people truly teach their kids anything at all and when they do it is usually something many others could teach, like sports or how to drive, but very few teach their kids what schools can’t, namely, to think outside the box, to have confidence, to move and not to fear mistakes.

anyway the last part of the letter is about crackers. i remember crackers and he didn’t strike me as any more smug than most house cats, but pop really liked the ground squirrels and he hated any form of cruelty.

in the 46 years he lived before this letter, he had grown up in an economically depressed town, was a military policeman in the army, stationed in germany. he had fathered 5 kids and was divorced twice. he had also been wealthy and broke several times so it is easy to see how the line, “there is no justice, only power” really resonated with him at that moment while sitting in prison.

heck by this point in time it resonated with me too. maybe because i was in the prison-like los angeles public school system or because my dad was in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

don’t let me leave you with the impression i think my dad never did anything wrong. even he admitted he had gotten away with a lot of things. things maybe he should have gone to jail for like drunk driving and that is how he was able to cope with being locked up, by looking at the bigger picture and not just this one travesty of justice in his life.

my father never ran an ad with the intention to not fulfill. he was however very capable of dropping the ball and going to lunch instead of watching his business. he had run several promotions before and after and not once did anyone ever hear him plan to cash checks and run.

i never heard him bother to explain that to people and somehow nobody ever cared that he did go to prison.

he was very capable of moving on.

copyright © gary c. halbert. all rights reserved.