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Bruce Hurd

Bruce Hurd

Biographies & Memoirs General Nonfiction
      • Bruce Hurd Bruce Hurd 4 years ago
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      • First of all, I don't want to die anytime soon--I feel I have a great deal to offer for many years to come. My goal in life is, and has always been, to live my life in a way that I can be proud of. I want my family to know that I love them dearly and to be surrounded by friends who know I appreciate and care about them. I want to be respected but approachable, highly regarded but not aloof, helpful but not over-bearing.
        There are many measures of success in the world. For example, one common yardstick in the Air Force is achieving rank. Often, attaining high rank is viewed as being the primary measure of success. And while that's true on some level (achieving rank is an accomplishment), I have worked for senior officers during my Air Force career who I had very little respect for due to their lack of integrity and/or having excessively "careerist" mentalities. I have also worked with officers and non-commissioned officers who I have tremendous respect for and who had highly successful careers because of the positive impact they had on those around them and the success they had in doing their jobs. I would far more rather be in that latter, highly regarded group, than achieving a higher rank and having a terrible reputation.
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      • Bruce Hurd Bruce Hurd 4 years ago
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      • Absolutely nothing. This isn't meant to imply that I've done everything perfectly (far from it), nor does it mean that everything has gone perfectly in my life (Case in point: growing up with an alcoholic mother). It means that these experiences in my life, both the good and the bad and everything in between, have enriched my life and been growing experiences.
        While I would never want to revisit some of the very painful experiences in my life, I can appreciate that all my experiences were a co-creation on some level. Looking back at them, I can explore what I learned from them and see how I can apply that knowledge to become a better man/father/husband/leader.
        There certainly are things I can do better--we all have those. That said, I believe we can identify those areas where we can improve, and then work towards doing just that without dwelling on regret or focusing on the "what ifs" in our lives. Those last activities are a waste of time.
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      • Bruce Hurd Bruce Hurd 4 years ago
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      • Writing my first book has been a journey. I’ve wanted to put my thoughts into words for many years. When I moved from full-time to part-time work as a program manager in 2015, I originally intended to write a book of stories about my life with most of my writing centered on my 30 years of experience as a pilot and officer in the Air Force. I didn’t originally plan on my book going much further than friends and family.
        As I got deeper into my writing, I noticed a focus on some major, traumatic events in my life. These events carried a large amount of shame I kept hidden from the world. This shame, this trauma, needed to come out. It needed exposure to the light, so I wrote about it.
        I’ve never been a victim and never will be, so I looked at these events from the perspective of “What have I learned? What have I gathered from all of this that has helped me become a better man?”
        After I wrote the initial draft of this book, I had the nagging sense of “so what?” I came to realize I had been using specific values and principles as guideposts my entire life, although I had never written them down. My life journey had also been all about the process of reinvention — the ability to move into new locations and new situations with radically different job requirements and succeed.
        This is what the fifth part of my book is about — it’s an introduction to the process of reinvention and the eight principles I believe can help anyone achieve what all of us want: a joyful, happy life. None of this is revolutionary. Philosophers, military/business/religious leaders, ethicists, and self-help experts have taught these principles for many years. What makes my approach different is that I believe each of us can use guided exploration and focus to improve in all these areas.
        This excites me, as I see sharing my experience and knowledge as an opportunity for me to continue to contribute in a positive and meaningful way well into the future. I also see a much deeper exploration of these principles as the focus of my next book. And, sometime in the future, either in book form or as part of in-person or video presentations, I look forward to sharing some amazing, interesting, and funny Air Force experiences I had during my career. Like the time my navigator became lost over the North Pole and thought he might have turned us directly toward the Soviet Union. Fun times!
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