Now, I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it too… what could Tom Selleck’s memoir have to offer as a resource for a personal development coach?
Good question.
Like many women of my age, Tom Selleck’s long running show “Magnum, P.I.” was a mainstay of my weekly TV viewing. I was nearly 13 years old in 1980 when the first episode of the series aired. From the beginning, I was hooked. 8 pm, Thursday evenings, you’d find me in our living room, ready to escape to the Hawaiian island of Oahu, for Thomas’s escapades with his friends, helicopter pilot TC and club owner Rick. I loved watching them outsmart Higgins (or not) and resolve mysteries Thomas was hired to investigate.
I was a big fan of mysteries having cut my teeth on the Nancy Drew books I’d received for every birthday and Christmas since I could read novels. And as a teen, I was a big fan of tall athletic men who were at home in the ocean, solved crimes or flew helicopters. But I digress.
Selleck has just released “You Never Know: A Memoir,” written with the help of journalist and author Ellis Henican. And you know, it’s a pretty good read. It’s far from a tell-all memoir, but instead sticks to the arc of his work as an actor in Hollywood. It tells a story of perseverance and hard work that speaks volumes to people from all walks of life. Embedded in the stories he tells about the years it took him to begin to get traction in the acting world, are a number of life lessons we’d all do well to know.
The biggest two pieces that he keeps coming back to are: nothing is certain until its certain; and expect the unexpected. Through anecdotes and stories about his life as an actor, Selleck underlines these lessons until they stick in your brain. I’ve often coached around the second piece, which I call holding things loosely, but the two are intertwined. If you expect the unexpected, then you’re not surprized when change happens. And if you’re holding it all with a loose grip, then allowing whimsey and serendipity to work their magic for you is a whole lot easier. And magic is what makes life that much more alive and joy-filled.
Perseverance is also something that comes up again and again. Selleck calls it “laying bricks.” It took him a decade of small parts, commercials, voice work, and one or two modelling gigs, before he started to get anywhere. And during all that time, he’d encourage himself by saying, “Just keep laying bricks, Tom.” Work hard, keep at it, and know that tomorrow is a new day. As he writes, “The hard-earned lesson that all those years had taught me was that you can’t control the outcome, but you’re fully in control of the effort.” What I saw here, and know for myself, is that perseverance is a practice, one that is best learned when we’re kids, often through commitment to a sport, or some kind of creative activity like learning a musical instrument… Practice makes perfect and all that. At least that was my experience with swimming, karate, rowing and learning piano.
Selleck has an athletic background having played basketball up to and including at the university level. He also played baseball, and beach volleyball (this one in Hawaii at the Outrigger Canoe Club in Honolulu). He brings a sports mindset to both his writing and his work as an actor. As an athlete, the scoreboard is important, but as he reminds us, “Every minute you spend looking at the scoreboard is time away from looking down the field.” So yes, celebrating wins, notching up successes is important, but life as an actor is feast or famine; the nature of the work is gig-based so if you’re not lining up the next gig while finishing the last, you’ll starve. It does create in him a certain amount of anxiety, and in showing us how he works with those feelings, he plays role model for us in our own lives.
I appreciate how connected Selleck is to his gut. You and I both know that big decisions are felt in your gut, and modern neuro-science is proving that to us every day through research insights and breakthroughs. There are many times through the course of his life that Selleck felt something was off. When he felt this way, he’d pause to make sure of his feelings, then he’d check with a few people he trusts and who know the business he’s in, to get their sense before deciding what to do. And when he committed to a way forward, he was all in.
Several times, Selleck shares stories about how things went sideways in his work and how he could have taken offense at someone or something… he tells us that taking offense is always a choice. But taking offense takes attention away from diagnosing the source of the problem, and coming up with a workable solution. And Selleck is nothing but solution-oriented; finding the win in the business of serial television and the Los Angeles television production machine is no small feat. Hollywood is a small world; you come across the same actors, directors, producers and crew all the time, so burning bridges is a career-killer. I think this is a big part of his success in his career. Basic wisdom like this is woven through the book, sparkling like quicksilver.
There is a quality in this book that is magical… or maybe its just my memory of having a crush on this handsome trio of men, but the friendship they had on the screen came from the family that Selleck created behind the camera and on the set. He created the conditions to melt the cast and crew into family, and that was intentional. Selleck did this because of his experiences on other shows where this was not the case, and which made the experience less than it could have been. His mentor, James Garner of the successful series “The Rockford Files” did this on his set for his very successful show, and Selleck felt the difference when he appeared on that show. He carried the lesson forward and I think this is also a big part of what came out in the Magnum series. When people like to go to work, and are working on something that has meaning for them, not only do they do their level best to bring their “A” game, they also cut each other slack, communicate better, and develop loyalty to one another. A recipe for success, no matter what you’re doing.
When you find success, there are always trade offs. And in Hollywood, these trade offs are often around your privacy. Selleck is up front about what he’s going to tell you about himself and where he draws lines. As a reader, I appreciated that forthrightness in his book.
At one point in the last part of the book, he shares some details about his wedding to his second wife, Jillie Mack, and I was reminded of something storyteller/researcher Brené Brown said about how not everyone deserves to hear your stories. Selleck gives us enough details to share that experience with us, but leaves a lot of the closer memories in his own heart. It’s a good reminder to us that some parts of our lives are also private. Yours and yours alone. You have the permission to have boundaries, and to keep things precious to you, yours.
All in all, I thought this was a great read. Sure, it’s about an actor, an iconic TV show from the 1980s with all the sexism and objectification of women that came from that time. But it was the first series that showed US veterans from the Vietnam War in a positive light, and that’s no small deal. And Selleck and the writers created a cast of characters that grew in themselves through all 163 episodes. As a fan of the show, I had a sense of the people that made the characters, and with facets of their past brought forth, I understood those characters better, developed compassion for them and felt a connection to their life. Oh, and humour! The series was not afraid of using humour to connect, humour to poke fun at the silliness of some of the corners Magnum painted himself into, and self-deprecation to keep Magnum rooted as a character, ankle deep in the white sand beaches of that beautiful island.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it too… you never know where a personal development coach will find inspiration and tools to help them coach people into lives that are more joyful, meaningful and intentional. Tom Selleck's book is just that place.
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