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We lost a significant part of our community this summer when professor Susan Herman of the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Management was taken from us by cancer. Susan has shared her wisdom many times in this space throughout the past several years. The University of Alaska will celebrate her life at

4 p.m. Sept. 11 in the Wood Center on campus.

Susan was special because she was not only a “success” (the best in the world), but she also was “significant” (the best for the world). She left me some important lessons for successful and significant living that I will pass on to my students.

Each day before we rise from bed, we must make a choice to live the day self-absorbed (excessively self-involved) or self-transcended (living beyond self for others). If our choice is for absorption, we invite misery and despair versus the multiplied joy we reap from a choice of self-transcendence.

Curiously, that joy or misery is far greater than the effort expended in our self-absorption or the self-transcendent service we provide to others.

What difference could we make in our community if each of us lived each day with an attitude of excitement, adventure, purpose and service to others? Is a positive attitude as contagious as a negative attitude? Can we control our actions, or are we simply reactionary animals?

I get a kick out of asking people how their day is going. Too many people say “It’s Monday,” “I get off in an hour” or just plain “FINE” (frustrated, insecure, neurotic and emotional). The best answer I got was from Judy Robertson who said “perfect.” Judy, like Susan, chooses her attitude each day.

But what if we aren’t feeling perfect? Remember, it isn’t about what happens to us; it is totally about how we respond to what happens to us. Behavior scientists teach that our minds gravitate toward our dominant thoughts. If we tell ourselves we are having a great day, our brains (or at least my brain) are so stupid they cannot tell the difference between true or false self-talk. If I tell myself it is a great day, pretty soon I will start to believe it. I wouldn’t be lying — I would be telling the truth in advance. Susan lived that kind of purpose-driven life, and it lives on in her students and colleagues.

When it is my turn for a eulogy, I hope I get to tell the one that a student gave me a copy of, which still hangs in a place of honor outside my office. It states:

“Life is not a journey to the grave with intentions of arriving safely in a pretty well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming ... WOW! What a ride!”

I miss Susan. I hope I can make it back to Fairbanks for her memorial. Thank you for helping me celebrate her life of success, significance and self-transcendence.

Charlie Dexter is a professor of applied business at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Tanana Valley Campus. He can be reached at 455-2837 or ffcnd@uaf.edu. This column is provided as a public service of the TVC Applied Business Department. Copies of this column can be found at www.CharlieDexter.com.