LSUE grad Burney explains 4 fundamentals

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LSUE commencement speaker Pete Burney offered what he called “a few nuggets” for the graduates-to-be at Friday’s ceremony in which 109 degrees were awarded.
Burney, an LSUE graduate and Eunice native, took about a dozen minutes to impart some life advice on focus, discipline, results and relationships, which he called “FDR squared.”
Burney retired from Hallmark Cards this year after 25 years with the company famous for its greeting cards. He was senior vice president of supply chain and business establishment and a corporate officer from 2009 to 2016.
Heidi Pitre, Student Government Association president, introduced Burney.
Burney was responsible for manufacturing, logistics, global procurement, engineering, quality, demand and inventory management and information technology, reporting to the president of Hallmark Cards Inc., Pitre said.
Besides LSUE, Burney graduated from Eunice High School, earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from LSU and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Massachusetts.
After graduating from LSU Baton Rouge, Burney served as signal corps officer in the 82nd Airborne Division.
Burney used that military experience to make a point about focus.
Before an airborne exercise Burney, who said jumping out an airplane at that point made him anxious, spotted a master sergeant “cool as a cucumber.”
He asked the sergeant, a Vietnam War veteran with more than 200 jumps, if he got nervous before a jump.
“He opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, ‘It is when you get nervous you lose your focus and you almost guarantee that will make a mistake. I choose to focus my thoughts on training and my preparation to do this safely,’” Burney said.
The lesson for Burney was to stay focused on what’s important.
“Be prepared because preparation gives you confidence and helps you calm your nerves and manage distractions from your goals,” he said.
Discipline is doing what supposed to be done even when you don’t want to do it, he said.
“Discipline is how you find peace from those burdens of the mind that create life movies with unhappy endings also known as regrets,” he said.
“When you are disciplined, your days are a whole lot less stressful,” he said.
Burney referenced the book, “Eat That Frog” by Brian Tracy, which explained that if the worst thing you have to do during a day is eat a frog, “do it first thing in the morning. Get it out of the way so the rest of your day can be productive rather than being saddled with that unproductive nagging feeling ...”
Burney advised, “Find it within you to do what you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do it even when you don’t feel like doing it.”
As for results, Burney used the advice given by a senior leader.
“She said ‘I sincerely appreciate hard work. Hard work is very important, but I’m a lot less impressed with hard work compared to how impressed I am with outstanding results,’” he said.
“As you write your story in your field of choice I encourage you to always ask yourself what is measurably better as a result of your contributions,” Burney said.
The final portion of his nuggets was relationships. “Relationships are everything. I think being liked is very important and highly under-rated,” he said.
“I had a manager tell me that whenever you engage with anybody in a conversation make sure that person knows that they are the most important person to you in that moment,” he said.
“They don’t teach us about relationships in school,” he said.
Recalling a Hallmark Hall of Fame film, Burney said an elderly rabbi was asked about the secret to happiness.
The rabbi said, “Be thankful for what you have, that’s it.”