Reach Higher

As I begin blogging again, I found inspiration for this blog’s topic from Michigan State University’s football team.  The team’s motto for the 2015 season is ‘Reach Higher’.  The statement very easily lends itself to a visceral interpretation of doing better and going further.  A motto that is fitting for a team that over the years has had increasingly great success in its regular seasons, bowl game appearances, and is sitting at the cusp of yet another banner year this year.  Without bragging about a team that I’m very proud of from my alma mater, let’s look into why this is a motto that is extremely pertinent to all of us whether you love or loathe football.

Let’s start with a simple experiment for illustrative purposes.  This will cause you to leave the screen you’re reading this on, so please come back to finish.  Don’t leave me behind in awe of the results.  Ready?  Here is the first instruction: stand against a wall and reach as high as you can.  Make sure that when you do this, you have a way to mark how high you were able to reach.  Return to a resting position, and come back to the screen for the second set of instructions.  Part 2: Do the exact same thing again, and you will probably be surprised that you can reach higher the second time.  Interesting right?

This type of phenomenon happens to us in our personal and professional lives quite often.  We work hard and give 100% of our effort to achieve a goal that we’ve been working towards.  The goal is attainable, but really expends a lot of energy as we’ve tried as hard as we can to accomplish it.  There’s a lot of pride that comes with reaching it, but we must remember not to get lost in the celebration.  Instead, if we focused our energy, concentrated and kept on pushing just a little harder we would be reaching higher and could achieve even more than we thought we could.

The biggest trap that we can fall into is being mesmerized by our initial success.  The intoxicating joy of achievement can easily lull us into a safe place of satisfaction.  Satisfaction is the worst enemy you can have when greatness in your personal or professional life is what you want.  Satisfaction means we’re too comfortable and settling for mediocrity.  The reality is, no one great was ever mediocre, and they were always pushing for the next goal to achieve, the next precipice to climb, the next business venture to embark on, and on and on.

Just when we thought we couldn’t get any better we aim to push a little more and reach higher and we can get an even better result.  Michigan State’s football team is illustrating their motto right now and we are watching it unfold before us.  Their head coach Mark Dantonio in his job acceptance press conference stated “My vision here is to win championships.  That’s my vision.”  He’s held true to this vision winning Bowl Games, Big Ten Division Championships, and Big Ten League Championships.  The success, and rate at which the program has achieved it, could be dizzying and very easy to be comfortable with.  But instead of being satisfied with their success, this year they are reaching higher and aiming for a National Championship.

This is the type of mindset that we need to carry with us.  It’s a hunger to keep achieving, to keep reaching higher just when we thought we reached high enough.

I’ve already proved to you that you can do it physically through the experiment that we started with.  So why not prove it to yourself through your accomplishments to reach the greatness that you desire and push a little further to surprise yourself with even more success.

 

 

Why Should I Be Average?

The question in this title is one that typically elicits a reactionary response of “I don’t want to be average.”  Which rightfully should be the response to a question like that.  However, I’ve been noticing more and more that mediocrity is slowly becoming an acceptable standard and it’s puzzling.  Mediocrity is the state of being mediocre and settling for less than the best, when in fact none of us should be satisfied unless we are the best, and constantly striving to be better. 

Let me share with you an experience I had while attending a job fair.  I was talking to the company recruiter about his company which shall remain nameless.  During the conversation he quotes to me, without my solicitation of the information, that their average sales person makes X dollars a month.  The statement caught me off guard because the recruiter stated that he served in a sales position before joining the recruiting team.  Therefore inherent in his explanation of his company I was expecting a well-crafted pitch to sell me on working for his company.  Instead I was left questioning if that would be a company I’d even be interested in working for, if they are sharing what their average employee makes.  I want to work for a company that expects the best and sets the bar high.  Tell me what your best employee makes so that I know what my potential is for a successful experience.  I’m not interested in your average employee, because if I come to work for you, I’m not there to cash a check and be average, I’m there to be successful and climb the ladder.

I’ve seen this lately in sports as well through different press conferences.  Without trying to turn you off by talking about sports, or elicit any feelings about the Miami Heat, I was struck by something that their coach said in a press conference after losing the NBA championship.  He made a statement saying at least we’ve made it to The Finals four times in the past four years.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all about finding a silver lining because I wrote a post about it (When Life Happens), and I acknowledge that there is a significant achievement in making it that far through the season.  However, in the moments after losing a championship, one would expect a substantial amount of disappointment at the outset, followed in the days to come by rallying, trying to find the bright side and moving forward.  Yet this coach who is in a leadership role with the team seemed somewhat content immediately following the loss with having made it that far, stating we’re still ok.  Where is the disappointment of not being the best?  Why did this seem like an acceptance of being just good enough to get that far?

The idea here is why settle for being just good enough?  Should it really be appropriate to be content with at least I tried?  I assert a firm no to those questions.  Settling for average will only get you average results, an average life, with the support of average people.  We should not be content with just making it, or content with what the typical person does, we need to persevere and aim to supersede those thresholds and excel with an overwhelming amount of success.  Will failure happen?  Absolutely.  We all fail in life.  (I’ll address that in a future post)  But we need to get back up after those failures and say “I will succeed”, “I will not settle for having at least tried”, “I will not stop at good enough, I will be better than good enough”.  This is the sphere of a successful driving force that we need to exist in.

Our own contentment with mediocrity will allow us to be passed by others who are working hard for success.  While patting ourselves on the back for a job well done by trying so hard, those who won’t settle for that are working hard to gain an advantage, and they will be the ones setting the higher bar and achieving great things.  We shouldn’t allow that to happen.  We should be the ones setting that bar through blood, sweat and tears, making a commitment to ourselves to expect the best, and then make that expectation a reality.

Life Lessons from Soccer

Soccer is a sport that I grew up watching, loving and playing.  With World Cup 2014 happening in Brazil right now, I find myself fondly reminiscing of my own experiences playing the sport, while being fully enthralled in watching games and highlights.  Playing the sport has taught me a lot of life lessons and concepts of team, team management, and leadership.  I felt that it was fitting for this week’s post to share my soccer-influenced insights on those topics during what is easily the largest, most impactful, and most watched sporting event worldwide.  If you’re not a fan of the sport, hopefully you’ll have a different appreciation for it after reading this.

The way that shot taking and scoring a goal occurs in soccer, is very similar to the way an employee team approaches a goal in the workplace or another situation.  While watching a game you’ll notice the amount of passing among the teammates much like different parts of a project get passed between employees contributing to a larger goal.  In a team work situation sometimes there are big surges forward in the process of completing a major project, but sometimes it’s important to pull back, regroup, and approach the goal from a different angle, because the first strategy might not be as successful as another one.  This is similar to how a team in soccer will build up to taking a shot on the field.  You’ll notice that there are a lot of forward passes, but sometimes it’s necessary to stop, pass it backward, reposition the players and then approach the goal in a different way on the other side of the field.

You’ll also notice that in soccer there are no time outs, the clock doesn’t stop and players don’t get a break.  As a player on the field, I was very familiar with conditioning and preparing for the long haul of playing non-stop.  In this role, you have to be ready to take on any challenges from people trying to keep you from achieving your goal of scoring and it’s essential to keep pressing on even if you’re tired.  This is such a straightforward and clear analogy for life.  Life doesn’t stop just because you’re tired or beat down from the challenges you’ve endured.  If you give up it will keep going without you, and you’ll be left out.  Most importantly, while focusing on life goals, you prepare yourself for the challenges you’ll face, and for the experiences you’ll have so that you can persevere under any circumstance for the long haul, just like conditioning for a soccer game.  It’s important to push beyond your comfort zones on a regular basis just like you would in a workout, because when it comes time for the true test, or ‘game time’, as it’s sometimes referred to, you’ll have to have the stamina to keep going and achieve the goal to be successful.

Learning how to fit on a team is another truly great lesson I’ve learned from playing soccer over the years.  I’ve played mostly as a forward or some will call it a striker when I played soccer (it’s the position that’s very offensive minded, shooting, scoring goals, etc.)  While this position is very offensive minded, depending on the situation or the team we were playing against, sometimes I would have to get pulled back into the midfield area to help out my teammates.  There were also situations where if we were playing a really great offensive team and if they were kicking a corner kick (when the team trying to score kicks it in play from the flag in the corner) I would be pulled back to help out on defense a bit.  The scenarios are endless but the point is that sometimes even though I was assigned a specific role I had to be flexible to help out the team in the way that they needed me at the right time, and other players on the team had to do the same thing. 

Quite often it is up to the player in the moment to make the decision of “How can I help the team be better and what do they need from me right now?”  This is not at all dissimilar from being on a team in a work/committee/organization situation.  In order to help the team out it’s necessary to be willing to help those other teammates out to complete a task or project, and support them.  Being inflexible on the field can result in a negative effect such as the other team scoring because someone was left open.  Much like in a teamwork situation being inflexible can lead to the team not completing the project.  The most important thing to understand on the field is that I am helping to pass the ball contributing to the process of shooting, scoring and winning, so I’m just as important to the team as anyone else.  That’s what teamwork is about, it’s about advancing the team, not about gaining all the glory.

The biggest gripe that many people have about soccer is the lack of scoring.  It’s not uncommon to have a final score of 1-0, 0-0 or 2-0 after 90 (plus a couple few) minutes of playing.  The reality is that this works much like achieving goals in our everyday lives.  It’s very easy to put a lot of hard work an effort into something just to achieve one or two results.  Then you focus on your next major achievement (the next game) and put a lot of time and effort into that.  Sometimes you achieve your objective or score one or two goals in a game, and sometimes you end up with zero or needing to try again harder the next time.  In the end it’s all a part of the process of getting better.

As you can see soccer has taught me a lot that I’ve applied to many different work and leadership positions.  The list could go on, but I wanted to highlight just a few of them.  Some of you reading this might feel that theater, playing in a band or another sport has taught you some of your own lessons.  I think that’s great and all the more reason that we should regularly have kids involved in such activities because of the transferable lessons that can be attained from such experiences.  There are a lot more World Cup matches to be watched, and hopefully what I’ve shared here can help you appreciate or think of the game in a different way. 

 

Why Not You?

Similar to many people, I spent this past Sunday night in front of the television, watching the Super Bowl.  My team (The Dallas Cowboys) were unfortunately not in the game, so I was not as invested in the outcome of the game as some of my friends who were watching with me.  As I watched, the temptation of various topics for this week was overwhelming.  There was too much easy material to work with in addition to what I had already planned to write about.  However, I abandoned other potential topic plans when I heard Russell Wilson in one of his many post-game championship interviews.  He was asked about a phrase that his father used to tell him that he used with his teammates to get them ready for the game, which was “Why not us?”

The phrase stuck with me throughout the rest of the night.  I thought about how simple yet how powerful a statement it was.  The phrase rattled around in my thoughts as I drove home and I whittled it down to the singular version and the exact phrase that Russell’s father reportedly used with Russell, “Why not you?” 

His father used it with him as naysayers told Russell that he was too short to play quarterback and had other critiques.  Russell’s dad would ask him “Why not you?”  Russell would go on to win a Big Ten Championship in college as a quarterback, and win the Super Bowl, arguably the biggest stage that sports can offer.  I’m not going to compare myself to Russell Wilson, but I admittedly have let the thought “No, not me” creep into my conscience before.  Sometimes I’ve been right, others I’ve been wrong, and maybe you have succumbed to those same thoughts of “No, not me” when considering something.  It could be asking that special someone on a first date, applying for a job, asking for a promotion or raise, trying to start a business venture, or even something as simple as exercising to meet a health goal.

Instead of saying “No, not me” and talking ourselves out of something, it’s time that we all recognize our self-worth and potential.  We need to stop defeating ourselves before the fight even happens, and stop convincing ourselves what our limits are before we even attempt something.  Somewhere between our youth and adulthood we lose some of our naivety of thinking big, imagining and visioning great things and believing that we can accomplish lofty goals.  Sure there are certain realities that exist such as I can’t be an all-star basketball player tomorrow, or run for president next year.  But if I put my mind to something and put in the necessary work, then “Why not me?” and if you did the same “Why not you?”

In life we feel like we need to have the answers to everything, and be able to rationalize things.  That’s where this “No, not me” defeatist attitude festers from.  We can rationalize and think of all the reasons why something doesn’t make sense to fit us and why it shouldn’t happen.  It’s time to make a paradigm shift in our thinking and start saying Russell’s father’s phrase to ourselves, “Why not you?”

So instead of focusing on your limits and what you can’t do, focus on your strengths and what your potential is.  Look at and focus on your hopes and dreams and focus on how you can harness the power of the strength of your skills to make that happen.  When your areas of improvement (I refuse to call them weaknesses) enter your mind, become solution oriented and figure out how to overcome those so that “It can be me!” becomes more of a reality.  Surround yourself with supportive people through networking and current relationships and share your hopes and dreams with them.  They might be able to help you in some way achieve what you want to achieve.  Then, as a mentor once told me, take that leap.  Go beyond what you feel comfortable attempting.  Make things happen.  You could really surprise yourself with how great you really are, accomplish your dreams and you may even reach beyond what you thought was your potential.  Now if for any reason it doesn’t work out, don’t quit and give up.  You deserve to experience greatness just like any other person, so try again even harder the next time, look in the mirror and say "Why not you?"

 

They Will Say No, You Will Say Yes

It’s definitely that time of year in sports.  There are NFL Playoff games happening, and NCAA College Basketball is in full swing.  So many of us watch great catches and defensive plays on the football field, and then flip the channel to amazing dunks that make us stand up and high five complete strangers.  If you take the time to read some of my past blogs, it will come as no surprise that I pull a lot of motivation and leadership philosophy from athletes, sports quotes and sports teams.

This week, I was reminded of something from playing basketball my freshman year in high school when I heard the stories of two athletes Derrick Coleman and Isaiah Austin.  I was reminded of a motivational quote our coach gave us during our first team meeting.  It stuck out to me, so I cut it out and hung it in my locker.  From then on, I would look at this quote all through high school, college, and eventually come to share it with people I supervised when I started working full time.  It’s from a Nike Ad (the ad is below) and although I love the whole thing, my favorite line is:

“They will tell you no.

A thousand times no. Until all the no’s become meaningless. 

All your life they will tell you no.

Quite firmly and very quickly.

And you will tell them yes.”

Derrick Coleman is a player for the Seattle Seahawks.  He climbed the ranks playing football through high school, at UCLA, and now will play on the greatest and biggest stage in the NFL, the Super Bowl.  I came across Derrick through, surprisingly enough, a Duracell commercial.  After reading more about Derrick I realized that he has a very inspirational story.  What you may not know about him, is that he is a legally deaf person playing in the NFL.  In a sport where snap counts, audibled plays (plays changed by the quarterback before the ball is hiked) and crowd noise play a vital role in the success of the team, Derrick has learned through his hearing aid and coping mechanisms to play at the most elite level in the sport.  From being a child trying to fit his hearing aid under his helmet, to going undrafted in the NFL, he was constantly being told ‘No’ and through perseverance and determination, he told them ‘Yes’.

The story of Isaiah Austin is also a story of triumph under difficult odds.  Isaiah Austin is a basketball player for Baylor University, a Division I Men’s Basketball Team.  Through a routine dunk in warm ups during middle school, he aggravated an injury from little league.  In basketball where eye sight and depth perception are as vital as a good jump shot, Isaiah was learning to play the game in a completely different way than most youth.  He tore his retina in one eye and despite surgery and efforts to save his sight, he eventually became blind in one eye.  He was therefore learning coping mechanisms to compensate for his sight, and how to play through his unique circumstance.  Bearing this secret until very recently, he admits to hiding his loss of vision in one eye because he was afraid people would tell him ‘No’ suggesting that he wasn’t good enough, or not take a chance on him because he only could see through one eye.  Instead he found ways to tell them ‘Yes’ before they even had a chance to say ‘No’.

I share these stories and the Nike Ad because intrinsic motivation is such a vital source of the drive we must have to succeed.  I think about my favorite line whenever I get the sense that someone thinks I’m not good enough, or when I come across an obstacle blocking me from something that I want to achieve.  Our circumstances may not be the exact same as Derrick’s or Isaiah’s, but they serve as great examples of how to overcome the odds against them to achieve their goals in life.

Most importantly I use the Nike Ad and will now think of these athletes when doubt creeps into my own mind wondering if I’m good enough, or talented enough.  I think it’s safe to say that we have all had moments of self-doubt where we have second guessed ourselves or berated ourselves in comparison to others.  We can easily get sucked into the spiral of negativity in our minds and our thoughts second guessing ourselves on whether we are capable of something.  It’s natural for those thoughts to creep in occasionally, but it’s even more crucial to put them out and stand resilient with the confidence in ourselves.  We have to eliminate those thoughts and be determined to succeed the same way Derrick and Isaiah have persevered through their challenges to succeed.  The reason this is so important is because as the Nike Ad says: “They will tell you No”, so if you’re not willing to tell them ‘Yes’, then who will?

Story from ABC about Derrick Coleman click here.

Story from Sportscenter about Isaiah Austin click here

A Thought on Leadership

There is a myth about being a great leader that has permeated what many people associate with leadership.  Through many different training sessions for supervisors that I have done, I find it is common that people believe you have to be famous or have some major accomplishments under your belt to be a great leader.  In reality all you really have to do is treat those that you lead with dignity and respect.  An integral part of the formula for good leadership, as well as getting effective results from your team can be as simple as that.  While it is true that there are great leaders who have accomplished something major, it is not a pre-requisite for being a great leader.  It is also unnecessary to have a wall of awards and trophies to serve as a leader who people adore and have come to identify as a leader who has made a difference.  It might come with the territory that an award is granted, but all too often those in positions of leadership pressure themselves to meet an imagined and arbitrary standard of being an awarded leader before they focus on how they treat those that they lead.

Let me walk you through a brief exercise I’ve done during a supervisor training session to illustrate what I’m talking about.  Try to name the past 5 Super Bowl MVP winners.  Try to name the past 3 Miss Universe winners. Try to name the last 4 Nobel Peace Prize Award winners.  Last but not least name the last 4 Oscar Winners for Best Director.

Now try to name 5 people who have been supportive of you.  Try to name 3 people who are great listeners.  Try to name 4 people whose honesty serves as a role model for you. Try to name 4 people who you’ve watched be kind to others regularly.

The first set of lists is remarkably more difficult.  Through that process we are listing people based on their awards, and while they have achieved some really amazing things, we do not remember them for their awards.  We do however remember people who have touched our lives in meaningful ways, and been there for us.  What’s more remarkable is that the traits they conveyed and are remembered for are traits that we generally associate with describing a good leader. 

The flipside is that as a good leader the respect from those you lead is commonly what resonates as more rewarding.  A recent example of this is listening to someone like Tom Brady who is a very accomplished quarterback in the NFL for the New England Patriots.  Recently he addressed college football players at the University of Michigan where he played as a quarterback.  He told these players that the accomplishment he was most proud of were not his Super Bowl rings, or a Super Bowl MVP award, but that his teammates voted him captain of the team in college.  He had earned the respect of his teammates and they looked up to him enough to select him to be their representative and leader.

This is exactly the crux of the matter.  Being a good leader is something that is earned from those that you lead.  Accomplishments while great and fantastic do not by default make someone a good leader.  Instead it is the way you treat those that you lead that make you a good leader.  Someone cannot be a leader without followers in any environment (work, sports team, volunteering, etc.).  The best way to be a memorable leader, as well as an effective one, is to be someone that people admire for the way that they treat their followers.  Just like in the exercise above, would you rather have someone struggle to remember you because of an award you won, or would you rather be someone who is easy to recall because you treated those you lead in a way that they appreciated?  It is in the latter where good leaders are created and how they earn the respect of those that they lead.

You Are Your Own C.E.O.

I recently attended my first job fair as someone seeking employment.  I have been on the other side of the table recruiting on a few occasions representing a university but this was a completely new endeavor.  I left with a lot of thoughts on the experience and feeling like I was selling myself to recruiters the whole time.  I was representing myself as if I was a product they should buy and invest in.  I know that this is exactly what you are supposed to do at job fairs, but it caused me to explore this topic of being the C.E.O. of yourself and how if you see yourself as a business, it can be a guide for success.

Board of Directors – The majority of businesses have a board of directors.  If you are to be successful you need to have your own personal board of directors.  I’ve had mentors use this metaphor so I don’t know where it originated from, but it’s very pertinent as you strive for success.  A board of directors are typically a handful of people who have expertise in a wide variety of areas and they collectively move the business forward.  This is what you need for your own success.  Select a core group of mentors and people that you trust to be your personal board of directors.  They don’t all have to convene around a table or know each other, but most importantly they have to know you really well.  Make sure that they are interested in seeing you be successful as they role model success.  The people on your board should not only be willing to celebrate your triumphs, but be willing to give you the constructive, and sometimes hard-to-hear feedback that it takes to make you a better person.  Your board, like many businesses can change over time through adding and subtracting depending on your life situations and how effective they are for you.  Most importantly your board needs to consist of reliable people you trust to consult with, not just people who will tell you what you want to hear.

Advertising and Promotion – This is important to any business because it’s how the business, or in this case you, are represented to the public.  You need to think about your public image and what people say about you when you’re not around.  Do not confuse this with being inauthentic and catering or altering your personality to people.  Consider this your brand.  Is what you represent, and are you perceived the way you want to be perceived?  If you’re not representing yourself the way you would like to, explore the reasons why, and what you can do to change your brand to what you want it to be.  This certainly includes your online presence with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, etc.  A good place to start figuring this out, is by asking your board of directors, which is why it is important that they not only know you, but that they are willing to be completely honest with you, and help you.

Manufacturing – At first glance you might have assumed I was talking about having kids.  Not so fast, that’s not what this is about, that’s up to you.  This is about what you are manufacturing on a regular basis in terms of your deeds.  Are you putting all of your effort into the things you say and do and cultivating your work ethic so that your product can be reliable?  It’s important that what you produce whether it be in your personal life or your work life is of a high quality in nature.  You should be proud of what you do and feel confident that you would want your name associated with what you do whether it’s volunteering somewhere, finishing a report at work or planning a birthday party for a friend, etc.  Give it your all, and have pride in what you’ve accomplished.

Accounting – This is you budgeting for yourself.  In order to be successful it’s important that you are not living at your means but living within it, and saving for the future.  Every good business has a budget plan that includes a rainy day fund, and a slush fund.  As a C.E.O. for yourself it’s important that you’re saving and creating a manageable budget for yourself so that you can be successful in the future, and that unpredicted expenses or that special thing you want to treat yourself with can be taken care of when necessary.

I could break down more business departments and give you more details and examples within those mentioned here.  However I believe you get the idea and hopefully you can begin applying such a model to your own life.  This model of thinking of different parts of your personality and what you do is a holistic model approach that encompasses not only being successful in your professional life but in your personal life as well.  I placed the Board of Directors first because I believe it is extremely important that your support network is in place and ready to support you throughout your endeavors.  You can be successful, you just need to put in the time and effort to develop yourself.  Success does not come overnight for any business and it won’t come overnight for you.  But it is attainable when you put the work in to develop the multitude of facets that make up who you are. 

Go the Distance

We have all had a slow day that leads us to spending some time on the internet checking out news stories and viral videos.  One headline story has some links on the side of the page to others and before we know it we’ve clicked and read through a labyrinth of articles.  In this same fashion I stumbled across one last week about Meredith Fitzmaurice, a runner who finished a marathon on accident.  An accident?  While whipped up in a frenzy of working out I’ve had great days where I had the energy to push through 5 more minutes on a run, or I did one extra set on the bench working out so I sort of get it.  It is difficult enough for most people to run a marathon and she finished one on accident?  It was hard to imagine how someone could finish a marathon “by accident”.  Or was it?

As I read the article (I’ve attached it below) I was obviously impressed by her accomplishment.  Then I paused and re-read it through a different lens.  I thought about how in life we typically have a path to success that we’ve planned and laid out for ourselves.  We work hard daily at our jobs, in our relationships or on something else in our personal lives.  We prepare ourselves, and do what we can to follow that plan, but life is very unpredictable as we go down that path.  There are the proverbial pot holes, or speed bumps that slow us down, but sometimes much like Meredith we get distracted by something, or something happens, and get unintentionally diverted onto a completely new path. 

Quite often we find this sort of diversion as a setback, and look at it as harmful to our commitment of staying the course.  We get sucked in to vilifying ourselves and beating ourselves up with thoughts such as: “How could this happen?”  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” “What now?”  But what if we approached these diversions differently, and took Meredith’s perspective.  Once she realized she was off course, she asked for a race official on a bike to keep her company while she continued on and she became determined to finish even though it wasn’t her plan to run the full marathon.  When we get off course in our plan, it’s ok to ask for help and reach out to friends, family, neighbors, etc. to ask them to be with us as we continue on.  This is not a moment of weakness, it’s a testament to strength that we continue on despite the diversion.  What’s most important is to not give up.

I had a supervisor tell me once that success occurs when opportunity intersects with preparation.  The phrase comes from Seneca, a Roman philosopher who philosophized that we create our own ‘luck’ in life.  Meredith prepared for a half marathon, got diverted and her achievement superseded her expectations.  She created her own ‘luck’ through her preparation, and when the opportunity presented itself, she was ready to work harder than she planned and eventually achieved an unexpected success. 

As you follow the path you’ve laid out for yourself, whether it is at work, in relationships, or in another aspect of your life it’s important that when things do not go as planned that you don’t lose hope.  Don’t second guess yourself to think I’m not ready for this, I can’t go on.  There will be times where you are diverted from your plan because life is unpredictable, it’s inevitable.  What is important is to remember that you have what it takes to keep on going.  Sometimes you will have to go farther than you expected to reach success, and sometimes it will lead to great things you didn’t think were possible, and didn’t expect to achieve.  Meredith qualified for the Boston Marathon before she expected to, and she was the first woman to finish the unintentional marathon.  Sometimes things don’t go the way they are supposed to but you just have to keep pushing on and believe in yourself that you can finish the race.  Success is in your future, sometimes greater than you expected, you just have to keep pushing yourself.   I believe in you.

The link to the news story is here:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Half+marathoner+wins+marathon+mistake/8955604/story.html