A New Day, A New Start

From the day we are born, we engage with others and begin to make decisions based on our experiences, our preferences for certain things, and our interactions with other people.  Our personality develops and our lives evolve into a collection of experiences resulting in what is commonly known as a life path.  We acknowledge our personal history, learn from it, live in the present and make plans for the future along this path.  As we traverse this path sometimes we may not like a direction it’s headed in, we decide to challenge ourselves, or feel that it’s time to improve upon ourselves in some way.  It is then that we engage in one of the most challenging things to do in life, creating a new start for ourselves.

The developments of modern technology have not matched the science fiction story telling of books and movies, therefore traveling back in time to accomplish a completely new start is impossible to do.  Yet there’s a natural mechanism we encounter every day that allows for us to create a new start.  It’s called a sunrise.  With the dawn of each day we have an opportunity to chart a new life path for ourselves and the possibility of starting something new when we wake up.

There are of course some life circumstances and the reality that we cannot make a drastic change from one end of the spectrum to the other overnight.  The manageable approach however is to make a conscious decision when the sun rises to do something different than our regular norm to create a better life for ourselves.  It’s easy to look for a conditional “if-then” excuse to try something new, or do something different in life, so let the sunrise and the start of a new day be that excuse.  We need to empower ourselves, dig deep into our intrinsic motivation and decide that today is the day that things begin to change for me. 

If eating healthier is a decidedly new start, then when waking up one day the first thought should be today I’m going to go grocery shopping for a healthier meal option, or I will start doing some research on how to create a healthier diet for myself.  Whether it’s quitting smoking, launching a business, learning an instrument, or even creating better more beneficial personal habits, the chance for a new start begins with a solitary decision to make a difference, and taking the first step.  That first step doesn’t have to be drastic, it just has to be a step in the direction of the new path you want to embark on.  From there, more steps can be taken and the momentum can be built upon as you move forward to that new start. 

The caveat here is not to get lost in the seductive misleading idea that change happens immediately and results will be automatic and significant in a short period of time.  That’s all too romantic of an idea and when results don’t happen as quickly as expected, it’s easy for frustration and quitting to lead into a dead end where progress is stifled.  It’s important to remember that good habits usually take about 21 days by conventional knowledge to take hold.  Time, dedication, and perseverance are the best assets to creating a new path.   But we need to remember that just like a huge oak tree comes from a tiny acorn, big changes come from just the first step, no matter how small it might be.

Follow Your Passion

I recently saw a meme that said “Purpose is the reason you journey. Passion is the fire that lights your way.”  Unfortunately I don’t have a person to credit that to because there wasn’t a name listed, but it was timely that I came across it.  We always hear in motivational speaking, books, memes on social media, etc. catchy phrases such as “Follow your passion”, or “Do what you love”.  I have found it to be solid advice and letting passion light my way (as the meme says) has helped me on my own personal journey thus far, which is why I want to share my experience with you encouraging you to follow your passion.

As you read this blog post, it serves as substantial evidence that following your passion can lead to successful results.  All my life I’ve enjoyed writing in a variety of forms because I believed in the art of words and how they can touch someone reading them.  That passion lead me into my Master’s Degree program in Health Communications, but I digress.  While I was in the midst of starting an active job search about a year and a half ago, a close friend that I look up to, sent me a couple blog posts of a guy who had been in my similar position.  He started following his passion, which eventually developed into his own personal business.  Admittedly I was immediately emotionally touched by the posts and felt like they were speaking directly to me at a time when I needed encouragement.  The next day I taught myself how to start a blog site, and started developing content to post. 

My first post was “Coaching at Work” and went up on August 20, 2013.  I had no idea what direction my site would take, but I knew this is what I loved doing about topics I enjoyed writing about.  Fast forward to today and my writing has taken off.  I’ll be honest, I don’t have a job in it, but it has opened up doors for me in areas I never expected allowing for the potential for even more job opportunities.  Since that day, 3650 views, across 46 posts that I’ve written, it is now a part of the New World Flood website which I was not a part of previous to this post.  I’ve also been able to write a few articles for a statewide Texas Magazine covering events in Austin, TX, national ones such as South by Southwest, and the ESPN X Games as well as writing social media copy for a couple business websites.  I say all this not to brag, but to serve as proof that things can start happening if you follow your passion.  All too often we get sucked into empty motivation where people will suggest doing something and they have no proof that it works, or that success can come from it, and I’m sharing my own personal examples to prove that it can happen.

If you Google ‘Follow Your Passion’ you will find a fair amount of people who disagree with that line of thinking.  Those that disagree will assert that you should “Love what you do”, and “Do what contributes”.  They will also suggest that in areas where there are a small number of successful people at the top, professional athletes, political offices, company CEOs, that it can be discouraging if following your passion doesn’t land a person in those positions.  A person’s opinion is a person’s opinion, but I ask you to make your own decision and question, why does it have to be mutually exclusive? 

There is a chance that you are currently in a job that might not be in a field or involve tasks that you are passionate about.  That’s reality, that’s life.  But in the process of following the advice of “Love what you do” and unifying it with “Follow your passion” why not try to think of creative ways to incorporate something you are passionate about into the work that you currently do?  For example if you work at a call center but you’re passionate about knitting why not start knitting during your lunch breaks and offer to make items for coworkers.  If you work at a bank, but your passion is boating you can start a boating club that coworkers can join and you can teach them about boating.  This can even extend beyond the work place.  Once you’ve identified your passion, you live in a community that has a wide variety of people living in them with different interests.  In the process of “Doing what has value” and following your passion, your passion might fulfill a niche within your community that can engage and help others in ways you never imagined.

The bottom line here is that as a human being regardless of where you come from, how much money you have, or what your culture is, we share some very basic tenets of personality.  We all have things that we are passionate about, we all have a desire to matter and make a difference, and we all have a value of some sort.  If we can harness, and combine those things together, what we are passionate about can make a difference and provide a value (monetary or not) to the community we live in and beyond.  Sometimes that value can even be very validating of our sense of self and help to make meaning of the world.  As you finish reading this post I encourage you to find your passion, think of ways that it can manifest itself in your life, and then follow it to 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. 

 

Learning from Lacey's Legacy

The morning of April 9, 2014 many people awoke to the news that Lacey Holsworth, an 8 year old little girl in Michigan had died of cancer around 1:00am that morning.  People who have never met Lacey were saddened by her passing and felt that they themselves had lost a loved one.  While it is always sad when someone dies, especially a child, many felt connected to her touching story because it unfolded very publicly after an encounter in 2012 at Sparrow Hospital with Michigan State basketball star Adreian Payne.  The two formed an immediate bond which strengthened and grew over time.  As many learned of her battle with cancer, there was an outpouring of love and support showed to her and her family from total strangers.  You didn’t have to be a Spartan fan, to be a fan of Lacey cheering her on through her battle with Neuroblastoma.  Princess Lacey (a nickname she affectionately took on) was such a young spirit, but there are so many great lessons that we can learn from her. 

All too often, we get caught up in the hype and bravado that we have to be a well-known, wealthy or highly influential person to make a difference or be important.  Lacey taught us that significance comes in all sizes and ages.  As an 8 year old little girl she lived her life with courage, and had a tremendous positive influence on others.  A pebble can be dropped in a pond and even though it’s not the biggest rock there will be a ripple effect created.  This can positively influence the lives of others, so it’s not always necessary to be the biggest, loudest voice in the room, just the most genuine. 

When Lacey was sitting in Sparrow Hospital in 2012 recovering from surgery, she had no specific laid out plans to cut down a net at the Big Ten Championship game, watch Adreian Payne in the dunk contest in Dallas, TX, or go on the Today Show and Good Morning America.  Would it be cool?  Of course.  But Lacey was living her life, determined to smile through her discomfort and the life altering difficulties that cancer presented.  That determination lead to her building a bond with Adreian Payne, which lead to inspiring a whole basketball team, and eventually others across the nation.  Lacey was creating her own ripple effect by being herself.

Lacey’s determination and courage to keep smiling and make the most out of her days is something else that we all can learn from.  It’s easy to get caught up in the complaints of our daily lives because something isn’t going right, or it’s not going the way we planned it.  This isn’t to mitigate the serious nature of what’s happening, but it’s too easy for that negativity to consume us and dictate how we interact with those we love and others.  I’ve been guilty of it on certain occasions myself, so you won’t find any finger pointing here.  But what if we shifted our perspective a bit and took the time to be thankful for what we have in our lives?  What if we approached each day being thankful for being able to see the sun rise, thankful for having people in our lives who love us, and looking for the silver lining of different moments? 

Lacey was grateful for each day she had, because she never knew what day would be her last.  She always had a smile on her face whenever the camera would show her in the stands at a game, or when strangers would ask for pictures with her, even though she had so much going on in her life.  If we approached life with a little more gratefulness would our interactions with others change, would we enjoy the little moments a bit more, and not take so much for granted?

The legacy that Lacey has left behind will be impossible to measure.  She touched the lives of so many people and will continue to remain in the hearts of many.  A vigil at MSU in her memory brought out droves of people in and outside of the community many of whom signed a famous landmark rock on Michigan State University’s campus.  The rock usually gets repainted with something new every 24 hours, from student group names, to events, to proposals, etc., but that same message in her memory (pictured below) has been there since April 9^th with more and more people making the journey to sign it with prayers, words of encouragement for the family, and messages of love.  Her story has inspired ESPN sports analyst Dick Vitale a long-time advocate for cancer research to set up a research fund in her name (click here). 

Lacey was just a child, but the way she lived embodied the words of a former famous basketball coach Jim Valvano who died of cancer as well, “Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.”

While you or I may not have cancer, if we live like Lacey with courage genuineness and determination, and love like Lacey (like it says at the bottom of the rock), while staying true to ourselves, we can leave our lasting impression on the world, and fully enjoy each and every day.