Blog
Read Blog Posts by Category:
Passion: Articles that deal with the inner drive that we all need to want to MOVE from where we currently are to where we dream to be.
Preparation: These posts reference articles, books, documentaries, speakers, quotes, and other inspirational and formative ideas that I have found that helped me and the people around me.
Practice: Articles in this category have a heavy sports and performance training lean.
Performance: These articles focus on how you go about your work. From networking to communications to finding a better way to do what you do.
Perseverance: Articles in this category speak to the mechanics that we go through both mentally and physically to stay on track and not get STUCK.
Three Internal Battles That Shape Our Lives
We all face our own set of unique challenges and struggles during our lives.
From our first breath, we're thrust into a battle for survival. This fight continues, evolving as we do, until our last breath. Some of these battles are colossal, their end never in sight. Though they may seem significant at the time, others fade into insignificance over time.
All of these battles do one very important thing: they shape who we become.
Climbing Your Professional Mountain
Climbing your professional mountain is a journey that requires dedication, hard work, and strategic planning. In today's competitive business world, it's essential to have a roadmap to help you reach your career goals faster.
Embrace the Struggle
The table was set for a pity party. What a great way to start a Monday.
I looked around at the other gym occupants … and you know what? Nobody had noticed. They were doing their thing, living their own struggles.
That’s life. Nobody knows the struggles that you go through. And … spoiler alert … nobody really cares.
How did I deal with my struggle? I took a deep breath. And laughed at myself.
I had two choices. Let this ruin my day or attack the problem. I chose the latter.
Love the Person in the Mirror
Truth Time: When you look at yourself in the mirror do you admire all the good parts or do you start nitpicking the tiny flaws?
Don’t be embarrassed if you only see the negative parts. Most of us do.
The more I go out and speak and the more clients I become associated with I continue to find how many truly are embarrassed or genuinely dislike the person that they look at in the mirror.
And by this I don’t mean the physical features they see … I’m talking about the “person”.
This negative messaging is literally killing us.
I am a truth teller and I tell them as much. How can you continue to be the best version of you when your early morning pep talk to yourself is, “I hate everything about you.”
Keep Climbing: Overcoming The Struggles in Your Life
In every story of success there is a point of struggle followed by an action where the storyteller overcame the issue that caused the struggle. In every story of a person getting stuck there is a point of struggle followed by inaction, where the storyteller allowed the issue to stop them.
Read that again. I’ll wait.
Yes, it is that simple. MOVE. Keep moving forward. It may be in small steps, but you must find a way to continue to fight through whatever it is that is slowing you down.
Growing Pains
When we change, we have to get away from being comfortable. We need to get off schedule as we make a new schedule. We must change the way we think about and speak to ourselves. We need to change the people we hang out with. We may need to be the “dumbest” person in the room. We will need to step out of our comfort zone and change the way we interact with other people.
Dualism: Trust and Faith
I was watching a movie the other night about the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. It took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Sinai to Canaan. If you were to walk it today. It would take you ELEVEN DAYS!
Why did it take them 40-years? The people who followed Moses had a lack of Trust and Faith.
They did not trust their leaders – who led them out of the slavery of the Pharaoh.
And they lacked faith in their God. The One who opened the Red Sea allowing them to escape the army of Egypt. The One who, when they were thirsty, brought water from a rock. The One who, when they were hungry, provided manna from the heavens.
Because of a lack of Trust and Faith it took the Israelites 40-years to go a distance that should have taken them 11-days, to get to their promised land.
This Trust and Faith thing is a constant battle in our lives, just like it was to Moses.
Trust is something that you control.
Faith is an inner belief.
Dualism: Good vs Great
After the event, he was getting the pats on the back from the people who had just watched him speak for an hour. He turned to me with a big smile and said, “Well, how did you like it?” I nodded and said, “It was good.” His reflex was to say “thanks” and move on. Which he did.
And then he stopped and turned back to me and said, “Did you just say “good”?”
I nodded and I said, “Yep, you were good.”
He was the pulled away by organizers of the event, and I went my way.
The next day I got a call from my friend. Before we could even get into the pleasantries he said, “What do you mean I was, just good?”
For the next 20 minutes WE talked about the holes in his talk. And then he said, “You’re right, I mailed it in.”
Dualism: Win or Learn vs Win or Lose
When I was younger, I was so focused on not losing that I couldn’t enjoy the victories. This all changed when I studied Nelson Mandela. When he said, “I never lose, I either win or I learn”, it struck me like a lightning bolt.
I put down the book I was reading and just stared into space. These words were fighting an internal battle with what I had taken for granted since my first memories.
Dualism: Get To vs Got To
Life is a Get To vs a Got To proposition. I have used these two terms (Get To vs Got To) for 40 years. I have asked countless athletes and clients to help them understand the truth about their commitment to being successful.
Comprehending the “Get To vs Got To” concept will lead you directly to understanding “who” you truly are.
Dualism: Ancestors vs Ghosts
I went to New York to watch Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. During his show he spoke about Ancestors and Ghosts.
It took me a while to work this through, but when I did it made perfect sense.
Ancestors are those who came before us that we lean in to when we are growing in our personal or professional lives. They are the people who taught us the basics. How to pray, how to drive, how to work on an engine, how to cook. The taught us what it looked like when you were doing things right and how to push through the hard times.
What a Great Gift
Change is good. Especially when we aren’t happy where we are at.
Here is the problem: We don’t move on our own because we aren’t quite sick enough of the old job because it pays the bills. This is the first signs of being “Stuck”. “Stagnation” is the second step. It comes after you have been in the job so long that you can’t afford to change jobs. The final step is “Death”. This is when your dreams and goals have fallen along the wayside and you succumb to the numbness of working for someone else’s dreams as your professional dreams die.
You Are Not Alone
One of the scariest things we have to do in our life is to do something for the first time, by ourselves. It may be walking to school or riding a bike or driving a car. As we get older, we have these same issues, whether it is personal or professional, where we feel that we are fighting our dragons all by ourselves.
Resist the Tug
When I was young, my friends and I would go down to one of the three rivers that came together in Mason City, Iowa (aka “River City” from the Broadway show “The Music Man”) and catch “crawdads” or crayfish.
It wasn’t unusual to catch a bucket full in 5 – 10 minutes as we walked down the bank of the river. The one thing that I thought was interesting about these “rock lobsters” was that when one was working his way to the top of the bucket, to escape, one of his brethren would reach up and pull him back into the pile at the bottom of the bucket. I never really thought much about it until I got older and my professional career began to grow and flourish.
Failure Is Not Fatal
Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill
Before my career changing run in with a chicken house fan, my overall coaching record, in the first eleven years of my coaching career, was 33 Wins – 77 Loses and 1 Tie. I was averaging 3 wins a season. Not a great resume statistic.
The one thing that was constant in my life was my belief in myself and my ability to become a winning coach. You may have noticed that I didn’t say a “successful coach”. I knew I was doing some good stuff. I knew I had learned a lot in my first 11 years of my career. I just needed the right place to put it all together.
When it all came together my wins skyrocketed (251 wins) to a career average of 11 wins a season. Like Churchill says, “Failure is not fatal.” The only thing that is fatal is if we stop trying. I could have looked at my three wins a season and said, “I suck”, and left coaching and taken a job I wasn’t passionate about. At that time, I would have failed myself because I would have given up on my passion. When we give up on ourselves than we truly have failed.
Fighting Negativity
“Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.” – Albert Einstein
Negativity is the slayer of our dreams. When we are young, we have the ability to dream BIG. We dream big, until someone steps in and tells us the price. Instead of staying with the dream many will adjust their course. Then they dream big again, until someone steps in and tell them they’re not good enough. Some will listen to them. What’s worse is when they stop dreaming big because have stopped believing in themselves.
Life: Help!
The “voice” of the 60’s was asking for help … and they were at the top of their game when they wrote this song. It happens to everyone. Life doesn’t care if you are in the low of lows or when you seemingly are at the top of your game, we all still need help.
It’s Been a Year
I heard an amazing song the other day. A young lady named Ashley Cooke was singing “It’s Been a Year.” She has a great voice, but I love the chorus when she sings, “It’s been three hundred sixty-five of record lows and record highs. Loving and losing, fun and confusing, praying and shifting gears … it’s been a year”. What a great hook. “365 of record lows and record highs”, I think everyone can relate.
Clearing Headspace
She stopped talking and just dropped her head. I then asked the “hard” question, “How much do you charge for rent?” She was staggered. “What?” She replied, “What the f*#k does that mean, what rent, I’m living in my house?” I chuckled and said, “Rent for the room that these people are taking up in your head?”
Accepting Blame
One of the biggest faults most of us have is that we lack the ability to take the blame when things go wrong. We can turn on the TV any time of day and watch one political party blame the issues on the other party and yet, in the same breath, take credit for all of the good. Not only in politics but we see this on talk shows, courtroom shows, soap operas, movies, commercials, sitcoms … everywhere!! We go to work and we watch the drama in real life. Even at home we see family bickering with one side saying it was the other side’s fault.
We are inundated with the “blame game”.