Month: July 2024

This past week, I went to see Def Leppard in concert. It’s surprising how long it took for me to cross that off the bucket list, considering I’ve been a fan since a young age. The show was great and focused on their classic albums: Pyromania and Hysteria. Pyromania turned 40 this year! The longevity of the band is remarkable, especially when you consider their humble beginnings practicing in an abandon spoon factory. Although their starting spot was not ideal, they reportedly spent nine months polishing their sound. It was only at the insistence of their late guitarist, Steve Clark, that they finally got their first gig.

The backend of the Leppard story is like so many success stories…. easy to discount! Success viewed after the fact seems inevitable. It is anything but that. While I could go down the list of setbacks and tragedies that have been visited upon the band over the decades, it’s the spoon factory that I’m going to focus on. That’s the place where I believe so many of us live.

The spoon factory represents that place where so many of us hang out until the time is right. There are plenty of reasons why. Need more polish, education, funding, support, etc. but usually these problems are fixable. The real problem is fear. It stifles our genius and willingness to take a chance on ourselves.

So GET OUT OF THE SPOON FACTORY! Perhaps you’ll be the Def Leppard in your area of expertise. Or maybe you’ll be on the long list of those who didn’t make it. Either way, you’ll know for sure. And that’s what most of us are afraid of… knowing. We don’t want to know that we’re not good enough. We’d rather hide behind the excuses. The thing that most people forget is that when you aren’t good enough, you can get better. “Hello America” isn’t “Pour Some Sugar On Me” but you don’t get the latter without the former. The only thing produced in that factory of fear is a lot of excuses about why it didn’t happen.

Rock, Rock ‘Til You Drop!

Pete

The refrigerator in my new place doesn’t have an ice machine. It’s a very small inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. So I had to go out and purchase ice cube trays for the first time in a while. Again, small purchase of a few bucks. The thing about ice trays is that they’re not automatic. They need to be refilled whenever ice is used. When I was a kid, living in a house of four teenage boys, it was easy for someone to come along and use a few cube but not refill the tray. The thirty seconds that it to keep the supply intact was often too much time for a teenage mind.

We often forego simple things that we know we should do because we “don’t have the time.” Workouts, stretching, a letter to a friend, meditation, etc. are all activities that we know would improve our lives in the subtlest of ways but the allocation of the time gets in the way. Just remember that it’s only 1%.

If you break 24 hours down into minutes, it’s 1440. That makes 1% of a day, 14.4 minutes (14 minutes and 24 seconds). For simplicity’s sake, let’s use 15 minutes. That’s 1% of your day! Just like filling the ice cube trays. It’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. However, if you’re willing to put in that little bit of time now, you’ll reap the benefits later.

Stretching for 15 minutes will give you mobility when many of your peers are laid up with injury or discomfort. Meditating for 15 minutes will give you peace of mind when others are panicked. Writing that letter to a friend will keep a tighter bond and add to your mental well-being more than scrolling through Twitter to see random videos of people doing stupid things. Walking, jogging, swimming, etc. for just 15 minutes will do more for your energy and vitality than sitting on the couch for 5%.

Our lives are filled with ice cube tray items. The little things that will positively impact our future but take very little time. There’s a desire for everything to be automated. For health, relationships, finances, mental well-being, etc. to just be handled for us or by one big gesture. Life tends not to work that! We need to give 1% to things that matter regularly. But if we do it consistently, the rewards that we reap are so much greater than what we put in.

Go fill those trays!

Pete