Author: Pete Huryk

When I was in college, I watched a movie called “Just Cause” starring Sean Connery and Blair Underwood.  It was a decent movie but the memorable thing about the experience was one of my roommate’s pronunciation of the title.  He was from Tennessee and called the movie “Just Cuz”.  We tried to explain the different meaning of JUST and highlighting the word CAUSE but he wanted nothing to do with that.  The movie title was “Just Cuz”.

That experience was brought back to me in my own self-talk this morning.  I said to myself, “I just have to keep going to the gym and I’ll lose that extra weight.”  Why “JUST”?  Just is a weak word!  It makes things seem easy or unimportant.  If the words that we say to ourselves are important (they are), then I should choose them wisely.  The words that I use with myself should not be JUST CUZ.  They should be definitive.  “I absolutely have to keep going to the gym in order to lose that extra weight.”

If I wanted to take it further, I could make it seem like less of a chore.  “I get to go the gym every morning.”  My perspective on my own life and how frame things influences what I will and won’t do.  I am fortunate to have such a small problem to conquer.

Don’t JUST do anything.  Do things with conviction and belief in yourself.

Recently I got into a conversation with someone about some of the things that I do on a regular basis: coaching, teaching, parenting and writing this blog.  All of my normal activities made perfect sense to them other than the writing of the blog.  Why write a blog at all?  Who is it for?   Here are the answers.

I write this blog for several reasons but they can all be broken down to the Nudge and the Push.  As I write I am trying to nudge someone closer to the best version of them.  In small incremental ways, I want to help someone change from who they are to who they want to be.  There is no particular order to the nudges.  They come to me organically usually in the morning and usually while I’m working out.  My hope is that the nudges add up to something as they accumulate.  While I am hoping for the nudge, I’m really aiming for the push.  My aim is to get someone to make a big change in their life that just hasn’t happened yet for one reason or another.  I’m aiming to push them into the fast lane where they cover some real ground rather than stuck in the standstill traffic of everyday.

The who is much easier.  I write this blog mainly for myself.  My nudges and pushes are principally aimed at me.  I want to get myself closer to my best self.  The only reason that I put it out into the world is that I’ve found over the years that lots of people are fighting the same battle that I am.  So my struggle is on display in the hopes that some other struggler will be nudged or pushed.

If you read this blog regularly, I thank you.  Helping people is who I am at the core and if I have helped you at all, then I am grateful for that opportunity.

Pete

Imagine there was a Happiness Lottery.  Once per week some lucky person would be awarded a lifetime supply of happiness.  Of course there would need to be some payment for the ticket.  Since the normal lottery requires a small amount of money in exchange for the chance at the big cash prize, it stands to reason that the Happiness Lottery would require a small happiness sacrifice to into the big drawing.  How many times would you play?  How much of your daily happiness would you sacrifice on the long odds of Happiness Lottery?  My hope is that you wouldn’t hang your hope for happiness on luck but rather come up with a systematic plan to create happiness and compound that which you already have.

• The first step would be to take stock of what assets you already have.  Be grateful for the people and situations that are already in your life that cause happiness.  Write down the happiness assets that you have in your life.  The more grateful you are for what you already have, the less likely that you are to squander it.
• The second step would be to look for ways to create more.  Accentuate the areas where you are creating great happiness and put more time into happiness areas that may be lagging.
• Diversify your portfolio.  Don’t expect all of your happiness to come from one area.  If you lean to heavily on one happiness source, tough times in that area will leave you living very thin.  Friends, family, hobbies, entertainment and a slew of other possibilities exist for you to have a balance to happiness.
• Cut down on waste.  Recognize where you are putting in great efforts but getting little returns.  Perhaps an area that used to be your biggest happiness producer is now a leach but you don’t see it.
• Watch out for thieves!  There will be thieves looking to steal your happiness if you let them.  With money we use banks, vaults and safes to protect our assets.  With happiness we need to vigilant watchers of our world and who we allow access to it.

Happily ever after is a nice idea for the end of a fairy tale but it’s not a realistic plan.  The lotteries, both monetary and happiness, are not a plan.  They are a pipe dream.  Happiness and finances both need to be cultivated through some strategic planning.  Very rarely are either the result of the luck of the draw.

Imagine it. You’re walking through a garage sale in a nearby town. Among all of the junk that people have put out on display, you find a State Championship Trophy from your graduation year. You pick it up, dust it off, pay the small cash amount they’re asking and take it home.  The year is right but the school name needs to be changed, so you go to an engraver to put your high school’s name on a little plaque that you’ll affix to the trophy.  As he asks if there is anything else, you decide “What the heck?!?!  Add my name and MVP too!”  After the plaque is added to the trophy, you display it proudly on your desk or mantle.

My hope is at some point this scenario became overwhelmingly absurd.  The trophy has very little value without the memories of the events that earned it.  The wood, metal and plastic are merely a representation of great deeds.  Trophies are not worth very much except to the people that earned them because the experience is what has true value.

Unfortunately too often we seem to have become obsessed with the garage sale trophies.  The transaction of something for nothing or almost nothing.  The diploma that has very little education behind it.  The diet pill that drops 20 lbs. in two weeks.  The marriage that happened more for the wedding than the relationship.  Perhaps the trophy will fool someone for a little while.  In the end, the momentary joy that it creates is fleeting.

Garage sale trophies are all around us.  Some are created to be sold to us.  Some we sell to ourselves.  When we buy them, we say that perception is what matters rather than substance.  So in the end we are as plastic as the trophy that was won by another.

I run at 5am most mornings. OK, it is really more like 5:20 after I hit the mental snooze and get into my gear. Some people question why I run at that time. They especially question it as the temperature drops. The main thing that people don’t realize about running in those temperatures is that humans are actually very good heat generators. If you do adequate preparation to insulate yourself from the cold, it is easy enough to be comfortable and even sweat. Insulating ourselves from the elements is the key component to surviving and thriving in the winter because with that insulation we are able to generate our own heat in ample supply.

This principle is not exclusive to heat. Humans are amazing creatures of generation when they learn to insulate themselves from the “elements”. As I spend most of my time walking the halls of a high school, I am going to focus on the “winter” of high school. I refer to high school as the winter because most of the social systems of high school are not set up to breathe life into young souls. It is the time when many are unsure of themselves and look for definition of self through others.

The heat of self-esteem is thrown out into the air as there is a desperate hope that everyone else will heat us up enough to feel truly good about ourselves. The truth of the matter is that you were always meant to be a generator. You can build up enough self-heat/self-esteem if you are selective about the people that you insulate yourself from or surround yourself with. There are heat hoarders, heat stealers, heat givers and heat takers. Which are you?
Start as a heat generator. Start with yourself. Write a list or just tell yourself about all of the great things about you. Once you are sweating with self-esteem, lend your excess to someone who needs it more than you.

The role of a captain can be very important on a soccer team. I say “can be” because on some teams, the captain does nothing more than the coin toss. My perspective is that the captain has a great deal of responsibility and should have certain characteristics that help her to lead.

Job Description: The captain is the liaison between the players and the coach. She is also the “coach on the field”. It is her responsibility to give players direction and keep the team focused on the task at hand. Away from the field, she should represent the team in positive ways. Other players and community members should see the captain as a representative of what all players in the program should strive to be.

Guidelines: There are many ways to lead others. Although I will make several suggestions about how to lead, one key component is that you need to be yourself. You may need to be a better version of yourself, but acting like someone else is not the answer.

• ·        Arrow to the Action: Inherent to the word leader is the idea of going first. A captain/leader should never ask someone else to do something that they are not willing to do themselves. Captains set the example. If they lead by saying but not doing, they will be found out eventually.
• ·        We before Me: A captain needs to put the good of the group before the good for herself. The role of captain is one of giving and not receiving. It requires a person who can control their desire for individual recognition. It does not mean that the captain receives no individual attention, but the team comes first and she knows that.
• ·        The Diplomat: As the liaison between the team and the coach, the captain needs to understand what problems need to be brought to the coach and which need to be handled within the team. She is not a spy or an informant, but a representative that is the voice and ears of the team.

Not all coaches will view the captain in the way that I do, so it will be important to understand the role under your particular coach. It is possible that your coach only wants captains to do the coin toss. If that is the situation, recognize that you can do more. Despite your coach’s view of the role, your teammates may be looking for more from their captain.

If captain is a role that you aspire to hold at some point, look at the leaders that you respect. Take stock of the attributes and actions of those leaders and assimilate the positives into your personality when possible.  Remember something else.  You don’t need the actual title to be a leader.

Most of the time soccer is a noun but today I’m going to use it as a verb.  Of course when you are creating a new word, it’s important to define it.  Here is my explanation of the term.

The action of “soccering” is not the act of playing soccer.  We already know how to say and do that.  And NO it doesn’t mean acting like you’re injured when no one did anything to you.  The action of soccering is the real life application of the virtues that are possessed within the game.  In soccer, players must make real time decisions about what to do, based on the stimuli that they take in from both teammates and opponents in order to achieve the outcomes of simultaneously reaching a goal while defending their own.  The soccer paradigm puts the impetus of decision onto eleven individuals acting as a collective rather than following the pre-scripted orders of an overseer.  Although positioning and style of play may be directed, principles and judgment are the main directors of decisions.

America needs to soccer!  It needs to take back the very impetus that this country was founded upon.  Regular people doing things as a collective that move us all forward and protect us against failing.   We need regular citizens who want to be self-determining within the existing system and help to influence that system.  At the moment we seem to be overwhelmingly passive and extremely willing to look for someone else to be accountable rather than looking to be responsible ourselves.

We can soccer by trying to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.  We can soccer by changing our perspective from a “they” to “we” mentality.  We can soccer by doing the right thing even if we know that no one else will notice but us.  We can soccer by deciding to take a chance on something that might not work, rather than doing it “the way we’ve always done it.”  There are so many ways to soccer but the thing about soccering is that it has to start with you.  You can’t tell someone else to soccer.  You can only show them how by doing it first and being an example.

Below is a long description of the historical paradigms where this thought came from.  If you are inspired to do something right now, then don’t read the bottom, act now, read later.

Why do I believe that America needs to soccer?  The historical successes of the United States have in large part been attributed to a football paradigm.  Land acquisition and forward progress are the hallmarks of the All-American sport.  In the past, both politically and economically, we have pushed forward in the name of progress and it has served us well.  Manifest Destiny is the perfect example. Presidents and other decision-makers laid out a playbook for the American people to score a touchdown on the Pacific coast.  Americans led the charge across the continent through wars and promised economic success, the way football players might listen to a play called from the sidelines.  The Space Race, the Arms Race, the Cold War and Industrial Revolution were all perfectly suited to the football paradigm.  So why change?

The reason for change is that the football paradigm is fundamentally flawed in a few different areas.  The idea of neverending progress is unrealistic.  At some point stock prices level off, profits decline and progress slows and stops.  In a paradigm that preaches forward motion as the truest indicator of success, it is not surprising that we have: insider trading, big CEO bonuses for bailed out companies and strategic layoffs to protect profits.  Individuals, companies and the government have all pushed toward their given marker of success whether it be money, land, power or prestige.  These success markers are not inherently evil or negative but their acquisition without thought to the human equation has created an imbalance in our perspective on success.

There are also the separations in the football paradigm.  The coach is the one who calls the plays.  The offense scores the points and the defense stops the other team.  Although all are members of the same team, it is easy to point the finger at another individual or group when things go wrong.  In the Industrial Revolution this system was completely acceptable.  Henry Ford brought forth the assembly line.  He took men who were making fifty cents per day and paid them five dollars per day because of his efficiency.  People were more than willing to be a cog in that machine because it was a better life than what they expected.  They were linemen but were happy to be that.  Now with modern technology and globalization that deal doesn’t work anymore.  That deal is being shipped overseas and no one wants to be a lineman anymore.  Everyone thinks they’re a quarterback and expects to be paid like one.

America needs to soccer because you’re part of the problem and part of the solution.  You’re on the field.  The decisions that you make on a daily basis matter.  The President, the senator, the governor, your boss, your wife, your children, your friends, your teachers are part of it all but so are you.  So before you point the finger, point the thumb.  What can you do today to SOCCER?

Almost nothing lasts forever. We as humans like to believe in forever but it is a concept that may truly be beyond us.  Since our world and our lives are inherently temporary, perhaps we need to embrace it.  Maybe the recognition that the good things in our lives won’t last forever could actually make us appreciate them that much more.  The ups and downs, the ebbs and flows are the natural order of the world.  Heartbeats, sleep, tides and the seasons are all natural cyclical events that add balance to the world.

With my players I often talk about the 12-hour pat on the back. After a winning effort, there is usually a very short window for celebration before it is necessary to look forward to the next challenge.  I tell them to feel good about their accomplishment but they only have about twelve hours to enjoy it.  It is not meant to rob them of the joy but rather to embrace it for the short time that it should truly exist in the forefront.  Breathing artificial life into something that was always meant to be temporary can devalue the experience.  It is the experience and the feeling associated with it that carries the most value.

After the season, they can look back and take stock of all they have done. With any luck they will have several of those moments to remember.  Those memories are about as close as we get to forever.

The beauty of the art of Self-Rejection is that it is so easy. You only need yourself and the dream of something inside of your head. They are your paint and your canvas. Then it is possible to create a beautifully horrible landscape of all of the things that could go wrong. You will be laughed at, shunned, ignored, or defeated. And there it is inside of your head, a masterpiece of nothing. Nothing real at least.

On the other hand, in the real world you can chance real rejection. Perhaps you do get laughed at, shunned, ignored or defeated but maybe you succeed.

The road of self-rejection always leads to regret. The road of taking the chance could lead anywhere but you have to travel it to find out.