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My soccer career started on a team called the Orange Crushers. I didn’t know what “irony” was at seven years old but our name epitomized it. We crushed nothing and it seemed as though our purpose in the league was for us to be crushed by others. My memories of that season are a complete blur except for one game. In one of our final games of the season, we won and I scored. I was so glad when it happened. The other team from town, Blue Bombers, was filled with friends and classmates and they were undefeated. So that lone victory was important for me because I’d received some ribbing at school.  Perhaps that lone victory kept me hanging on despite the poor start to my soccer career.

As the years went on, there was a slow dance that went on between winning and I. One year my team would be a success. The next we were knocked back down a peg. By the time I reached my senior year in high school, I had figured out who I was as a player. I was one of the kids who wouldn’t quit. That was my first year as a complete “success”. Conference and County Championships were the first two real trophies that any of my teams had ever won. As I thought back to that team, I realized that not one player from the Blue Bombers remained. They had all stopped playing soccer or switched to other sports.

Knowing how to lose and not quit or to persevere through tough times are skills that you acquire from a poor start. These skills are invaluable because no one maintains success forever. Using memories of our failures as stepping-stones is the way we make a staircase toward our success. The examples of poor starts are woven throughout the history of the United States. Lincoln, Ford and Carnegie are three that instantly pop to mind but one of my favorites from the present day is Stallone.

When Sylvester Stallone sold the script of Rocky, the studio wanted to make the film but with someone else playing Rocky. At the time he was completely broke and refused a series of offers from the studio for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He stuck to his guns. He knew how to survive and live with failure but he saw this film as his one ticket to ultimate success. So with very long odds, he bet on himself and won. I used to watch the Rocky films regularly when I was in high school. Later I learned just how much the movies mirror Stallone’s life. In Rocky Balboa, Rocky tells his son that life is about “how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” My guess is Stallone learned this early and never forgot.

A poor start is not something to be embarrassed about. It is something to be embraced. The power of a poor start comes in the fact that you know where you began is not where you’re going to end. The power of a poor start comes from realizing that failure did not put poison inside you, it put fire inside you. The only negative to a poor start is if you quit and make your start, your end.

It’s ok to start poorly, if you finish strong.

Pete

Yesterday I described the amazing capability of humans to achieve great things by following in the footsteps of those who have stretched the limits.  Unfortunately there is the other side of that coin.  Although people can stretch their limits to reach amazing heights, there are just as many people digging toward the depths.

Humans have gone through many different periods of existence.  We had the hunting age, the agricultural age, industrial age and possibly the information age.  At the moment we seem to be locked in the entertainment age where the sole desire of people is to be entertained for the moment.

Unfortunately this age lacks substance and gives the power of attention to people who don’t really deserve it.  Honey Boo Boo, Snookie, the Kardashians and others are much like a lollipop or hard candy.  They’re intended to be a quick treat to the senses, not a major part of your diet.

In life there are many types of currency that you will use, two of the most valuable are time and attention.  Spend most of your time and pay most of your attention to the people who matter: family, friends and people of substance.  When you spend time and pay attention to people of substance, much like your diet you become what you consume.

Although you have a ton people being thrust into your face who seem to lower the bar, it is your choice to let them influence you or not.  “Who is more foolish?  The fool or the fool who follows him?” –Obi Wan Kenobi

The perfect excuse is difficult to find.

• It needs to be believable but not overly obvious.
• It needs to take all blame and strategically place it somewhere else.
• It cannot offend or degrade anyone that is important to you.
• It must leave your desire completely intact: I wanted to but I couldn’t because…
• It must be new. Reused excuses get tiresome.
• It does not particularly have to be based in reality.

The problem with the search for the perfect excuse is that we might find it.  Or worse, we might find it and believe it ourselves.

Sexy is a favorite word for a friend and colleague of mine. At times I feel like his use of the word is misplaced, like when Paris Hilton used to describe everything as “HOT”. In the end I know why words like HOT, COOL and SEXY become the go to words for some people. Even if they are slightly misused, they get the reaction of attention. So I am going for the attention grab but I’m going to take it a step further and argue that Development and Maintenance are SEXY!

First the attention grab, what are the things out there that warrant the word SEXY? Maybe your favorite model in a swimsuit is SEXY. Your favorite sports car could be SEXY. A move or a wonder striker by your favorite player could warrant the word SEXY. All of these and other things could be considered SEXY. And in our Instagram and Youtube World it is easy to pull up SEXY and admire it almost anywhere you want. You can share SEXY in an instant. Friends and possibly family will get a chance to see that SEXY thing on your computer, phone or tablet. We know SEXY when we see it. Or do we?

Sexy isn’t an accident. It doesn’t happen all on its own. It takes time. That photo or video clip doesn’t show where sexy comes from. It only shows the end product. That model went through years of development where she didn’t look like she does now. Then the maintenance involved in keeping a body firm, hair flowing, and other hair tweased or waxed away. The sports car took several engineers countless hours to develop that particular model, not to mention its predecessors. Then the factory workers had to sweat and toil to put the plans into physical form, pouring hot metal into pieces to be assembled with plastic and fabric. The player spent days or months by himself with the ball. The end of practice for most was the beginning of practice for him. The idea, that someone else might be doing more than he was, kept him on the field, always sharpening the saw.

Development and maintenance are sexy because they are the start. They are the streams that eventually flow into Niagara Falls. No one wants to see the streams but you would notice if the streams weren’t there because the falls would dry up. The root may be under ground and dirty but the fruit is nothing without the root. So I implore you to be sexy, so that you can eventually be SEXY.

There are many things out there that I’m sure you would like to have, do or be. The only question I have is “Why not you?” Is there really anything insurmountable standing in your way? Who is really trying to stop you? Or do you stop yourself before you even start?

If you’re really afraid, start out small. Do something that seems like it would be hard. Once you’ve done that, do something that seems really hard. Then do something that seems like it would be impossible. I hope that you have some good failures through this process and you learn that failure isn’t fatal.

No one wants failure. It is the “not so attractive” girl that has had a crush on you since the second grade. She is the only one at the school dance who asks you for the slow dance. So what do you do? Reject her and wait for opportunity to shine on you? No, you dance.

You learn from your time with failure. She is not your ideal partner but almost no one starts off with ideal. Besides if you were not willing to dance with failure, you wouldn’t know what to do if ideal asked you to dance anyway.

Fantasy sports are a popular pass time between many people.  It is no longer a young male adult game but something that any sports fan can attempt.  For me, the only one that has ever held my attention was fantasy football.  The scoring is easy to follow and the games are only once per week.   The concept behind fantasy sports is a simple one, try to compile the best team that you can in order to earn the most points each week.  There are many different perspectives on drafting players but the overwhelming concept is filling your team with as many “superstars/point getters” as you possibly can.

I have friends and colleagues who spend hours or even days planning out their draft selections.  These choices are important.  Getting the right players off the bench each week and into the game is the key to survival.  It is natural for players to be dropped to the bench or even released from the team when more desirable players are available.

It’s easy to see when talking about sports and fantasy that compiling the best team in order to win is important.  That you would drop players that are holding you back and look to add players that will bring you forward.  Why don’t we do the same thing with our friends and acquaintances?

In many ways our friends are part of our team.  They not only support us but they also shape us.  There are acceptable norms within relationships.  Depending on your friend group, it may be unacceptable for you to smoke cigarettes.  Or if you are part of a different group, it may be expected that you smoke.  These acceptable norms are not limited to simple things like smoking.  They extend out to your expectations of life.

When you add a player like Peyton Manning to your fantasy team, you do it because he is going to get you closer to what you want because he’s an all-star.  Take a look at your friends.  Are they all-stars?  Are they helping you get to where you want to go?  Do they hold you back?

Like it or not, your friends are influencing who you are.  Did you pick them consciously and for the right reasons?  Are you going in the same direction?  Can you get where you want to go with them around?

Perhaps some of your friends need to be put on the bench or cut from the team.  This should not be a decision that is made quickly.  People can serve all kinds of purposes, so do your homework on why your friends are your friends.

Also in a very real sense the internet has made fantasy football possible when it comes to the people who influence you.  In the past, you might have been limited to your town or school.  Now you can listen to leaders of almost any kind, speak about almost any topic.  Who are you listening to today?