It’s Mr. Baxter from 7th grade science class that started my tendency toward being a spelling/grammar Nazi. Two times receiving a 99.5% based on spelling errors was enough frustration to get me to pay attention. I fully recognize that language is a fluid and live thing. Every day we can influence it for the better or worse. Outside of church, very few people are using “thine” and “thou”. These words have been morphed and replaced with their more recent counterparts. Change is not my concern. It is laziness and apathy.
Widespread education and technological advances have democratized access to knowledge and the overwhelming response of the public has been indifference. There was a time in this country when only a select few could hope to become educated. The huge supply of knowledge seems to have caused an equally huge plummet in demand. While this lowering of expectation has happened in the realm of language, it is just as obvious in personal health, civic responsibility and many other areas of life. As the challenges of life have become easier, we seem to be less inclined to meet them head on. Instead we have found a degree of comfort in social proof. If “everyone else” is holding a low standard, then it makes us feel that we are OK.
What if you were the one to hold the line for yourself? Not to tell the world that it is wrong but to do what is right for yourself and those around you. If you held the line on your health, your marriage, your relations with people or yourself; what kind of a ripple effect could you have on your family, community or even the world? Even if no one else took up your particular cause, how would it feel to be the answer to your own problem? Deciding for yourself, exactly what you would and would not stand for could be liberating. Rather than looking at those around you to find the path of least resistance, you could look inward to find the strength to hack out a new trail. Our world is filled with more possibility and less hardship than every before, so are you going to sit there and bask in the glow of what our forefathers built? Or are you going to do your own work? The choice is yours! And that is probably the biggest kicker of all, we get to choose to step up or not.
So I hope that you find within yourself a desire for better than most. Be a leader by doing first. Utherwhys whee May knot bee aybl two reklame wut weave lust!
Make today better.
Pete
If you go to a fine restaurant and order a steak, you will probably enjoy a fine meal and receive no side-ward glances from anyone. The location and timing are everything. On some level you must realize that months earlier, that steak was part of cow. If you got dressed up, went out into the field and bit the cow’s ass, you’d definitely get a reaction especially from the cow. There’s a place and time for almost everything. Getting that combination right is the difference between being cheered and ridiculed. To a certain extent, Galileo was considered a “cow-biter”. The things that he was saying and doing were so far ahead of their time that no one understood them. He was even excommunicated from the church for his beliefs. People were not ready to hear what he was saying because they were too invested in their worldview.
Mike – “This is Trent. We call him Double Down.”
The other night I had dinner with a former student/player of mine. We ran into each other a few months back. Our common love of books and podcasts started the conversation. He’s freshly out of college and we’ve been talking about life and career lately. This dinner was a eye opening conversation for me and I’m hoping that this post will help someone who may be in the same spot as my friend.
Seinfeld is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. It has so many memorable episodes and characters. Despite my love for the series, I’m not a huge fan of the early episodes. Many of the episodes, I just don’t find funny at all or they feel forced. This is not surprising in the slightest. It took those early episodes in order to get to the later ones. Early failures lead to better episodes later. A few of the story-lines were even repeated with better effect the second time around. The early episodes of Seinfeld were not a good indication of where the series was going.
Despite all of the examples of enduring early hardship, there is still a pervasive desire for instantaneous results. People want to be hit right away, if not sooner. The perception of overnight success is usually due to the glossing over of the hard work done before the big break. Sylvester Stallone was a breakout start with Rocky! After he was a starving actor who had to deny a big pay day in order to star in his own movie. J.K. Rowling had the blockbuster Harry Potter book series followed by movies. After she was on welfare and had her book rejected by many publishers. Most of us are looking for the triumph without the trials. It seems that it doesn’t usually work that way.
About a year ago, I was having a discussion with a friend and she said she had hit “bock-rottom”. It was a moment of mental dyslexia. I really liked the word but wasn’t sure what it should mean. This morning on my run it became obvious what bock-rottom was. Rock-bottom is the place lowest point that a person can hit. “Hitting bock-rottom” is the act of hitting your lowest point, bouncing up and hitting the lowest point again. It is so disorienting that it mixes up the letters.
It’s a longstanding phrase in advertising, “Sex Sells!” It sells things that have nothing to do with it whatsoever. Sex or the perception of sex has been used to advertise cigarettes, alcohol, deodorant, shampoo and so much more. The reason is that it works. If someone is able to link your desire for sex to their product, they’ve increased their chances of making a sale exponentially. So with this all in mind, I’m going to try to sell you on your best life in sexual terms. This sales pitch will start with the less desirable and move up from there.
At one point in my life, ketchup was not a condiment, it was an ingredient. Ketchup sandwiches were a staple of my diet. Any undesirable food such as broccoli could be made digestible with an ample serving of ketchup. Obviously this is not an ideal system for a balanced diet. It was more of a survival tactic for an extremely picky eater rather than a conscious decision about eating good food. Eventually I learned that ketchup was not the answer to all of my food issues. It wasn’t versatile enough to be an everyday ingredient.
Despite the extremely broad reach that the internet gives us, people seem to feel as though they are at the effect of their circumstances. If circumstances were what made people, then a frail asthmatic doesn’t become a president revered for his adventures. A stutterer doesn’t become one of the most recognizable voices of his era. And an actor with a partially paralyzed face doesn’t become the face of multiple film series. The truth is that we all know that circumstances are only part of the recipe. It is just easier to use poor circumstances as an excuse for poor results. Or a lack of resources as a reason for no results. You may not have everything you need to make today great but you have the most important thing and that is you. You’re the ingredient that you’ve been waiting for! If you’ll step up to the challenge and be what today needs.
In a world where almost anyone can have 1,000 or more followers, who is doing the leading? It seems as though there should be a connection between the two: leaders and followers. Unfortunately the act of following has such a low threshold for involvement that many have it as the default option. Following is easy, semi-rewarding and comes with little to no responsibility. The problem is that just because people are following, doesn’t mean that anyone intends to lead. Following the car in front of you is a good strategy if you’re going to the same place. It’s a horrible strategy if your intentions are different than the person you’re following. Leadership should be an intention, not meandering with followers in tow. So the question is, who should be a leader? You!
The sport of skiing is one that I did not acquire until I was well into my twenties. My wife took me for the first time while we were engaged. I enjoy it but because I learned to ski later in life, I feel a certain amount of hesitance about pushing my limits. Skiing is an activity that allows for a good amount of self-policing. Generally speaking, there are no official representatives of the mountain telling you what trails to take. You need to have enough self-awareness to know if you’re a green circle, a blue square or a black diamond. Incorrectly gauging your level could have disastrous consequences. Despite this possible peril, most people make it down the mountain unscathed because they accurately police themselves.
Huryk Unlimited 