Are you the bow? The one who stays in the same spot and gets put under regular tension. You do basically all of the work but are a tool being used by someone else.
Are you the arrow? The one with direction who gets to go places and reach targets or miss them. Regardless you are getting out there. Staying inert is not your thing, in fact it makes you quiver (hahahaha).
It’s not so much that one is better than the other. Both are necessary parts of the equation. However the perspective on how you interact with your world is important. We’d all like to believe that we are flying free toward our targets. That freedom is found in perspective. Kings have been slaves and slaves have been kings. The crown itself is powerless. It is useless on the head of one whose spirit is crushed under its weight. The chains and walls also cannot hold the person who is free where it counts. So go fly before someone puts you under major tension to propel them toward their bullseye!
A toaster is a useful piece of machinery at breakfast time. Its identity is so certain that it bears the name of what it does. A smartphone on the other hand has many functions. It can take calls, search for information, teach you another language and thousands of other things. It’s just horrible at making toast.
My toaster!
There is no shame in being a toaster if you place yourself in the right spot. In fact you can be the most valuable item in the right kitchen. There is also no value to being a smartphone in the wrong environment. A place with no cell towers and no electricity renders this ubiquitous tool inert. It becomes a paperweight or a good skipping stone.
In the end it is not what you can do or what you cannot. The skills that you have need to match the life that you lead or want to lead. So it is up to you to decide. Is your identity the perfect size for your life? If you’re a toaster, then be the best damn toaster ever and find the right kitchen for your output. Don’t envy the smartphone, it can’t do what you can!
Childhood should be a magical time where kids have the ability to believe in certain things. They should be able to believe in their ability to be an astronaut or a cowboy or an astronaut cowboy. Blind faith dwindles as we gain experience. As a child, there was a time where Santa Claus was something that I believed in without any doubt. He was a real person who had semi-magical powers and brought gifts for me and my brothers on Christmas. Now I believe in the concept of Santa Claus but not the man. The man no longer delivers on the promise of my childhood. He does not show up with presents. However the feeling and belief in what is represented is still there. It has morphed into something much more general and less strong. The certainty has been replaced by a version of realism/skepticism.
If a man in a red suit shows up in my house early Christmas morning, he’s more likely to get the business end of a baseball bat than cookies. This reaction is based on thirty five years of non-belief. The question is not whether that momentary reaction is right or not. The true dilemma is how long do I hold onto my “realistic” belief if the evidence is in his favor. Would I bear witness to convict Santa if his story held up? My hope would be no, that I am able to change my beliefs about what is possible based on new information. We should all have this ability. However most of the time, we are not dealing with a court case. We are living moment to moment making gut reactions on beliefs.
The best version of “A Christmas Carol” is the one with George C. Scott in my opinion.
In all likelihood, you’ll not be face to face with Santa in a few days. However you are going to be face to face with yourself often. Although your chances of becoming an astronaut cowboy are pretty slim (see if Elon Musk has a need), there are probably pieces of yourself that were discarded in the past. An optimism and self-belief that you could use in that new endeavor. The child inside of you believed that you could be anything and while some childish things need to be left behind, there is no reason that you can’t mix that sense of possibility with a dash of common sense. Most of the time that youthful spirit inside of you is trying to leave presents under your tree, not rob you of everything that you have. So put down the bat for a moment and see who it is that’s coming down the chimney in your head. Perhaps the ghost of your childish past is going to fill your stocking with something that you desperately need.
Singfish! Wouldn’t that be the opposite of humbug?
Winter has mostly descended on Virginia. So our fireplace has gotten a fair amount of use recently. Although the TV will try to sell us all on the idea that a single log can burn for hours on end with the perfect flame, it’s just not true. This type of false fire advertising leads to people buying fake logs from the store because the shame of not being able to build the perfect fire is too much too bear. Obviously I’m being ridiculous now but there is a disconnect between an effective fire and starting a fire. Big logs are not the start of a quality fire. They come later. The beginnings of any great (non cheating) fire is a bunch of twigs. Once they catch, it is relatively easy to add slightly larger pieces until the log is ablaze. The fact that we rarely have to build a fire anymore creates a disconnect with natural order of the world.
Twigs, sticks and logs were all harmed in the taking of this photo!
In our own lives with American Idol and get rich quick schemes, it is easy to forget that most things that we want to build only require twigs at first. The idea of making a million dollars should be preceded by making a dollar then another. Twigs are everywhere and we overlook them in our lives because we want the blazing fire now. Each of us needs to realize that the big logs or dreams are never going to self-combust. They each need those little twigs or actions to get things started. There is a certain amount of pride that needs to be taken in finding the twigs and small branches to add to the fire. Being smart about not adding the big log too early because the pressure will only snuff out the small flame.
Although it’s possible for a person to become obsessed with their small fire based on twigs, I’ve found that more people are sitting in the dark with their big log and magnifying glass hoping. These pieces could all work at some point but their combination just doesn’t. Knowing where you are in the process and what you need to get the next stage of the fire going is crucial. Your blaze is coming if you build it up right!
When my grandfather was a young man, he got into a fight at a softball game. It wasn’t a league or anything, just a friendly game where the two teams agreed that the losers would pay for the keg of beer. The odd thing about the situation was that he didn’t get into a fight with someone from the other team. He got into a fight with someone on his own team, for not trying hard enough. A lot has changed since my grandfather was a young man and I’m not a fan of fighting but this story has always stuck with me.
The kids that I encounter today have the term “try hard” for someone who puts out excessive effort in a situation. While I understand the desire for someone not to go too far in a situation that doesn’t call for it, I feel that the term weakens the “intensity muscle.” The social stigma of caring too much may have gone too far in the wrong direction. Balance is needed of course but much like the chastising of “nerds” was stupid, this might be worse. Putting someone down for being a “nerd” was an idiotic way for less intelligent people to shame the smart. As foolish as this was, the insult of “try hard” is probably more dangerous because it can be used much more pervasively. It is not just one group who fall victim to it but anyone can.
So I beg of you! Try hard! Try the absolute best that you can! You only get one shot at each day of your life. The thought that you might come up short because you were shamed into giving half effort is a scary proposition. That shame is only coming your way because the critics are afraid to try and fail. So leave it all out there on the field or my grandfather is going to kick your ass!
Quotes like this captivate our imagination because they simplify things to a singular thought. LIFE (and especially your life) is much more nuanced and complicated. Sayings like this are easy to put on posters and Instagram posts but much more difficult to live up to, especially when they are not true. In this case, the truth is that winners quit things all the time. Winners quit making excuses! Winners quit holding low standards for themselves! Winner quit doing unimportant things! Yes! This more nuanced approach is less evident and harder to put on a poster. However it is definitely more powerful. No longer is an average person like you or me under the pressure of “NEVER.”
Abraham Lincoln probably didn’t say this!
“Knowledge is power!” is the next lie that I’d like to unpack. Knowledge is not power. It is is only potential power. Knowledge without action is like gasoline without a flame. It has the potential to make a big explosion but is inert on its own. The person with the knowledge must do something with it in order to extract its power. The equation for power is work over time. No doubt that in the real world, knowledge can reduce the time and the work in order to make that equation more powerful. Knowledge is something but it’s far from the only thing. Many people scour books and the internet for all the knowledge that they can find but their inaction keeps them stagnant.
So as you encounter these sayings, dig a little deeper because under the surface is all of the value. Think it through and make it apply to you. Grandiose is often not practical. We all need tools that we can use, not just sayings that look good next to the picture of a famous person. Life is supposed to be meaningful, not just quotable!
For years I’ve been saying it to my teams, “Winning is not always success and losing is not always failure!” Now this sticks right in the craw of many people who want to put trophies on mantles and points on the board. The problem is that this one metric doesn’t tell the entire story. It’s just the most obvious thing that people measure. It’s also the reason that I REALLY REALLY dislike Manchester City in the English Premier League. We need to dig a little deeper to uncover the metrics by which true success can be measured.
My statement about success and failure is usually followed up by a thought exercise. I’ll ask my high school players, “If we played Arsenal and lost 1-0, were we successful?” The answer is always a resounding “YES!” Then I ask, “If we were to play against a U8 team and won 1-0, were we successful?” The answer is always a resounding “NO!” “Could we even characterize that as a ‘failure’?” Again the answer is always unanimous, “YES!” So if a loss can be success and a victory can be failure, how do we truly measure these contradictory outcomes that are so integral to how we feel about ourselves? It is simple but not easy.
Success is the distance between someone’s resources and their results. Many of the components may be subjective but we have the exemplars written in the fabric of our culture. It is no wonder that Rocky continues to be a classic after all of these years. That movie personifies this idea about success. Rocky has almost none of the resources but uses what he has to get unexpected results. Conversely Apollo has all of the resources and barely gets the minimum expected. These may be fictitious characters but these stories play out in the real world everyday. Possibly even in your own life.
Now that you have a definition for success. Take it, use it, run with it. Measure yourself against it. Are you really succeeding or are you beating up on the U8 team because it’s easy? With the resources that you have at your disposal, are you living above or below that line? Recognition is the first step to moving in a new direction. Then put on the gloves and start swinging.
A good friend of mine had a great night tonight. He is a high school basketball coach in Iowa and they won their first game of the season. The victory is more impressive because they did not win a single game last season. As I’ve known this man for many years, I know that he has been selling an idea to his team for months. The idea that they are better than their record from last year. I am sure that he has been trying to convince his players that they could win. While I like to believe that everyone is as optimistic as I am, there were probably a few of his players that believed he was full of it. The truth is that he was, up until tonight.
Magellan, Galileo, Tesla, the Wright Brothers and yes! John Windham were all kidding themselves at one point. At least that is what the people around them tend to believe. The reason is that it is easier to be pessimistic. It takes almost no effort at all to see the obstacles. The struggle of believing is just too hard for many people to bear. We’ve become enamored with the ideas of predictability and consistency. As we go through our lives, the monkey wrenches that get thrown into the gears of our perfectly planned days cause major upsets and anxiety. Everything is supposed to work like Starbucks where things are predictable but make you feel special at the same time. Believing something into existence is just too much work! What if I fail!?!?!? What if I’m full of it?!?!?! You will and you are. The people above were all branded fools up until and often beyond their successes.
If it’s all bull$#%t until it’s not, then what are you willing to be mocked for? The pessimists are always going to be there, no matter what. So the key is believing in something more than you care about what people will say. Time and tenacity are all it takes to change the impossible to the possible. Now is your time!
This thought hit me the other night as I was watching “A Few Good Men”. Tom Cruise’s character is a lawyer who everyone expects to take the easy route. He has a reputation for plea bargains and that’s what they expect him to do this time around. No one is waiting for him to do anything great.
Our lives are made up of moments and they stack upon one another. We get used to our particular level of performance. Whether your best is better or worse than someone else’s is largely irrelevant. People expect that you are going to show up like you. When you fall short of your normal level, the people who care about you might worry. Your enemies may chuckle but most people are too self-interested to even notice.
The thing that no one is waiting for is for you to be great. It will make your friends uncomfortable because if you do something great, then they feel inadequate. Your enemies want you to fail, not succeed and the general bystander needs more mediocrity or ineptitude from others to make them feel better about themselves. So under no circumstances is anyone waiting for you to do something great.
So it all boils down to you and what you want for yourself. The moments of your life belong to you. There will be peaks and valleys for each of us. The question becomes what level do you want to be your average? Who do you expect to show up every day when you look in the mirror? If no one else is waiting for you to be great, will you demand that of yourself? Or will you live up to the expectations that people have for you at the moment? These are questions that only you can answer. Regardless of whether you do so consciously or not, your actions will tell the story. So what are you waiting for? Make today happen and if at all possible, make it great!
It was the latest thing! The internet was on fire with different videos. Everyone from celebrities to little kids were taking part in this craze. For about two weeks, I saw it go through the entire life cycle. The birth, life and death all happened in such a short period of time that it was impossible to miss it. It didn’t last long enough for anyone to care that it was gone. Of course I’m talking about the “Harlem Shake”. If you had something else in mind, that’s not a problem because I could have gone with other examples. Flappy bird, dabbing, fidget spinners, bottle flipping, etc. Each had their own amount of time in the spotlight but none lasted too long. Fads are not new and by no means am I suggesting that they should go away. My fear is that everything has become a fad.
As a child in the 80’s, I saw the rise and fall of so many fads I could “gag myself with a spoon!” I had Bugle Boy Jeans a year after they were cool. My mullet was never quite right and convincing my mother to buy jeans that already had rips in them was unthinkable. Even though I didn’t fully partake in any of these fads, I was influenced by the culture around me enough to notice what was “in”. As I said previously, it’s not that fads are new. Each of the fads that came and went through my childhood stuck around long enough to be remembered. None were life altering but they usually hung around long enough to get associated with a year or part of life. The life expectancy of a fad was long enough to make it memorable and possibly meaningful.
In the age of the internet, the viral nature of media has caused fads to appear out of nowhere. They disappear almost as quickly. Very few cultural phenomena have the “staying power” to hang on for a year. Often the life of a fad is measured in weeks. While this isn’t a problem on its own, let’s face it, the Harlem Shake didn’t deserve much more of our time. The issue is the cultural impact on our perception of life expectancy. People have become accustomed to the idea of things disappearing quickly. So things that matter or require time to develop and flourish get swept aside because they don’t peak early enough or burn slower than people’s comfort level.
In a world filled with fads that seem like mental candy, have we lost our ability to recognize the things of substance? Are we so accustomed to anticipating the new that we are unable to determine if the thing in front of us deserves the time to develop? Our minds are like muscles in so many ways. I fear that these short spurts of attention are training us for the wrong game. Most of the things that really matter in life are the result of long term thinking. If that long term muscle never gets exercised, it will atrophy. Eventually we will only be equipped to deal with the short term, prepackaged, watered down version of life. While it might be easier, I don’t think it will be more fulfilling. So be aware! Some things, people and situations in your life deserve more than just a passing glance. You need to develop the awareness to recognize them and have the patience muscle to see them through. There will always be another shiny thing laying in the road. Most of it is just trash that you’ll discard. Most of the things of value require some mining!
Huryk Unlimited 