Tag: motivation

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Better Mediocrity

Pete Huryk

mediocreMediocre means “ordinary, average, middle-of-the-road, unexceptional, lackluster and forgettable.”  In many ways, I would put myself in the category of mediocre.  I’m 5 foot 9 inches tall and weigh 190 pounds.  My bench press and squat numbers are nothing impressive.  I got a 1060 on my SATs (the old version).  My yearly income is nothing to “write home about”.  By most accounts, I am pretty mediocre.

The thought of mediocrity has been one that has entered my mind several times over the past year.  The realization of my own mediocrity was nothing new.  I have little chance to become exceptional in most areas.  Even for my age, the benchmarks of excellence are pretty high.  This divide creates a chasm that stagnates improvement.  With the possibility of excellence off the table, it is easy to see why so many people lose their drive.  However it is actually in this chasm that I believe we actually have the greatest of societal opportunities.  As a collective (Athletes, Americans, Humans), we can choose to strive for better mediocrity.

In the past, I have written about the “Bannister Effect” and how the breaking of new ground creates possibilities for others to follow.  That is a concept that I still endorse wholeheartedly.  However as I thought about my own mediocrity, I came to realize that we need a “second wave”.  There must be another push from the middle.  The outliers pulling forward will only have an effect on those that are close to their level.  For example, the 10s only pull the 9s forward but the effect is almost unnoticeable by the time that it reaches the critical mass in the middle.

This second wave needs to be created as an individual and a  collective undertaking.  The mediocre individual competes for the most part with himself.  Improving with a partially selfish desire to take a step up one rung on the ladder.  Despite this selfish motivation, the individual also recognizes his membership of a collective (Athletes, Americans, Humans).  The “mediocre Americans” are getting better.  The middle of the road changes from 5 to 7 and there is a pride in self and the collective.

Better mediocrity would change so many things about our lives and expectations.  Perhaps mediocre would no longer be a slight insult but rather an identifiable force pushing the forerunners to greater excellence.  If you happen to be mediocre, choose to be better mediocre!

Pete

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Know Thyself (Protect Your Baby)

Pete Huryk

emily 60608 010This is by far one of my favorite pictures.  It seemingly represents a father “asleep on the job”.  The parenting books say that you shouldn’t do this.  However I have this identical photo with my son and I never had a mishap.  There are many reasons why I love this picture.  One is that it is a reminder of a period of time when I learned a lot about myself.

The learning curve for a first-time (and even second time) parent is pretty steep.  Your life is filled with turmoil and you work on less sleep than seems humanly possible.  A key to survival as a parent is self-knowledge.  My wife and I were a good team through the infant stages because we knew our own and the other’s strengths.  My cuddle naps were a piece of the puzzle that made a difficult time more manageable.  I knew that I wouldn’t roll because the cargo was too precious.  Raising a child is a mixture of trial and error with a complete belief that you will not fail no matter what.

Babies teach you a lot about yourself because you can’t bargain with them.  They let you know their needs on a constant basis.  Your complaints, excuses and convenience do not matter to a new born baby.  They will test your limits and then retest them the next day.  Ultimately you end up finding strength that you never thought you had before.  It is inevitable because you have no other choice.

What is your baby?  Is it making the varsity team?  Is it singing a solo in the concert?  Is it running a marathon?  Is it asking that special someone to prom?  Is it finishing that book that you started six months ago?

Take care of your baby.  Keep it warm and safe.  Feed it with the best fuel that you can find.  Help it get on its feet.  Stand it back up when it falls flat on its face.  Help it find its legs and walk on its own.  Protect it from the ridicule of others.  Watch it grow and be proud of what it becomes because it is yours.

Sea Isle City 089Take care of your baby!  Even when it throws up in your face!

Pete

 

 

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The Fog and The Fear

Pete Huryk

DelawareMemSunday morning I drove from Maryland to a soccer tournament in South Jersey.  I crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge at about 7:30 am.  This is not a major problem but I have a fear of heights.  When I cross high bridges, I usually get a tingling sensation in my legs.  It is a physical reaction to my mental picture of the bridge coincidentally collapsing as my car crosses it.  This fear is not debilitating, just a sensation that I have to move past.   There was a heavy fog that morning and I could not see any indication of height.  Strangely enough there was no tingling in my legs despite knowing that the height was there.  This was extremely odd because the tingling has been consistent for years.

Fog is nothing more than a dense accumulation of water molecules that clouds our vision slightly.  The fog allowed my vision to focus on the road ahead and nothing else.  It’s such as simple thing but it is profound as well.  The thing that we fear is very rarely staring us right in the face.  It is usually on the periphery and we allow it to distract us just enough to cause accidents or immobilize us.  The fog didn’t take away the possibility of danger, it only blurred my acknowledgement of it.  As you set a goal, fog your fear as well.

Make your goal ever-present.  Put it in front of you in pictures, words and emotions.  Print it out in 72 pt font.  Ingrain its presence into your consciousness like a hot rivet being driven into a steel beam.  Then take your fears and put them out there in the fog.  If you’re a picture person, put the photo of your fear behind wax paper.  Print it in 4 pt font, so that by comparison that fear is extremely small.  It is acknowledged but not as big as the goal.    Fear is almost never completely extinguished.  The key is to make it an ember rather than a bonfire.  Embers are easy to ignore.  Fog your fear and focus on your goal.

Go for that big thing today, tomorrow and the next day!

Pete

 

Blogpost, self-reliance

The V.O.C.

Pete Huryk

VocIn today’s high-speed world, people use acronyms more often than ever before.  In the past people hoped to be the MVP, a VIP or the CEO.    Now we are saying IDK, LOL, BRB and other things that I don’t even feel comfortable writing in acronym form.  Today I’ve decided to coin my own acronym.  It applies to many people and even applies to me at times.  Rather than being a VIP, we seem intent upon being the V.O.C.

The VOC is the Victim Of Circumstance.  It’s a really tough place to live.  Circumstances keep piling up on these individuals that they don’t like.  The world has thrust all of this upon them.  They don’t like their job, school, boyfriend/girlfriend, lack of popularity, lack of influence or prospects for the future.  These people have it, THE WORST EVER!.  Go ahead and try to tell them about a bad situation in your life and they can find one from theirs that is ten times worse.  The worst thing in most cases about being a member of the VOC club is that you have to choose to be a member!

That is one heck of a choice to make.  There are many things in this world that we should choose to be, a victim should not be one of them.  The problem with being a victim is the lack of power.  It is by nature a position of weakness and defense.  At some point the VOC decided that it was better to be weak, defensive and blameless rather than taking responsibility for themselves.  This is a dangerous bargain to make because eventually it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  When you are wearing brown tinted glasses, everything in the world looks like feces.

So rather than being the VOC, become the DOC.  The Director Of Circumstances is not completely in control of circumstance but acts more like a traffic cop.  The DOC decides what he or she will let pass and what needs to be stopped and evaluated further.  The traffic cop is separate from the traffic.  They may cause it, they may alleviate it but they are not the traffic.  Ultimately, they can usually move to a different intersection if their position becomes too much to handle.  It is a game of choice.

Direct your life today!  Don’t be a victim within it!

Pete

 

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“Daddy, Watch This!”

Pete Huryk

“Daddy, Watch this!” is a phrase that I heard about two hundred times yesterday.  My seven year old daughter was saying it as she performed an underwater back-flip or some other trick in the pool.  The consistent request got me thinking about the request.  While she was extremely happy to do the trick on her own, it became even more important that she share it with me.  The perfection of her delivery did not matter, each attempt was important even the “failures”.

As she flipped in the water, I thought about my students, adult friends and myself.  We generally primp, polish and perfect everything before we put it on display.  The obvious reason for this is a form of fear.  We have failure shamed out of us by the time we are teenagers.  The unfortunate thing is that failure is a necessary ingredient to all progress.  Although public display of failure isn’t particularly necessary, I’m not sure many of us seek out failure in private either.  In a society where no one ever fails, we stand still and become spectators watching the same old tired tricks that we’ve seen before.

So now what do you do?  What do I do?  We fail forward.  We try to top what we’ve done before with the childlike optimism that we can.  Then as we get closer and closer to our coveted goal, we can scream at the top of our lungs “WATCH THIS!”  Perhaps we’ll fall on our faces.  However I’d rather be face-down ready to try again than be standing on the sidelines with an empty heart and only criticism to offer the world.

Go fail forward today!

Pete

Blogpost, self-reliance

The Scumbag and Tragedy Report

Pete Huryk

100_9372My son’s first birthday party is a memory that I will never forget.  The unfortunate thing is that the reason that particular birthday sticks in my memory is not the cake, the presents or the joy of my wonderful little boy celebrating his first year on this planet.  It is memorable because of what happened the next day.  The next day a student at Virginia Tech killed 32 people and wounded 17 others.  The two events are forever coupled in my mind and at the time shook the very foundation of who I am as a person.

In the aftermath of the shootings, there were several practical things that needed to be done.  I was teaching at school less than two hours from VA Tech.  We instituted protocols for locking down the campus and dealt with the grief of students.  There was a lingering problem that I had trouble reconciling.  I had an extreme amount of guilt for bringing a child into a world that was capable of such evil.  After celebrating the life of one of the people that I love the most, this act of evil made me question what I had done.  The tragedy in Charleston is the latest reminder that the evil of man is still here.  My heart goes out to the people who have lost someone in these senseless acts.  The victims, their families and friends are the only ones that matter now.  I know they are hurting much worse than I was over eight years ago but I have hope for them and us.  For my own part, I was able to pull myself out of the pit of despair that I had created for myself.  There were two words that brought me out: focus and hope.

By focusing on the evil of the world, I had made it my reality.  It is an easy thing to do at times because the media shows us regularly what horrible people can do.  This is not particularly their fault because we pay more attention to tragedy and they are giving us what “gets the ratings”.  However I choose to focus on other things now.  I see joy in my daughter’s eyes for big events like “field day”.  My eyes turn to Mrs. Lobby, the kindergarten teacher, who pours her heart and soul into little minds every day.  You’ll never see those things on the “scumbag and tragedy” report in the evening but they still exist and that is the world that I live in.

My other word is hope.  I have hope and confidence that the good in people will spread and win.  It is my influence on my children and the other people that I have contact with that I can affect the future.  I am a small drop in a large ocean but I hope that my small ripple combine with those of others can create a tidal wave of good that reaches around the world.  We must find the good in each other and expose that to the rest of the world.

As my final thought, I’d like for you to imagine two pitchers and a large bucket.  In one pitcher is red colored water and in the other there is blue.  If you only pour red into the bucket, the bucket water will be all red.  If you pour equal of both, you get purple.  The water has no choice what color it is.  However we have a choice what we put out into the world.  If you want the world to be greedy, selfish, hateful and driven by negative thoughts and emotion, then put those out there.  Recognize that you have a choice.  I don’t have rose colored glasses on and I’m not going to break into a verse of “kumbaya”.  The only thing that I want you to realize is that you have a choice.  The world is not inherently evil nor is it inherently good.  People have choices.

Be good to one another.

Pete

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The Pepsi Challenge

Pete Huryk

pepsiLast century (specifically in the 1980s) Pepsi had commercials and other advertising with the “Pepsi Challenge”.  An “unbiased” consumer was asked to try two different colas and give their preference.  Of course the on-camera participants always chose Pepsi.  Perhaps it was what they truly liked or the entire thing was rigged in some way.  In all honesty it doesn’t matter that much to me because I preferred Pepsi to Coke without the seeing choices of others.  It does make for an interesting discussion on why we choose the things that we do.

In a given day, you have literally thousands and possibly millions of choices to make.  Some of these choices are simple and probably automatic.  For example “Am I going to wear clothes today?”  No matter whether the answer is yes or no, it is an easy choice based on your daily life.  Other choices are much more complex and require major deliberation.  Choosing to go to college or the military is life-altering and for many would demand some time and attention.  In the middle of the automatic and grandiose decisions are many moment to moment choices that need to be made by you.  There are many people who treat these mid-level choices as though they were huge.  Others put all of their choices on automatic pilot letting others decide for them.  The worst scenario is that people forget that they are choosing at all.

In each moment, you have choices and some of the most important are about how you are going to feel.  Believe it or not, it is a choice.  If you are feeling sad, it is a choice.  Perhaps there are very good reasons for you to choose that but it is your choice.  By taking the physical state of your body, your mental focus of the moment and your inner dialogue, you determined the feeling that you were going to produce.

So now I put a new “Pepsi Challenge” on to you.  Let’s call it the “Huryk Challenge”.  Can you choose to feel good in all circumstances today?  No matter what life throws at you, can you CHOOSE to feel good.  You do not need to like the circumstances but you choose your feeling despite the poor situation.  I challenge you.

Choose to have a great day!

Pete

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Full Throttle All the Time

Pete Huryk

BoltWe are not machines.  It seems as though we wish that we were at times.  However the human animal is not infallible and fatigues just like any other creature on earth.  If you look at the World Records for running events, there are a few truths that you can learn about humans.

World Records for varied differences.  Please check my math, it’s late and it might not be perfect.

100 meters – Usain Bolt – 9.58  (23.37 MPH) (2 min 34.14 sec per mile)

200 meters – Usain Bolt – 19.19 (23.31 MPH) (2 min 34.38 sec per mile)

1 mile – Hicham El Guerrouj – 3:43:13 (16.13 MPH)

5K (3.12 Miles) – Kenenisa Bekele – 12:37.35 (14.83 MPH) (4 min 02.74 sec per mile)

Marathon (26.2) – Dennis Kiprutto Kimetto – 2:02:57 (12.78 MPH) (4 min 41.68 sec per mile)

After all of those numbers, names and information, what is my point?  You need to know what race you’re running in order to determine “full throttle”.  Each of these amazing athletes ran their race as fast as they could for the distance that they had to cover.  Usain Bolt’s 100 meter record is amazing but his pace is completely unrealistic over a 26.2 mile race.  Dennis Kiprutto Kimetto’s pace for a marathon is astounding but if he ran a 100 meter at that pace, he’d be considered “slow”.  The key is to know the race that you are in and what “full throttle” means for that race.

This is applicable to many areas of real life.  For example intimate relationships.  If you are looking to get married, recognize that it is a marathon.  Expect that the pace is slow and steady in order for it to last for years.  High school relationships are usually over in a few months, so the sprinter’s pace of spending every moment together is natural.

So what kind of races are you in at the moment?  Recognize what “full throttle” means for each of those races.  Perhaps there’s a project that is a sprint, then sprint that project.  Maybe at the same time you need to take control of your health, which is a marathon (figuratively).  Then you need to marathon your health.

Regardless of which form of “full throttle” you are in, realize that you are human.  The expectation that you can maintain Usain Bolt speed for 26.2 miles is ridiculous.  Don’t set yourself up for failure with unrealistic expectations.  Recognize the race and go after it intelligently!

Go full throttle today!

Pete

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The Best There’s Ever Been

Pete Huryk

AliThere are often debates with sports about who is the “Best There’s Ever Been”.  In basketball, names like Michael Jordan, Lebron James and Wilt Chamberlain come up often.  In soccer, the names are usually Pele or Messi.  Muhammad Ali proclaimed himself to be the “greatest of all time”.  Many of these conversations are apples to oranges comparisons that are nothing more than opinion.  The positive side to these debates is that they give a peak model for the newcomers to follow.

For most of us, we were not born with the necessary tools to be the “best ever” in anything.  The books “The Talent Code” and “Outliers” outline many of the factors that contribute to the recipe of greatness.  Despite the lack of ingredients, there is no reason for the everyday person to shy away from the thought of greatness.  We must reach for rungs on a ladder that we are able to climb effectively.  By comparing myself to Messi, I’m setting myself up for failure and disappointment.  In order to find true comparative success in anything, there is one basis for comparison – self!

In ourselves we can find both our truest basis for comparison and our best competition.  “Never try to be better than someone else.  But rather be the best you can be.” is a quote from legendary UCLA coach John Wooden.  As we standardize test and rank everything from our number of friends to attractiveness, it seems as though we’ve become obsessed with comparison to others.  This obsession moves us farther from the comparison that we really must  do in front of a mirror or in our mind’s eye.  You don’t need to try to be the best there’s ever been.  You only need to be the best you that you’ve ever been.

Go do you!

Pete

Blogpost, self-reliance

Levantarse

Pete Huryk

levitateAs a speaker of Spanish and English, I get a good perspective on the differences between the two languages.  One of the most confusing differences for English speakers is reflexive verbs.  In Spanish, you wake yourself up, wash yourself and brush yourself your teeth.  There are many actions that Spanish specifically tells you that you do to yourself.  For example, the verb levantar means “to lift” but levantarse means “to lift one’s self or get up”.  This simple difference in the way that an idea is expressed can change our perception of self.

Our language sometimes limits our thought process because we often think in words.  The idea that we lift ourselves up is not a difficult one to understand.  However it is one that we may take for granted.  We’re too busy getting up every morning to remember who is lifting us up and why.  Even though we are always lifting ourselves up, we may feel forced to do it.

There is power in choice.  Deciding on the reasons why you are getting up in the morning gives you the power to live with purpose.  It is much easier to slog through difficult times when there is something waiting for us at the end.  If all you see is the slog, then life is the slog.  So even though the day has already begun, it’s not too late to decide what today is about for you.  Why did you get up this morning?  If you don’t like the answer that you give then re-ask the question with a broader scope of possibility.

Make it a great day.

Pete