Tag: Success

Blogpost, self-reliance

Stupidly Iconic

Pete Huryk

It’s happened so many times throughout history, yet people still believe that there is a secret. Movies, books, musicals, songs, etc. Many of the most popular were a complete surprise when they came out. The directors, authors, composers and musicians were hopeful but more than likely unaware that they were about to strike gold. Some even believed that they were creating absolute trash. Despite the doubts, they persisted on to find their way into our hearts and into history.

It’s easy to look back at the success stories and believe that they were inevitable. We have the benefit of hindsight. The dots all connect in a perfect pattern that make us believe that destiny had her hand in the equation. Perhaps she did but the people who were in the thick of the moment had no idea. They had doubts, insecurities, failures and fear. In a lot of ways, they are very similar to me and possibly you regarding that thing that you’ve put off doing for a week, month, year or years!

We all have that project that we’re afraid to start or worse, have started a hundred times but stalled. All of the emotions that are tied to the outcome do not serve you in the day to day. So many times, we don’t start or give up because we’re so uncertain about the final product. The possibility that it could flop paralyzes us into inaction. We need to remember that success is not completely up to us but progress is! Our job is to keep things moving forward in incremental steps. So many projected blockbusters have gone belly up that it’s laughable to think that anyone can predict them. The reverse is also true. The hits are often a surprise. Since no one will know the outcome until you finish, it is in your best interest to keep moving forward. The sting of failure will be with you for a much shorter time than the ache of regret.

Make it happen! Your flop might fly but there is only one way to find out!

Pete

Blogpost

Success Is The Distance…

Pete Huryk

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.

Fight the good fight people!

Pete

Uncategorized

The Thirteen Year Safety Net

Pete Huryk

HighWireWalkerIn the 1970’s Philippe Petit walked a high wire strung between the Twin Towers in New York City.  It was an amazing feat that was a result of a slow but steady progression of skill and daring over years.  The film “Man On Wire” is a great documentary about the planning and execution of his walk.  A slight warning that if you are afraid of heights, you may feel uneasy.  Even though you are safe from any imminent danger, you may feel dizzy or tingly based on the images.  I cannot imagine how Philippe Petit felt during the walk, over one thousand feet in the air without a net!  Sure, he had years of experience and successful walks but the scale of this endeavor dwarfed everything else.  It is easy to look at Philippe and say that he is special, talented or even crazy.  Closer to the truth is probably that he was passionate about pursuing something to an extreme level.  The use of a net negates the entire reason that he was walking in the first place.  Under no circumstances and am I suggesting that a tight rope walk from dizzying height should be be in anyone’s future (I’m one of those people who tingles just seeing the photos).  I am suggesting that the intersection of passion and stakes is a place of power.  It’s someplace that we need to become more comfortable going to.

Unfortunately at the moment, we seem to be faced in the opposite direction.  The formative years of youth and adolescence are spent with nothing but safety nets around.  Whether it is literal foam padding to avoid injury or systems that are meant to insulate young people from failure, responsibility or any other stakes that could injure physically or emotionally.  The dichotomy of these systems are interesting because they protect in the short term and potentially injure in the long term.  Finding the balance of those two extremes is the name of the game.  Philippe did not start out on the roof of the World Trade Center.  Those stakes would have been overwhelming.  His passion for walking the tight rope also would not have grown if he never went higher than six inches off the ground.

For each one of us, we have things that could grow into passions but we are afraid to raise the stakes.  Failing, looking foolish and uncertainty are being trained out of our young people.  We have given many young people a “safe space” but the counterweight needs to be put into place as well otherwise we do not have a creative space.  All creation is messy, uncertain and possibly even dangerous.  We are born from a series of chances taken with an element of risk.  So to protect our future generations from that risk is robbing them of what is to be human.

As I often say to my players, “to be a leader, you need to go first”.  So if you have young people in your life, be a model of a balance in both passion and risk.  Perhaps you also need to break out of the foam rubber because comfort and security are things that many of us desire.  Unfortunately they also allow for little emotional intensity which is what passion is all about.  Go!  Take a chance!  Maybe even a small one and be an example for those onlookers who need someone to show them what is possible!

Philippe didn’t leap but he had to take a step off the edge and you can too!

Pete

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Blogpost

Leveraging the Dark Space Inside

Pete Huryk

High School Soccer from Senior Year

My overall purpose in this world is to help people get the best out of themselves.  Whether I do that work in the classroom, soccer field or elsewhere is irrelevant.  Most of the time it is done through helping people see the possibility within themselves and breaking through the self-imposed limits that they have.  Although my messages are usually positive in nature, I’m not against the idea of leveraging the dark space inside each of us.  It is probably the reason that I’ve been a successful coach for many years.

It was my senior year in high school and there were no big expectations for our soccer team.  There had been lots of talent in the prior year’s senior class and the season had no trophies or accolades.  My senior class had only a couple players of impact.  The junior and sophomore classes were full of talented but untested players.  As the only senior captain, I believed it was my role to help get every last bit of effort out of our team.  If we kept the idea that we were all in it together, we’d do OK.  In all honesty, we shocked a lot of people, even me.  We had an impressive record with only one loss and one tie as it was getting close to the playoff portion of the season.  Our record was good enough to win the conference title.  Against all odds in a penalty kick shootout we were able to beat a much bigger school for the county title.  We were ranked highly by the papers in the area and the number one seed for our section in the state tournament.  I’m not sure if it was one factor or a combination of things but we lost in the first round of the state tournament.

That was over twenty five years ago.  Despite that fact, it is one of the reasons that I have so much to give to my athletes from the sidelines.  Winning and losing are not actually my concern.  The reason why that is such a hole inside of me is that we didn’t give it our all.  I, as the leader, was possibly complacent and overly confident going into that game.  Sure there were other things that impacted the outcome but I know inside that it was at least partially my fault.  So I’ll have this hole inside of me forever because I can’t rewrite the past.

The only option that I have is to leverage that dark space into something positive.  That cautionary tale that I lived through is a driving force on the mundane days where no one feels like giving their best.  It is that pain that gives me the energy to work harder than others and leave it all out there.  I don’t talk about it often or even replay it in my head.  I don’t have to, it’s just there in the background.

We all have these experiences.  There is nothing particularly special or unique about mine.  The question becomes whether or not you can use it toward a future positive end.  Even the greatest lose from time to time but it is what you do with that setback that matters.  No moment is a definitive statement for the positive or negative on who you are as a person.  We are what we’ve done consistently.  With todays challenges you should absolutely give them everything you’ve got.  But if you come up short, take the lesson from it and allow it to propel you forward.  Sometime you win and sometimes you learn!

Have a great day!

Pete

 

Blogpost, self-reliance

King of Introductions/The Ultimate Success Formula

Pete Huryk


Ecuador28In my junior year of college, I traveled to Ecuador as part of a winter semester program.  I lived with a local family and took a class on literature.  It was a life altering experience on a variety of levels.  Although I went there to improve my Spanish abilities, I can link many of my fundamental beliefs back to that trip.  I changed as a person during my time there.  One of the simple ways that I changed was that I became the “King of Introductions”.  There was no official coronation!  It’s an unofficial title that I developed for myself but it was a key component to many later successes.

Two days after Christmas in 1996, I arrived in Ecuador.  After a few days of touring, I was paired with my ‘Ecuadorian family’ on New Year’s Eve.  For the next two days, I attended no less than three family parties.  If I had to guess, I was introduced to over fifty people in less than 48 hours.  Obviously all of those introductions were done in Spanish.  It was nothing that I had planned but the more times that it happened, the better that I got at introducing myself.  With the first few people, I was only saying ‘hello, nice to meet you’.  Eventually the conversations got more robust with full explanations of why I was in Ecuador and my thoughts about the country so far.  The repetitions were the key.  Even though all of conversations were slightly different, each one gave me another opportunity to organize, edit or add.  By the end of those first two days, I was definitely the “King of Introductions”.

It seems so simple but often people ignore this methodology.  People give up on things quickly because they’re not “good enough”.  The need to not look foolish is ingrained so strongly within us that we tend to avoid even chancing it.  So we never get past the peasant status much less reach to the level of king.  With something so simple, it would seem like everyone would follow this recipe but often we don’t.  Any success requires that you:

  1. Take action
  2. Notice what’s working/what’s not
  3. Adjust the approach
  4. Pay attention to those already getting the result you want

It’s almost too easy, isn’t it?  The problem usually isn’t a lack of role models to follow.  It’s a failure to take any action at all.  When there is no guarantee of success, a lot of work and a possibility of looking foolish; peasant status is what is chosen.  In the minds of so many, it is better to be the peasant that never tried rather than the one who went for the crown and failed.  The most important thing for you to recognize though is that the walls between you and the crown are usually built by you.  The world offers all kinds of riches and above is the plan for how to get any of them.  We just need to be willing to follow it long enough to get them!

It’s good to be the king!

Pete

Blogpost, self-reliance

I Had To F%#$ This Up!

Pete Huryk

HHS Soccer
Not exactly the right year but the shorts tell the story!

I was in 8th grade and my school soccer team was playing against North Warren.  They were the only team that had beaten us all season.  It was late in the game and the score was still tied.  Someone passed me the ball as I was wide open in front of the unprotected goal.  I shot the ball and it sailed over the goal.  It almost defied physics!  I was so close to the goal that missing seems as though it was harder to do than scoring.  The memory of that shot is almost 30 years old and it still bugs me a little bit.  All of these years later though, I’ve come to realize that I had to miss that shot.  In all of our lives, there are things that we really have to f%#@ up.

No one wants to fail.  The disappointment, the shaken confidence and the negative memory are all reason enough to avoid failure.  People are always trying to give themselves the best chance for success in any endeavor.  Aiming for success is always crucial but always achieving it is both impractical and probably detrimental to future successes.

The path to where you are is probably filled with potholes, detours and the occasional breakdown.  Even though we think that we want a smooth and clear path to our destination, most of the fire that we have in our belly comes from past failures.  Learning how to live through and overcome failure are key ingredients to a growth mindset.  Although we live in a physical world, the beginning of almost everything in our lives starts in our mental world.  That is the space where failure can be taken, molded and turned into a stepping stone for future success.  I’m sure that you want whatever you’re working on right now to be a great success and I hope that it is.  However what if you need to F%#@ this up to succeed later.  Part of the equation is that you really want to succeed but recognize in the long term f%#@ ups are part of the equation too.

Give it your all today!

Pete

Uncategorized

Early Seinfeld

Pete Huryk

SeinfeldSeinfeld 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.

JKRowlingDespite 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.

The road to success in anything will most likely be filled with potholes, detours and poorly constructed bridges.  The sports car or limo that you’ve imagined yourself arriving in will probably not make the trip.  In fact you’ll probably have to go most of the way on foot.  Are you willing to make that trip?  Or will you take the easy road to Nowhere Near Where You Want To Be?  It sounds like a town that many people live in while they dream about being someplace else.

Get on the road today!

Pete

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New Year + Resolution + Old You = Same Old Same Old

Pete Huryk

The act of making a New Year’s Resolution is a good concept.  Taking the opportunity to start fresh with a brand new set of goals is admirable.  The problem is that most people don’t follow through on their new resolutions.  There are many reasons why most resolutions fail.  Below are some of the normal pitfalls and suggestions on avoiding them.

  • Going It Alone – Change often takes willpower and some people are in short supply of it.  So one way to increase your chances of making a change is to partner up with someone.  The small group adds a bit of social pressure that feels less like will.  Or even better, join a new peer group where your desired outcome is the norm.
  • Biting Off More Than You Can Chew – People often set themselves up for failure by trying to make too many changes.  Start with bite-size chunks that are manageable.  Break it down into a daily basis where it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.  Also set up systems that help make things automatic.  Program a wake up call in your phone and put your shoes by your bed if you want to run every morning and reward yourself for little successes.
  • Bringing Old You to the New Year – If you would like to make a change in your life, don’t bother making the resolution.  There’s not enough power of emotion behind that.  You need to get to the point where you need to make a change because it is who you truly want to be in your soul.  Change is inconvenient, difficult and a Do It Yourself project.  Come up with all of the reasons why this must happen and you might have a chance.
  • Confusing Progress and Success – Often people walk the first five miles of a thousand mile journey and become satisfied with their progress because this is the farthest they’ve ever gone.  Define the endpoint  and keep it in mind.  Don’t be satisfied with anything less.
  • Making Setbacks into Failure – Everyone screws up, stumbles, forgets and blows things off.  Don’t beat yourself up.  If the goal is worth having, then it is worth going through some missteps.  Will you only be satisfied with having your goal if you never faltered once?  Then don’t even start, we all screw up.

As is always true, these posts are as much for me as they are for you.  Good luck in 2015!  Make it a great year on purpose.