Month: November 2013

On Thanksgiving Do You Prefer the Exception or the Rule?

On Thanksgiving tomorrow you will either experience the exception or the rule.

The rule for Thanksgiving is a big family dinner with turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce and all the other fixings.  The rule for Thanksgiving is watching the parade and football.  The rule for Thanksgiving is taking time off to spend with family and friends.

The exception is the opposite.  The exception is having dinner alone or with one other person.  The exception is eating dinner out at a restaurant.  The exception is Chinese food for dinner.  The exception is watching reruns of Law and Order.  The exception is working overtime.

Which type of Thanksgiving experience do you prefer?  What type of life do you prefer? Do you enjoy experiencing the exception or do you complain about it?

Shout Out to the Person Who Pushes You When You’re Tired

It’s easy to quit when you’re tired.  When I reach the point of exhaustion, I always try to push myself to keep going. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t.

On the days that I think I can’t, when there’s someone there to give me that extra kick in the but, there’s a 99% chance that I find the strength to rise to the occasion.

I’m sharing this because of my experience tonight with my son at wrestling practice.

Practice consist of a 90 minute drilling session followed by 30 minutes of live wrestling. After that, there is another 15 to 20 minutes of conditioning. For a 7 year old kid, this feels like an eternity.

If that’s not enough, my son then “chooses” to climb a long rope up to the ceiling to top off what’s already a tough practice session.  Most days this is routine for him, but today he wanted to quit at the end.

In the spirit of teaching him a lesson on pushing himself when he’s tired, I encouraged him to dig deeper and keep trying to pull himself up the rope. What usually is a 60 second activity then turned into a 20 minute pouting fest.

However, when it was all said and done, my son pulled it together and found that little extra something he needed to get to the top.

On the ride home from practice, he surprised me by thanking me for pushing him and not letting him quit.  I smiled from ear to ear, because the last thing I wanted was him to be upset with me for being too tough.  I think it’s safe to say he learned the lesson.

That was the moment it hit me.  Everyone needs someone to occasionally push them when they’re tired.  Everyone occasionally needs a little tough love.

Yes, more often than not you must be able to push yourself.  The reality, however, is that having someone there to push you gives you a big advantage.

So tonight I want to give a shout out to all the coaches, parents, spouses, and friends who eliminate quitting as an option.

I want to give a shout out to those who see something in someone when they don’t see it in themselves; then give them the tough love needed so they can see it too.

I want to give a shout out to anyone who has pushed someone to keep going when they thought they couldn’t.

You’re an unsung hero who deserves recognition for doing what you do.  You don’t get much credit for being the asshole who delivers the tough love.  Yet, without you, many of us couldn’t keep going. So please keep doing what you’re doing.  The world needs you.

Two Important Lessons Learned 25 Days into My Daily Blog

I committed to writing this daily blog 25 days ago. Since then, I’ve wrote one blog post each day without fail.

There are two main things that I’ve learned since starting:

1. It takes more than 25 days to form a habit

2. The key to the daily blog is to sit down and write

Lesson 1: Blogging is not Habit forming

Habit formation is more difficult than attempting to reach some mythical milestone of days.  At one point, I was convinced that there was a 21 day rule to create a habit.  It turns out that this is a myth.

The reality is that you just have to force yourself to do what you said you were going to do. When I sit down to write a blog post it has nothing to do with it being habitual. Since my family life requires flexibility and adapting to change, there is no way I can set a specific time of day to write everyday.  As a result, the only thing I can count on is that sometime between 12:00 am and 11:59 pm I must FORCE myself to sit down and write a post.

I put “force” in all caps because this is literally what I must do because it’s often very hard for me to overcome this inner voice that tries to talk me out of it.

There is nothing magic about it.  It’s sheer will power to drag myself into my office and put my fingers to the keyboard. After 25 days, I don’t notice anything with this process changing or getting easier.  It’s brute force today just as it was on day one.

Lesson 2: Just Sit Down and Write

When I sit down to write, at least 50% of the time I have no idea what I’m going to write about.  Today is the perfect example.  All day long I used my idle brain cycles to think of a topic.  Nothing stuck.  Nothing motivated me.  I just couldn’t think of anything I wanted to share.

So when I sat down at my computer at 7:53 pm to start writing this post, I was flat out stumped.  I gazed at my screen for a little over 30 seconds, then I just started typing. Then,  waalaa!!!

This is not the first time this has happened either.  Time and time again I sit down thinking I have nothing to share.  All day my anxiety builds with thoughts that I will end my daily blog streak without breaking my 45 day in a row personal best.

Then I force myself to just start writing and suddenly I get inspired.

After 25 days of doing this, I can now say I trust myself.  Not only do I trust myself, I trust the process.