 Roots Not BranchesA sequoia tree stands as tall as a thirty-five story building. When you see one for the first time your brain immediately assumes it must have roots that extend hundreds of feet into the earth to hold up all that weight. But you'd be wrong. The sequoia's roots go down only six to twelve feet. That's it. For a tree that weighs more than 2.5 million pounds, that’s not very deep.
So how does it stand and survive earthquakes, floods, fires, and winds that would topple almost anything else? The answer is in what you can't see. The roots spread outward up to a hundred feet from the trunk, intertwining with the roots of other sequoias in a vast underground web. The trees don't survive alone. As a matter of fact, you never see them alone. They form groves where their roots fuse together, literally merging into one interconnected system. When storms come, the wind can't knock down a single tree without knocking down the entire grove. The shallow roots that look like a weakness are actually the tree's greatest strength, because they connect rather than isolate. If you walked through a sequoia grove and tried to judge which tree was strongest based on what you could see above ground, you'd focus on the wrong thing entirely. You'd look at the tallest trunk, the widest girth, and all the visible, cosmetic markers of strength. But the actual source of that tree's ability to stand for 2,000 years is completely underground, invisible, and unimpressive to look at. Not to mention, shared with every other tree around it. The world only sees the branches. The world never sees the roots. And that's exactly the problem with how most people approach life, leadership, and excellence. Why Should We Care? We live in a culture that worships branches and ignores roots. Everyone wants the shortcut, the hack, the how-to that skips the work and jumps straight to the results. They see someone with a successful business and want the profit, not the decade of failure that taught them what actually works. They see an athlete performing on the biggest stage and want the recognition, not the years of discipline that built the foundation of the performance. It's all branches, no roots. Like the sequoia's root system, when it comes to sustainable excellence depth matters less than connection, and what's invisible matters more than what everyone notices. Most people are trying to grow their roots deeper when what they actually need is to grow their roots wider by connecting with others, building systems that don't depend on themselves alone, developing character and habits that nobody sees but everybody benefits from. Our addiction to smartphones is the ultimate expression of this branch-focused mentality. They give us the illusion of connection with likes and followers while destroying our actual root system of deep relationships, sustained focus, and the ability to be alone with our thoughts. Everyone's optimizing for what shows up on the screen. The best leaders have a healthy disdain for anything that becomes popular too quickly because they understand that truly valuable things rarely go viral. When everyone's chasing the same shortcut, the same trending strategy you can almost guarantee it's not where the real work happens. REAL TALK - Action Steps Building a root system instead of just impressive branches requires intentional choices about where you invest your time, energy, and attention. Here are a few areas to focus on:
We live in a world that worships branches and ignores roots. Most people don't want the truth about what builds sustainable excellence. Stop optimizing for what people see. Start building what holds you up when nobody's watching. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!
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 Create, Don't ManageThere's a version of life most of us are living that we didn't actually sign up for. We wake up, scan the horizon and spend the day managing circumstances. We manage what people think. We manage uncertainty. We manage fallout. It feels responsible. It feels necessary. But it's exhausting, and deep down, we know something is missing.
Because it is. In 1943, a Hungarian-Jewish psychiatrist named Viktor Frankl was stripped of everything. His family. His freedom. Loaded into cattle cars, Frankl entered the Nazi concentration camps with nothing but his mind and the clothes on his back. By every physical measure, he was a victim of his circumstances. But Frankl made a decision inside those camps that robbed his captors of their power and eventually changed how the world understood the human spirit. He decided that while they could control his environment, they could never control what he made of it. Frankl began creating meaning out of the most meaningless suffering. He created a future, in his mind, even as the present tried to destroy him. He survived. He wrote. He taught. He created. What Frankl discovered in the worst circumstances imaginable was that creation and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. When you are genuinely creating, fear has no power. Managing circumstances is reactive, survival mode. Creation is generative. It moves forward. Fear lives in management. Faith lives in creation. Why Should We Care? Stress is almost always the product of managing circumstances. When we focus on controlling outcomes, fixing perceptions, and responding to problems, we operate from a deficit. We're always behind. Always on defense. Always one move away from catastrophe. The moment you shift your focus from how do I manage this? to what am I building here?, your entire posture changes. The question moves from defense to offense. From fear to faith. It's the difference between a life that is happening to you and a life you are actively building. Faith is a prerequisite for creation. You can't build something you can't see without it. Frankl couldn't see his freedom. He built toward it anyway. Every great coach, teacher, parent, or leader who has ever done something remarkable has had to create in the absence of certainty. They didn't manage their way to significance. They created their way there. Managing circumstances requires control. Creation requires trust. Managing keeps your eyes on the problem. Creation keeps your eyes on the possibility. And, you can't do both at the same time. You're either managing or creating. You're either reacting or building. You're either operating in fear or operating in faith. The people worth following aren't the ones who have the cleanest circumstances. They're the ones who refuse to let their circumstances determine what they build. REAL TALK - Action Steps Here are three things you can put to work right now to shift from managing to creating.
The circumstances of your life are not the point. What you create from them is. Stop managing. Start building. Fear can't survive in a life that's under active construction. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Hold Your PenWe live in the most opinionated era in human history. Everyone has a platform. Everyone has a take. And everyone thinks their opinion matters. News flash - it doesn’t … and never has.
In 2004, this kinda dorky, thirteen-year-old kid from England decides he wants to be a musician. Although he carried his acoustic guitar everywhere with him, by sixteen he'd still been rejected more times than he could count. A few good-intentioned adults even informed him that he had better come up with a backup plan, which he did. He dropped out of school and spent the next several months hanging around and sleeping outside of any venue he could get to in order to stay around music. But, Ed Sheeran had a crystal clear idea of what success was to him. He wasn't measuring himself by other people’s opinions or counting doors slamming in his face as failures. He was measuring success by his growth and fulfillment. The criticism didn't faze him. When fans started showing up and YouTube clips started spreading, he stayed the course. The praise didn’t faze him either. Eventually, Elton John heard a small sample of his work and sent Sheeran a tour bus. Then, Jamie Foxx let him sleep in his Hollywood home for six weeks while he found his footing. The rest is history. Far too many brilliant, capable people hand their pen to their story. Praise. Criticism. Doesn't matter. Both can wreck us if we’re not careful. We’ve talked a lot about not allowing the scoreboard to define us, but there’s a sneakier version of the same trap. Sure, we have to tangle with the question - will you let the outcome define you? But, it seems an equally prominent question these days is will you let someone else’s opinion of the outcome define you? Why Should We Care? As leaders, whether we’re coaching a team, raising a family, or running a business we are going to be evaluated constantly. Formally and informally, to our face and behind our back. We’ll get feedback that's useful and feedback that's useless. Often the most confident voices in the room will be the least qualified to speak on who we are and what we’re capable of. When we let criticism define our ceiling or let praise define our identity, we’ve handed the pen to someone who doesn't live with the consequences of our story. And, the reality is that most people giving us feedback, even the well-meaning ones, are working off incomplete information. They don't see our morning routines. They don't know what we’ve overcome to get here. They aren't watching the film of our entire career. They're watching a single play. The best leaders are feedback consumers, not feedback dependents. They listen, like really listen, because they're secure enough not to be threatened by whatever the feedback says. They sift through it with a singular focus - does this make me better? If yes, they use it. If no, they set it down and walk away. They don't dismiss people. They don't get defensive. But they also don't let the crowd rewrite their purpose. They've done the hard internal work of knowing who they are, what they value, and where they're going. That foundation is what makes honest feedback a gift. When we are clear on our purpose, external noise loses its power to paralyze us. Criticism becomes data. Praise becomes encouragement. Neither becomes our identity. And when we can operate from that place, we become the kind of leader people are drawn to follow. REAL TALK - Action Steps Knowing and doing are two different things. It’s not enough to know. We must do. Here are three things you can put to work right now to keep a hold of your pen.
Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  To See If You CanIf “to see if I can” isn’t a good enough reason for you … we probably can’t be friends.
Now, I’m probably not climbing El Capitan but I do like to try things just to see. My wife would happily confirm that most of the time there’s really no tangible benefit and the risk pales in comparison to the reward, but still, we’ll give it a try. I’m not completely sure why, other than it just feels right. Alex Honnold did climb El Capitan. The 3,000 foot granite wall had never been climbed - well, not by someone alone with no ropes, no harness, and no safety net. Honnold relied solely on his hands, feet, and relentless focus he had built in the shadows. Free soloing El Capitan had been considered essentially impossible. Not only that, but the world hadn't asked for it. Nobody needed it. Only a few had ever even considered it. There was no contract waiting, no trophy at the top, and no crowd cheering from the base of the mountain. When people pressed Honnold on why he would risk everything, his reason was simple: to find out exactly what he was capable of. He wanted to see if he could. That was it. That was the whole reason. On June 3, 2017 he found out. He could. Why Should We Care? Leadership and the pursuit of excellence share a common enemy: comfort. The moment we stop testing what we are capable of and start settling for the acceptable, we've already begun to shrink. Honnold didn't free solo El Capitan because someone told him to or because there was an obvious external reward attached. He did it because the question of whether he could mattered more to him than the certainty of staying comfortable. That's the internal scoreboard talking. That's a man living in alignment with his own standard of excellence, not the world's. The people you lead are watching how you carry yourself when the outcome isn't guaranteed. When the path forward is unclear and it would be perfectly reasonable to pull back is precisely when your choices matter the most. Your people are not watching to see if you win every time. They're watching to see if you still show up with the same commitment and curiosity when there's nothing certain on the other side. The leader who moves toward difficulty because they genuinely want to find out what's there is the one that sets the temperature of the room. Contrary to what most people think, exploring your limits isn't reckless. It's responsible. Honnold made a commitment to the process of becoming. It required honesty about where he was, humility to keep improving, and the kind of courage that doesn't need applause to keep going. To see if you can is a perfectly good reason - and the answer doesn’t really even matter. REAL TALK - Action Steps Consistently stretching that comfort zone isn’t natural. Here are three things you can act on today to move that direction:
Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here! |
About bcI'm a teacher, coach, and parent seeking excellence while defining success on my own terms. Archives
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