 She Can LaughEvery morning at 8:00am, for a while now, I’ve sent the same two text messages. At first, they were offered as sagely advice for a situation one of our kids were trying to navigate - a kind of ninja parenting tactic if you will. One I’ve always known they saw cleanly through, but I would mask anyway. Now, I suppose, the purpose of the messages is simply to remind. To remind them of who they said they wanted to be and to remind myself of the hope each day brings to start fresh on just that.
To Gabe: Selfless. Devoted. Neoteny. Attack life! Have no fear! Love you! To Dink: Thankful. Selfless. Resilient. God-fearing. Keep Smiling! Love you! Dink is Ally and she’s getting married this week. Sure, that means I’m old but it’s still awesome. Naturally the monotony of the daily text messages tends to dull true meaning over time, but as I’ve hit send on the message the last few days the meaning has shoved its way back to the forefront. As I look closer, what was once my hope is a reality - and has been for a while. Al is thankful. She doesn’t miss opportunities to say it. She doesn’t miss opportunities to show it. She knows exactly where she came from and is unapologetically proud of hanging out with janitors during basketball practice or shoveling cow poop at two in the morning. Al is selfless. There is no better gift giver in the world. She’s always listening, always paying attention to what makes those in her circle smile. She’s never more happy than when she can bless their world with a beam. Al is resilient. She’s a supreme optimist, tough as nails, and more disciplined when convicted than the most accomplished athlete. No one can kill a 30-day shred like her. And, Al is God-fearing. Strong in her convictions, respectful and proud of the person she is. As Proverbs 31:25 says, “She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.” Laughing is her specialty. I’m so thankful Ally feels at home in her own skin. There may be no greater gift a child can give a parent. It allows her to enter her marriage as herself, not a cheapened version of whoever someone else wants her to be. Isn’t that how all of the best relationships operate? We accept ourselves, which frees us to accept others. When we are unable, or unwilling, to accept ourselves, then any relationship we have with another person falls victim to the same judgment we aim at ourselves. My hope now is that her soon-to-be husband simply accepts her for who she is and she accepts him for who he is. Not the version of each other they might wish existed, or the version that shows up on the best days. The real one. The one that's tired and imperfect and still perfect. The best thing anyone can bring to a marriage is a full sense of self. A person who knows who they are doesn't need their spouse to complete them. They get to complement them instead. Parenting is leadership, just with higher stakes. It took me a while, but I eventually realized that we don't get to choose the outcome for our kids, or those we lead. We get to choose what we say and do day after day after day. We get to choose whether we show up the same on the hard days as we do on the easy ones. And, we get to show someone who they are before they fully believe it themselves. What an honor to parent, and lead. What will it feel like to hit send on the text message Saturday? I’m not sure. But, I’m going to send it. 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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 Nowhere to BeEveryone knows the name John Wooden. He coached UCLA basketball for 27 seasons. In that time, he won 10 national championships, seven in a row, plus an 88-game winning streak that still stands as the longest in college basketball history. He was a legend that coached legends.
A noteworthy aspect of Wooden’s accomplishments was his coaching style. On most game nights he sat calmly with his rolled-up program in his hand, simply watching his players perform. He knew the majority of his work had been done in practice and by this point, he had surrendered the outcome. He wasn’t consumed by the scoreboard. He wasn’t obsessed with berating officials. Unlike his coaching peers, Wooden found a way to separate himself from the one thing everyone else was fixated on - the outcome. It was intentionality, not indifference. And it was grown from deep within him, through years of losing and mediocrity that most disregard. Wooden spent 14 years quietly building his definition of success that had nothing to do with trophies before winning his first championship. Wooden’s definition goes like this: "Success is the peace of mind which is a direct result of the self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable." He eliminated the external validation, making it completely absent from his definition of success. Wooden arrived somewhere most people spend their whole lives chasing and never find. Nowhere. He had nowhere to go. Nothing to get. No one to be. Why Should We Care? Most of us are living one step ahead, or behind, ourselves. We're not here, where our feet are. We're on to the next win, reaching for the next promotion, and already working on the next version of ourselves that may (fingers crossed) finally feel like enough. We believe that if we can just get there - wherever there is - we'll be good. We'll finally lead well, live well and feel like we've made it. Unfortunately, or fortunately for those who have accepted it, there is no there. And deep down, you already know it. Because no matter how much you chase it, no matter what mountain you climb, there’s always another one. Some lazily attribute this mindset to a lack of ambition, but ambition isn’t the problem. Ambition isn’t inherently good or bad. The problem is making your peace of mind contingent on outcomes you can't fully control. When that's the deal you've made with yourself, fear runs your decisions, not conviction. You protect the destination and those you lead can feel it. They feel the difference between a leader who is fully present with them and one who is desperately trying to be somewhere else. Leading from desperation and leading from fullness are two very different things. When we start from a place of fullness, those we lead don’t have to wonder what we need from them because the answer is obvious. We need nothing. We’ve already decided what success is. That kind of leadership feels like freedom, not pressure. And the people worth following give that to the people around them because they've stopped needing, not because they've stopped caring. REAL TALK - Action Steps Living from a place of nowhere to go and nothing to get requires intentional work. Here are three places to start:
Nowhere to go, nothing to get, no one to be … sounds easy enough. It's a mindset available to every one of us who is willing to stop running toward something long enough to ask whether what we already have is actually enough. 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!  Laughing at FearI love the movie Hoosiers and love all the Rocky movies of course, but Secretariat may be my favorite film of all time. And, as far as scenes go, nothing beats Big Red making the final turn in Belmont Park. A narrator breaks the silence: “He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing. He will not shy away from the sword. He will not stand still when the trumpet sounds.” Her voice fades to the sound of Secretariat’s hooves thundering the dirt, on his way to a 31 length victory.
I cry every time. Let me set the scene for you. June 9, 1973. Belmont Park. Nearly 70,000 people in attendance to witness history. Secretariat had already won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. One race stood between him and the first Triple Crown in 25 years, but nobody knew what was really coming. When the gates opened, Big Red, typically a come from behind type horse, ran side by side with his rival Sham through the first half mile. The pace was much faster than experts of the time expected. When most guessed Secretariat would fade at the longer distance, the exact opposite happened. He exploded and began to run not only faster, but freer. Ron Turcotte, his jockey, later said he never asked him for more. He simply let him run. By the final turn, the question was no longer whether Secretariat would win. The question was by how much. He crossed the finish line 31 lengths ahead of the second-place horse, Sham. That’s a 253 feet win in a record time of 2:24 that still stands today. Secretariat ran like he had nothing to protect and nothing to lose. There is no better place to perform, or lead, from. Why Should We Care? Fear is the most common performance killer in leadership, and it almost never looks like what we think it should. It usually shows up as hesitation disguised as wisdom. It shows up as over managing, over explaining, and over hedging. We wait a little longer than necessary, pull back a little sooner than needed, and stay safely inside a lane that's a little narrower than it has to be. Fear-based leadership is exhausting. Not just for the leader, but for everyone around them. People can feel when their leader lacks the confidence to go for it, even when the leader can't. It changes the temperature of the room and lowers the ceiling of what a team believes is possible. Laughing at fear isn't the absence of awareness. It's the presence of something stronger. The leaders worth following are the ones who have developed something inside them that is more powerful than the fear. It’s certainty. Conviction. When it's truly present, fear doesn't disappear, it just stops driving. Your team is running at the pace you set. If you're holding back, so are they. If you're hesitating, so are they. If you're managing your risk instead of running your race, so are they. Your posture is contagious in both directions. Fear is coming. The question is do you have an anchor strong enough that you can laugh at it? REAL TALK - Action Steps Confronting fear with a smile takes deep work and intentional practice. Here are a few steps along that path:
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!  Fighting AnticipationThere's an old western story that I've always liked. Three cowboys set out early in the morning and rode hard through the whole day with nothing in their stomachs. By midday two of them feel the need to express their frustrations and begin to complain - about the heat, about their saddle, but particularly about how long it had been since breakfast. They went on and on describing how hungry they were, as if the words themselves would fill them up.
The third cowboy, who had been in the saddle just as long and eaten just as little, said nothing. Finally, one of the others turned to him and asked if he was hungry. The third cowboy simply shrugged and shook his head ‘no’. Of course, that reply only prompted the first two cowboys to double down on their pain and struggle with more complaints. That evening when they finally arrived at their destination, they settled in for their first meal of the day. The first to fill his plate and begin scarfing down his food … the third cowboy, the one who claimed to not be hungry. His two partners, surprised and watching closely, finally asked, "I thought you said you weren't hungry?" The third cowboy set his fork down on his empty plate and looked at them for a second before replying, "Not wise to be hungry then. No food." Why Should We Care? Complaining is one of the most socially acceptable habits we have, which is exactly what makes it so dangerous. We treat it as a release valve. A way to connect. A reasonable response to difficulty. As true as any of those are, they rarely improve the situation. Most of the time, complaining about a problem that has no immediate solution is just an energy leak which costs more than we realize. The cowboy in the story above wasn't pretending. He simply made a choice. Rather than suppressing his discomfort through gritted teeth while secretly suffering he made a decision to disregard his feeling of hunger completely knowing that the awareness of his hunger, with zero ability to fix it in that moment, served no useful purpose. So he redirected his energy toward things that did. He stayed present. He did the work in front of him. And when food arrived and he could actually do something about being hungry, he did. There's a version of this that shows up everywhere in leadership and life. Complaining doesn't make the food come faster, the meeting more organized, or the practice more productive. It just makes the ride feel longer. The best leaders are constantly assessing if the challenge immediately in front of them is something they can fix right now. If the answer is yes, then they stop talking and fix it. If the answer is no, they minimize the energy on it until they can. They aren't wired for denial, they're wired for efficiency. They understand that suffering out loud benefits no one. REAL TALK - Action Steps Here are a few ideas to shift your thinking in this direction.
The real battle most of us lose isn't with the problem itself, but with the anticipation of the problem. We love to rehearse the difficulty before it arrives. That's the trap. Not the hard thing itself, but the mental miles we log dreading it. The discipline of staying present and of refusing to suffer before suffering is even required is one of the most underrated forms of toughness there is. |
About bcI'm a teacher, coach, and parent seeking excellence while defining success on my own terms. Archives
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