Life is about transitions. Graduation. First job. Marriage. But no transition has been as game-changing for me as becoming a parent. The transition is ripe with challenges and is loaded with life lessons that can unlock our wisdom.
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Love what you do? Nah. Love competing, curiosity, and collaboration. That’s who you are. It’s more important than what you do.
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Many of us are guilty of “if-then” thinking: the trap that keeps us in a hamster wheel of future behavior. Here are a few examples:
Work to live or live to work?
I've come to reject this binary.
I want to work to live AND live to work. I want both.
The more I work with leaders in organizations, the more I am convinced of the power of culture. Yet, most people are fuzzy about what culture actually means. As a result, it can become a meaningless buzzword. Here’s how I have come to understand it.
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For me, there is a distinction between motivation and inspiration. I have a good sense of what motivates me and try to consistently refresh my motivating factors for success.
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Something I wish I knew when I was younger... When someone's going through something difficult, saying nothing (out of fear of saying the wrong thing), is typically worse than saying the "wrong" thing.
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I posed this question to myself recently. If I could only pick one of these, which one would I want on my tombstone?
World-Class Writer
World-Class Coach
World-Class Speaker
World-Class Podcaster
World-Class Dad
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If a team member is not a positive influence on the team, how valuable can they be for the team? I have been thinking about this a lot lately. We often prioritize talent over leadership qualities.
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Sport Psychology education, sales training, and executive coaching taught me to avoid closed-ended questions as if they were the plague. I was told they lead people to give one-word answers. And yet, I am starting to believe that the best questions on my podcast and in my 1-on-1 coaching sessions are often closed-ended.
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When someone says, “It’s not about the money,” I think what they often mean is “It’s not just about the money.” One word can change how we communicate and the clarity of our communication. One word can breed authenticity and the lack of a word can breed phoniness.
When we don’t have experience, we often feel the need to over-communicate what we have done.
When we have experience, we often don’t feel the need to talk about what we have done; our actions show our expertise in their own right.
The most confident people in the world are often the ones who are willing to genuinely say “I don’t know.”
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Burnout is often more about emotion than it is about thoughts. We often try to problem-solve with our thoughts (myself included) while ignoring what is going on with the body and our feelings (emotions). Think of the words associated with burnout—exhausted, tired, frustrated, stuck, stressed, fatigued, etc. Those words have to do with how we are feeling. They often have to do with an emotional experience.
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The best football catches occur when the QB makes a bad throw—think of Justin Jefferson’s catch last year versus the Bills. The best golf shots typically occur after bad shots—think of Bubba Watson at the Masters. The best saves in hockey occur from defensive breakdowns—think of a goalie standing on their head to make a save.
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"Now more than ever" is overused and typically factually wrong.
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This may be controversial, but it's what I believe. You don't have to train your mind to be great. You don't have to read, listen to podcasts, meditate, take ice baths, etc. It may work for others, but there’s no shame if it doesn’t work for you. Each of us needs to find our own way.
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Below are some reflections I had from a recent trip to Hungary. I hope they inspire you to think deeply about your ancestors and how you can intentionally lean into their experiences. As always, thanks for reading.
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Stop being so sensitive. I can hear my brother’s voices as 13-year-old Brian is starting to become a man. I hear it in my fraternity brothers while in college. And I can even hear it in my friends and people that are closest to me today. As long as I can remember, I have felt that sensitivity has been part of my wiring; in my DNA, so to speak. As a kid, I didn’t know what to do with it. I could feel things others seemingly didn’t, or at least they didn’t acknowledge they did. I was emotional. Boys are often told to be stoic. Brush it off. Don’t cry. Be tough. Heck, forget being tough, you just are tough. Like sensitivity, it’s part of your wiring.
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A lack of boundaries often leads to bitterness and resentment. I have frequently put a desire to be well-liked over a desire to set boundaries, and surprisingly it leads to being less well-liked. Let me explain further. Boundaries need to be front-loaded. They create expectations. When we set our intentions up-front, we create clarity; when we don’t, we create clutter. Many of us create stories and assumptions when boundaries aren’t in place. It’s in those stories that drama thrives. Boundaries are about truth over hearsay.
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