Category: Challenges

Challenges Offer Learning Opportunities

1/9/2017

"If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you." – Unknown

One thing I really look back on in my life was that I got this message and took it to heart. Today, as a guy over 50, I have no problem what so ever taking this to heart since I’ve been through enough of life that I can the value and truth to this statement. The funny thing is, I’ve had plenty of people telling me that when I was younger and of course I didn’t really listen to them. Equally as comical is the fact that I give this same message to my 2 kids along with my students and basketball players. I hope they listen better than I did.

I’ve seen more challenges as I’ve gotten older along with most of those challenges being a lot more serious and heavy duty than most of the ones that I had when I was younger. When I was younger I thought those challenges were serious of course at that time, only to learn that you do what you can and get help if you need it and then time moves on, and just about all those challenges are a distant memory as I got older.

What I know now is that those times when those things come up in life are meant to test us. They are meant to give us some of the most valuable lessons we will ever learn throughout our lifetime. That’s if we look at that way while being in the middle of those problems and issues. That’s the challenging part. It’s really easy to look back on memories to think about them or at least try and remember them for the lessons that were there. I think it’s a hundred times more valuable if we can look for the lessons while we are in the middle of the lesson.

Also remember, we learn from many different sources. Other people telling us about their stories of their ups and downs – and the lessons they learned. Even watching others go through things without them telling us about them. We learn from reading books, listening to podcasts, seeing current events going on around us, etc. The most valuable of them all – those things that we go through ourselves! We are the best source of learning for our own lives since we are in the title role playing ourselves in our own story.

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One Thing For Sure - Learning Never Stops

4/16/2016

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"I learned about the strength you can get from a close family life. I learned to keep going, even in bad times. I learned not to despair, even when my world was falling apart. I learned that there are no free lunches. And I learned the value of hard work." — Lee Iacocca

One thing I know for sure is that learning never stops. At least it shouldn’t stop if we know what’s good for us. This weekend I learned about strength in family. I have a very good friend that lost his wife to cancer. I’ve seen these losses before for others and it always has lessons for me and for others to learn from and for the most part I’ve learned many but honestly I could say maybe I’ve lost a few of them over the years. Not proud of it, but it’s probably true.

This one hurt too, just like the others and just like the deaths of a loved one that you have suffered too. Finding out part of the back story in that my friend, who I’ve known since 1st grade along with him being the best man in my wedding too; how he’s handled this over the last year and a half or so – simply amazing!

These lessons have pushed me into a little bit more action than previous lessons. I guess all the previous lessons along with this one and for sure the ones that are to come in the future, could all be put into a book. That book should be drawn on often, if not every day. It comes down to this – these lessons should help us to live a better life each and every day! What we say and do. How we treat others. Things that we shouldn’t waste our time on and things we do need to spend our time on. The list can go on a lot longer too.

Part of this idea above from Lee Iacocca is the value of hard work. Things that have been decided that are worth it (and that is different for everyone) are usually things that will take some hard work to make them happen. For the most part, things that come easy may not be really worth it in the end. Through all the ups and downs in life, the heartbreak and the moments of happiness and enjoyment, there has to be some solid effort that is put into our equation of life. Not much if anything comes free to us. It has to be earned for sure.

Another part is the not quitting, not giving up! Having to have faith in our situations, ourselves, our loved ones, and for the most part faith in something bigger than ourselves. It helps so much to have our lives going in a direction towards things that we are passionate about, so that when the tough times hit (and they always do), we can find our way through the storms in order to keep going and not quit.

The lessons I’ve learned this past week or so are powerful. But like I said, so are the other ones that I’ve learned in the past. Now, maybe they are all coming together. Maybe now I have enough of a “reason why” to do some things differently and make some changes that I’ve been dabbling with for years. What lessons have you learned lately from life? Any time you want to share them – please do for I know they will help me along with they will help others too.

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It's Planting Season - Always Do Your Best

4/2/2016

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"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later." -- Og Mandino

It's great to see Spring coming around a little bit more everyday. Even with some colder weather coming in during the start of April, it's still nice to see it lighter out later along with some green coming back all around outside.

I am reminded about this quote seeing that I have been constantly reminding my students about doing their best for years. As I have always told them, I need the same advice for myself that I give to them. The things that we all do now, both good and bad will be what affects our future. There have been some things that I have gone out of my comfort zone for lately, and I need to continue doing that. It has become more exhilarating for me compared to causing me to be nervous and getting worked up about.

That's the one thing that my students have helped me with so often over the years. When I talk to them and hear parts of their stories about overcoming challenges and difficulties, about getting out of the comfort zone; that helps me so much so that I can try and do the same. Of course I tell my students the sooner they make these changes, the better off they will be. I also tell them that since I'm much older than they are, most of the time it's more difficult for me to make those types of changes.

I think it means more to me however (and others that are older) since we realize all the time that has gone by along with the amount of time we have left in life too. For younger people they may think that they have plenty of time to start things later, that they don't have to do it right now. This ties into a saying from John Fuhrman about every choice we make in life either takes us towards our goals and dreams or takes us further away. So we do harvest later what we choose to do today. It's up to us as to what we will be harvesting.

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Challenges Make Life Interesting - Quote of the Week

7/14/2014

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“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful” – Joshua J. Marine

Thinking about how challenges are all around us all the time throughout life caused me to stop for a moment when I saw this quote. We all have challenges that we are dealing with. Each and every day. We see life challenges in the news, on social media, talking with friends and neighbors; enough to know that we are not alone when it comes to having challenges to deal with.

In pausing life here for a moment thinking about this idea, with a cup of coffee too by the way, I have come to a couple of main thoughts that stick out to me. First, I am indeed not the only one with problems and challenges. In fact not only do we all have them every day in our lives, some obviously are far worse than what we have to deal with. The thought that others do have it worse off than I do helps me to see that I need to not complain about my challenges and that I need to not let them define me along with not letting me quit due to those issues that I have.

Another thought that comes to me when I think about this is that there is tremendous empathy and caring for others that comes out of taking a few moments to dwell on these thoughts. Empathy is a point that I try and get my students to think about every year as I think it's one of the most powerful abilities that we have in connecting with other people. It's one that we all need to do more of in this world especially with all the lousy examples we see in the media about the selfishness and lack of character that seems to be all around us in our world.

These two ideas are really helping me as I face another of many challenges in my life as I go in for knee replacement surgery tomorrow. It truly has been a long and painful process over the last few years of trying to do everything I could to help my knee pain. It has finally come down to the fact that the severe arthritis that I have started to battle now in my life has caused me to make some choices to get back my quality of life that I want to have. I look forward to this process because I know at the end of it will be a life with less pain and my ability to do things I love to do. I know there will be more procedures that I will need to have done in the future due to these changes in my body as I get older. But I know there are so many people worse off than me, I will not let this stop me from doing the things that I know I need to do along with the new things I want to do in my life. There are so many more meaningful moments in my life that going through this and other upcoming challenges, will make them all the more sweeter.

What challenges are you going through right now where maybe you can take these couple of ideas to help you get through them and look ahead for better days? Let me know as we can help each other out with some new thoughts, ideas and discussions about this and many other life events that we all go through.

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Quote of the Week - August 26, 2013

8/26/2013

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"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." -Henry Ford

There was a little bit of a connection to this being a Monday and this wonderful quote from Henry Ford. When I saw it this morning I thought about the fact that I needed to reset and begin a few things again today, being the start of another week. This week is crucial leading up to the new school year and there are plenty of things I need to work on in a more intelligent way than I've done before.

This holds true with work things that we have to do, but more importantly it also has to do with life things too. The sooner we look at the difficulties in our lives, how did we arrive there, what things can we learn from those experiences, how can I make changes so it doesn't happen again; are just some of the things we need to think about. This of course is all wieved arround the fact that we can't let our own negative thinking get in the way of learning from our failures.

One thought I had when I read this over a few times this morning, was that all the things I've failed at throughout my life, I must not have learned much since some of the things I'm still struggling with. From there it might be a thought like, 'what makes you think this time will be any different?' Another one; 'who are you kidding, you know you'll end up right where you started as you have tried this so many times.'

A funny thing though. As I started running the usual negative thoughts in my head there was a little response, just a little voice that said - hey, this time can be different. It also said that 'you know you can do this', along with little pictures in my mind about me being successful and actually doing these things that I'm working on doing. The key is that over time (and for me it's been a long journey) I have learned little bits and pieces even if I wasn't successful at accomplishing things that I wanted to do, I still got just a tiny bit better than I was before.

There is the key! As long as you come coming back, struggle, try and do more, try and get better, keep trying to accomplish things in your life; this quote from Henry Ford will continue to hold truth for you. This is why it's important to continue to read and listen to things more than once. In fact it should be many times - some experts even say almost 20 times we need to read or listen to something for it really to become a habit, or it gets placed inside of us that we can draw on it any time we need it. What is it for you? What does Mr. Ford's quote mean to you? How do you connect to it? As always I invite you to share with me and others your thoughts and ideas about this quote, for there will be many other ideas and thoughts that can help me and others. It's always great to see someone's thoughts and opinions that can get us thinking differently. Seeing things from different points of view are always helpful.

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Quote of the Week - April 1, 2013

4/1/2013

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Even with a break from school - I still wanted to get some thoughts out.

"Learn from your failures or be conquered by them." - from livelifehappy.com

This quote just jumped right out at me from two standpoints. First, learn from your failures is something that I know I need to always focus on in my life. Sure wish I had a clue about that earlier, but now I do. Failures happen, but we need to learn from them, make adjustments and move on. So many times I see myself and others making mistakes and failing... but then we don't learn from them. Ouch! Life is all about mistakes happening. Life has failures in it everyday. But we don't have to choose to keep making them over and over again, do we?

Second, if we don't learn from our failures and we don't make adjustments to become better or to get through those things that we struggle with - those failures will end up holding us back, really conquering our futures. There are obviously so many different levels to this as there are different levels of failures. Another key element to this that when we don't learn from these failures, they will also affect the other people in our lives that we are connected to.

Too many of my failures and shortcomings that I've had in my life have affected my family. Whereas if I would have learned from them and gotten better, things could be more positive in many ways for me and my family. These really end up getting in the way of our relationships in life. Which, if you haven't figured out by now, are really what's important in our lives.
Any thoughts or ideas on this? Have you thought about how things like this might be getting in the way for you? Always looking for discussion points.

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Quote of the Week -March 25, 2013

3/26/2013

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"Don't let someone else's opinion of you become your reality." - Les Brown

When I first heard Les Brown talk about this - it really hit home with me and my students. Many times I think we give up control to those people in our lives that will fill our heads with doubt. Many times the critics in our lives are those that are the closest to us. Those people that love and care for us - and we for them, will sometimes be the biggest distractors for us to get through.

I am also reminded by this statement that we also have to work on our own opinion of ourselves. If we hear enough negative from others in our lives and add it to our own self-doubting opinion about ourselves, that is a recipe for going nowhere. Where if we have the attitude and mental preparation to take these opinions as fuel or reasons for getting better - to use them as inspiration, well... that's another story. When you actually sit back and think about things like this, isn't it the right thing to do - to take these critics in our lives and use their opinions to help us do more and get better? That's an approach that I think would be great for all of us to use. I know I need to do just that!

There are so many things that Les Brown says that really hits home for me and for my students too. I suggest you look him up and read some of his books, listen to some of his audio recordings, and watch his videos as he's got so many messages to connect with so many different people. Another quote he gave to us in this recent presentation - "the best revenge is massive success." For all the doubters and critics in our lives, that is something that will help others to see our true reality for sure.

Any thoughts or ideas on this from Les Brown. Remember, not only do your thoughts and ideas help me, they help yourself and many others too. When you take the time to put some of these in writing - it gets you thinking about making adjustments in your life. Might be right then when you do it, or later on sometime. Either way, it's good to share your thoughts and ideas on these quotes... so thank you for doing just that.

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Quote of the Week - March 18, 2013

3/18/2013

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"Every challenge is nothing more than a chance to make things better." - Lolly Daskal

This in itself is an amazing quote due to the simple fact that since we have challenges just about every day of our lives, we have the chances every day to make things better. Some people have more challenges than others so they really have the opportunities to make significant changes in their lives to make things better.

Another key to this thought I think is that not only can it help ourselves in our own life, but those that we are connected to as well. You see, all the people that are connected to us in our lives also face challenges. If we are able to have this way of thinking to help ourselves, we can also help those around us too. If you haven't noticed the world if full of challenges each and every day. Instead of complaining, criticizing, condemning about them and letting those challenges dictate life to us, we have the ability to look at how we can get better from this. We can spend our time looking to solve these issues or at least work towards making them better.

Funny thing is, it's taken me so long to figure this out. Actually, I'm just starting to not only figure this out, but maybe even actually doing something about these things. Do I wish I figured it out sooner in life? You bet I do. I try and get my students to start thinking about these things sooner than I did. I always tell them to learn from me and others so they can do things differently than we did. Even today as I write these thoughts and ideas over a cup of coffee before I start my day, there are many things that I need to work on and this morning I did work on one small little thing instead of putting it off like I normally do. I look at that choice and I know my day today (a Monday) will start out better than normal all because of a choice I made to do something different this morning.

How about you? What challenges are you going through that you are trying to make things better? Remember, we can learn so much from each other. I love being a teacher because I can help others get better. But the flip side is more true than that.... I get to learn from others. So drop me a note, leave some thoughts and ideas for me and others to learn from and make things better for you and others too.

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Challenges Offer Learning Opportunities

One Thing For Sure - Learning Never Stops

It's Planting Season - Always Do Your Best

Challenges Make Life Interesting - Quote of the Week

Quote of the Week - August 26, 2013

Quote of the Week - April 1, 2013

Quote of the Week -March 25, 2013

Quote of the Week - March 18, 2013

Coach John Daly

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