“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”
– Rick Warren (b. 1954), pastor, author, theologian, from his top-selling book, “A Purpose Driven Life…”
OK, let’s get this out of the way. I thought yesterday’s post was awful. Maybe my worst ever. (No, I’m not going to link to it!)
The concept wasn’t bad, that politics kill organizations, but it was not well-thought-out or well-written. Was I tired? Was I distracted? It doesn’t matter. I let you, and myself down. (For any of you that liked yesterday’s post….raise your standards! Just sayin’…!)
Everything that we have seen, done and heard comprises who we are right now.
Pastor Rick, who arguably has brought more people to Faith than anyone except for a certain Jewish Carpenter, puts the concept of owning it in a clear context. When we own our mistakes, we learn and grow from them. When we don’t, when we deny or try to hide them, they end up owning us, and we become prisoners to things that we can’t do anything about. Yikes!
The phrase “products of our past” means that we’re here, now because of what’s brought us here, now. As many long-term subscribers have read before, that’s why what we do next is so important. What we do next is our “get out of jail free card.” Sort of.
Sort of, because nothing worth having is ever “free.”
“Table stakes” is the amount of money you have to bring to the table to play in a game of poker. “Cost of doing business,” is a similar term, refined for more of a business application. That “free undercoating” on the new car? It’s built into the cost of the deal. That one month “free” at the gym? It’s an extra 50-cents per day for the rest of the year. The 72-month, interest-free loan for the car? Built. In. Not free.
And like those examples, the experiences we’ve had, good ones, bad ones, neutral or forgotten — they’re the cost of getting here, now.
And no one is perfect.
Save for the aforementioned Jewish carpenter, perfection is an unrealistic goal, and, in the long run, it is self-defeating, even crushing, perhaps. Perfectionism becomes a prison.
Our disappointments in life are rarely tied to our circumstances. Instead, they are almost certainly tied to our expectations. And if we expect to never make a mistake, we’re prisoners in the purest sense of the word.
A bad post, a missed sale, a job offer declined or not received, a billing error — you get the point — we’re products of all that crap.
We’re not prisoners, even though we might occasionally slip. In 1969, I was 8-years-old and pitching in a Little League game against a giant of a 10-year-old named Terry Nelson. I was ahead 0-2 in the count, and I threw another ball right down the middle of the plate. I heard the crack of the bat. I never saw the ball, because Nelson hit it about 350 feet, which is a freakin’ mile when you’re ten! “So, what, Heston?”
Well, here’s what…
Sometimes, even when we think we’ve escaped our bonds and learned from our mistakes, we slip. In 1982, against the University of Missouri, I was ahead 0-2 on the count against a guy named Phil Bradley. Phil Bradley played eight years of Major League Baseball. I did not. “There is no way Phil Bradley thinks I am going to throw another fastball right down the middle,” I remember thinking. Turns out, Phil Bradley thought that I just might. And, of course, I did. I threw the fastball. I heard the crack of the bat. I felt the ball hit me in the right shoulder. I never saw it. The first image in my mind (right before the intense pain hit) was, “Holy crap! Phil Bradley just Terry-Nelsoned me!”
The point of the Daily Difference is to provide context, sometimes a little levity and to make us all think.
I whiffed yesterday, and I own it. In almost 8,000 posts, Seth Godin has never, to my knowledge, whiffed, and I think I’ve read about 7,800 of them. Maybe it’s because he didn’t take a year off because some doofus asked him to. Maybe it’s because he writes every day. And the next day. And the next…
What is that one thing we want to perform at the highest level? Did we practice it today? Will we practice it tomorrow? If we simply expect it delivered by Amazon Prime™ we’ll get old and gray sitting on the front step waiting for the UPS truck. If we want to #getbettereveryday, we’ll pick up the pen or keyboard, step on the treadmill or track, grab the kettlebell or yoga mat — we’ll own it. The process. The outcome. Success. Failure.
And, people will want to work with us. Because we own it.
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