We need an ocean of change.

Every vote is a drop that helps create that ocean.
Each vote seems so small and insignificant, but without the drops there is no ocean.

As some of you who are reading this know, I have never voted before.
I had never been registered to vote until this summer, but was moved to do so as a result of an increased awareness of the social injustice and systematic racism in this country.

I didn't just feel a responsibility to register (and vote!), I also felt compelled to try to get others to do the same thing.
So, I turned my phone camera on myself and recorded a message telling my story of registering to vote for the first time and imploring those in similar positions to do the same.

It wasn't the easiest, or most comfortable, thing to do but once I hit "Share" on IG I felt great about it.
I felt like I had done a good thing and hopefully made an impact that day by encouraging at least one other person to register.

Less than an hour later, most, if not all, the wind had been taken out of my sails.
I received a call from a good friend who lives in a different state.
​He had seen my post and his response was this: "Well, Biden is going to win Delaware regardless, so your vote isn't going to mean much anyway."

I got silent on the phone as I processed what he had said.
He didn't mean to hate...but Damn, it sure felt like he was hating.
I started to entertain the idea that he could be right...
I wasn't sure, to be honest, but either way it killed my whole "making an impact" vibe, and the feeling that I had when I put myself out there on the video was gone. 

Then later that day I came across a really important article.
I don't know how I found it, (maybe it found me) but I do know why I came across it, and it's the same reason I'm sharing this with you.

The article was written by President Barrack Obama one week after the murder of George Floyd. 
​Here is the part of the article that really hit me, and why everyone, NO MATTER WHAT STATE YOU LIVE IN, should vote:
​

 
The presidential election naturally gets the most attention and coverage.
But don't be fooled into thinking it's the only political race that is important, or that your vote doesn't have the power to affect change beyond that.
​Like President Obama wrote, some of these elections come down to a few hundred votes! (You can read the whole article here.)

If you've made it this far, Thank You for reading this.
I ask only this of you: VOTE (and if you're not registered, Register HERE.)

Vote in the presidential election.
Vote in your local elections.
Vote in every election you can, not just in 2020.
​

What story are you telling yourself about your time in quarantine so far?

Is it the one about how your life got tossed upside-down, you’re struggling to develop (let alone maintain) a productive routine, you should be doing more, or better, and that you don't know how much more of this you can take?

Or is it the one about how you’ve shown unbelievable strength to make it through six weeks of freakin’ quarantine due to a worldwide pandemic (something that a few months ago only those who study this type of thing, and Hollywood writers, thought was even remotely possible) and how, even though you don’t want this to last even one more day, you’ve got the resilience to accept whatever comes next and push through no matter what?

This isn’t about the virus. 
This is about you. 
You are the hero of this story. 
Make sure you're telling yourself the right one.

Stay strong,
​

You know how at the beginning of a game of Jenga all of the pieces form a perfectly stacked tower?...One piece resting on another, building on the previous one, climbing up one level at a time?

That’s kind of how I felt about my daily routine a few months ago. (Ok, maybe it wasn’t that perfect, but that’s how I’m choosing to remember it.)

Then along came COVID-19, like a toddler trying to grab a piece from the bottom of the tower, wrecking my routine (and probably yours).
​

But life goes on (Yeah, I know, it feels different for me too) and we need to find a sense of normalcy in this “unnormal” time. 
We can find that sense of normalcy in our routine.

Artists make beautiful mosaics from broken glass so why can’t we pick up the pieces too?

​Some parts of your old routine are now impossible (or at least against lock-down laws) and need to be thrown out.
Some parts of your routine need to be tweaked.
And some parts of your new routine you will need to create based on your circumstances at home.
But the important thing is that you create a routine for yourself, and do your best to stick to it.

You may have heard the expression that we are "creatures of habit". 
Well, your routine is a collection of those habits.

In a time of great uncertainty, the structure of a routine can give you something to be certain about...something that you know you control.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and please share it with anyone that you think it might help.
​
Stay strong.

Eliud Kipchoge recently became the first person to ever run a marathon in under 2 hours.
Kipchoge ran 26.2 miles in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 40.2 seconds.

After the event Kipchoge paid homage to Roger Bannister who, 65 years earlier, became the first person to ever run a sub-4-minute mile.

People had tried for over a thousand years, but doctors and scientists claimed that it was physically impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than 4 minutes.

On May 6th, 1954 Roger Bannister did the "impossible", running a mile in 3:59.4.

As amazing as that was, what happened next was even more fascinating.
Just six weeks later someone ran a mile in 3:58.
And a year after that 3 runners broke the 4-minute barrier in the same race!

Bannister had turned the belief that a sub-4-minute mile was impossible into a myth, and at the same time opened the minds of runners around the world to what they could truly accomplish.

None of it would have happened had Bannister not had an unrelenting belief that maybe, just maybe, he could achieve what everyone else was telling him was impossible.

Impossible is a story.
Limits are stories.
Whether they are limits that others have put on us, or ones that we have put on ourselves.

Control that narrative.
​Choose to believe.
Roger Bannister did, and in doing so he redefined what was possible.
You could do the same.

​​If you give, you will receive.

The more selfless you are, the more your self grows.

The more you talk about yourself, the less people want to hear about you. (Try to avoid speaking with others for the sole purpose of hearing yourself talk.)

Being disciplined gives you tremendous freedom. (see Jocko Willink's Discipline = Freedom)

The first step towards helping others is getting your own life in order. The foundation of leadership is through example. 

Humility breeds confidence. Arrogance is born of insecurity.

The one with the most questions is usually the smartest.

Being vulnerable is a sign of strength.

Trying to be perfect is an imperfection.

Last week I was talking with a friend of mine who was looking to create significant change in his life and he said something that has been on my mind ever since.  

I asked him what he saw for himself in the future, and what that might look like, and his response to those questions is what really struck me.

"I just want to start over with a clean slate," he said.

A clean slate.

I could appreciate where he was coming from but I also felt that his thinking was a little misguided. 

The concept of starting over with a clean slate might be appealing to you, just like it was to my friend.  You may be reading this thinking that wiping your slate clean and starting over would be liberating, even rejuvenating. Maybe just thinking about it makes you feel like the weight of the world would be lifted off your shoulders, instantaneously making all the stresses in your life disappear.

If that's the case, then I challenge you to change your perspective...

The first thing is to realize, and accept, the following:

There is no such thing as a clean slate. 

Your "slate" has been written on, drawn on, scribbled on and spilled on.  You've created beautiful art on it but it's also been subject to miscalculated strokes and accidental marks. You can try to erase the mistakes, but while they may fade a little, they will always be there.

The second thing is that you shouldn't want to wipe your slate clean even if you could. 

​Everything on our slates is part of who we are. The good and the bad. We are the sum of our choices and experiences, our successes and our failures. It is all part of the masterpiece which you are creating that is your life.  

Embrace what's on your slate.  Accept your failures and realize that you can't just wipe them away.  You can however learn from them, grow from them and let them make you better. 

The need to belong, to be part of something greater than ourselves, has been written in our DNA for thousands of years. 

That's because in our caveman days, belonging to a tribe increased our chances of survival.  Not only would a tribe gather food together but more importantly tribe-members acted as look-outs for each other against life-threatening predators.

Belonging to a tribe was so vital to survival, for so many years, that it is still hard-wired in us today.

But what does belonging to a group mean today?

After winning back-to-back NBA Championships and NBA Finals MVPs, Kevin Durant said the following and I think he nailed what it means to belong:

"I'm just grateful that, you know, I get to go to work with a group of guys that care about the game so much, who care about each other."

The feeling of belonging is present when the members of a group genuinely have both of the following:

1. Love for each other.
2. Love for a common passion/pursuit/purpose.

Fundamental to our feeling of belonging to a group or team is our need to feel acknowledged, accepted and appreciated.  Some people aren't comfortable using the word "love" but essentially all three of these are forms of love. It is very apparent when you watch the Golden State Warriors that they care about each other.

And then there's the thing that brought the group together in the first place, the thing they had in common. Most groups or teams are bonded together by that one thing; an interest, a hobby or even a mission. As KD put it he was grateful to work with guys "that care about the game so much"....guys that shared the same passion he did.  

​Feeling like we belong enables us to do our best work and make our greatest contribution...Just ask KD.

​​I have (very) recently taken up cycling in an attempt to join some friends in a bike race for charity. I hadn't even owned a bike in over 20 years and other than “knowing how to ride a bike”, I am a complete Newbie! Beginner. Novice.

But it's been an amazing experience. It has been truly mind-opening to learn something from, essentially, square one. It's taught me a lot about learning how to learn and improving, in general.

Recently I read an article on 'Handling Technique: How to Corner on Your Road Bike' (I told you I was a newbie!)

The concept sounds simple, but imagine high speeds, (who am I kidding?) sharp turns and skinny wheels. The first couple of rides I found myself going really wide in turns, with my momentum wanting to go straight when the path wasn't, forcing me to hit the brakes pretty hard. Not smooth, to say the least…

One section of the article I found really interesting was under the heading “Look Out When Cornering" which included the following passage:

“Your eyes are your biggest allies when cornering...your body, and subsequently bike, will naturally pull towards the point your eyes are focused on.”

As basic as that sounds, it was a huge help and it was remarkable how everything just followed and aligned with my focus point.

As I experienced the almost surreal feeling of my body subconsciously following my eyes, it struck me as a metaphor for our journey towards our maximum potential.

We are cornering all the time!!

The Path to Mastery is not straight; there are treacherous twists and countless curves.
The key to navigating those turns however, is not to focus on the turn itself.

Instead, look out.
Keep your focus on where you want to go.
Everything else will follow.
​

Maybe you're making this harder than it needs to be...

The thing you're trying to accomplish...
The person you are trying to become...

It was never going to be easy.
It was always going to be a challenge.
That's part of why you chose it to begin with.

But maybe you're making it harder than it needs to be.
Maybe you're over-thinking it.
Maybe you've gotten away from the root of it.

So take a minute and ask yourself, "What would this look like if it were easy?"

This may help you strip away the unessential, the unnecessary, unwanted layers of complexity that you have unintentionally added.
And maybe this will clear the path for you to proceed where you previously couldn't.​

“It takes years of hard work to become an overnight success.” - Gary Mack, Mind Gym

There is often a big difference between public perception and reality.

We've seen plenty of examples of this play out before:
​
Someone, or some team, does something spectacular to land themselves in the national spotlight, much to the surprise of everyone.
​
"They came out of nowhere," we hear people say.

Yesterday, no one knew who they were.
Today, nobody can stop talking about them.

The perception is that they are an “overnight success”.
​
The reality is that they’ve been grinding.
In the dark.
Away from the spotlight.
​For years.

The overnight success is a myth.
But there’s a lot of truth in hard work.