Breakthrough

"Who had I become? Just another shark in a suit? Two nights later at a conference in Miami I had a breakdown. Breakdown? Breakthrough."

- taken from the movie Jerry Maguire

Back when I was playing college tennis our coach had a gentleman by the name of Scott Williams come talk to the team at the beginning of our season. After a brief introduction where we learned that Scott was the captain of an Eco Challenge team based out of San Francisco, he put in a video of the last race he and his team competed in--which showed all individuals doing all sorts of crazy things in extreme physical conditions.

After the video was over, he asked the entire team "How many of you have ever quit?" The room was silent. "C'mon. Hold up your hand if you have ever quit." Hands started being raised, including Scott's and our coach's, and quickly after everyone in the room had their hand up. "And how did quitting make you feel afterwards?" Again, the room was silent. "I'll bet you didn't feel to good after you quit, right?" Everyone in the room was nodding. We were all quiet, but the guy had us. "Looking back on the situation, I bet that if you would have dug in a little bit deeper--not that deep even--and just hang in there, you would have been able to finish."

I don't remember word for word what he said after that--I was so awe struck by his last line that my ability to remember the details was shut down. Scott went on to say that as captain of his Eco Challenge team, he would not allow any of his teammates to quit a race. If any of them approached him during a race and said, "I want to quit," he would then give them the canned response of, "I know you want to quit, but you are not going to." He then quickly organize his team and figure out a way to finish as a team.

After my swim lesson this past Tuesday I was seriously contemplating quitting swimming. I was tired of the nagging shoulder problems, the limited volume that swim due to these injuries, and my lack of progress over the past year. Then I reflected on the aforementioned talk that I heard as a sophomore in college, and recognized that if I did quit how it would make me feel and the need to dig in just a little bit deeper.

I went up to my room, looked at my stroke in the mirror, downloaded some tape of Michael Phelps swimming, and started to reimagine the stroke--all the while taking notes feverishly as to where the breakdown in my stroke was most likely occurring. Prior to getting in the water with Coach Kevin this evening, we discussed some of the possibilities and issues that I had identified and we able to quickly identify where my stroke was breaking down and what has been causing my ongoing shoulder pain. It was the breakthrough moment I had been working towards for the past two years. If I hadn't dug in that extra little bit that breakthrough moment would never have occurred.

Earlier this week I received an email from a good friend of mine who is knee deep in starting his own company. He's lucky in the sense that he has a mentor who is a certified billionaire who is coaching him through this process. My friend had two comments regarding the coaching from this gentleman: (1) The most important thing that he has received is encouragement from someone who has been wildly successful in the business world. Nobody can tell you how to run YOUR company, but encouragment and some direction along the way is priceless. (2) Success is mostly about negotiating and minimizing your failures. It seems that if a person can do this, learn from their failures as they go, and stay in the game long enough, then success is the natural by product of such efforts.

Namaste

In the Clearing Stands a Boxer...

"If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.

- Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris as portrayed by Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby

Any movie with a Morgan Freeman voiceover is a good movie in my book--Shawshank Redemption and Million Dollar Baby come to mind immediately. Although I didn't like all the white trash stereotypes that entered into the movie or the whole thing about the Hillary Swank character getting paralyzed. Anyway.....

As part of my new workout routine I jump rope for at least 15 minutes a day. It's a great workout. It burns the lungs, works the stabilizer muscles in the shoulders, and the calves. Sometimes when I am hitting the rope and am in a good groove, I imagine a Morgan Freeman voiceover inserted into the soundtrack of my life. I hear the man saying the above sequence, only tailored to accounting. I imagine that beautifully weathered voice talking about footing the 10-K over and over and over, tieing out the document to make sure each number is perfect, then doing a clean read late into the night; working until the cleaning crew has left and leaving the office knowing that you have met the high standard of a professional. I usually have these thoughts during my 5 AM workouts when I am a little bit loopy. I also imagine my company's CFO saying, "Hit 'em in the head! Hit 'em in the stomach!," in his beautiful Scottish brogue while I am jumping rope.

So what's new with me? Not a whole lot, really. I haven't written much lately as my colleagues and I are up to our shoulders in SEC reporting fun. I've worked each weekend since returning back from Christmas vacation, and the work is starting to take its toll on my mind--in case the jump rope sequence wasn't any indication of this. I had breakfast with a friend of mine this morning, and my contribution to the conversation was all over the place. Random thought I had had over the past several weeks which had not been articulated previously came flowing out of my mouth even though they didn't relate to the conversation at hand. My mind is trying to funnel out all the backlog of thoughts that it has been harboring for the past several weeks. Whether you like it or not, often times one's mouth has a mind of it's own.

My plan for tomorrow is simple: decompress. I don't know exactly what will happen, but I have images of sleeping in, sitting on my back patio with an enormous cup of coffee, and enjoying the beautiful weather of Phoenix without an agenda.

Those are all my thoughts for now.

Namaste