Today marks the end of my family’s first season as a swim family and I must say that I have certainly been impressed with my family thoughout this season. Firstly, let me say that my oldest daughter, the one who swam this year, gave me an overwhelming sense of pride. Last year, she barely had the guts to let go of the wall at her aunt’s apartment swimming pool. She was nervous about even trying out because she wasn’t sure if she could actually swim 25 meters. But she tried out anyway. She made the team.
And she was a little nervous being on a team with other girls that had been swimming for years. You could see her tentativeness when hanging out with them at meets. But she did it anyway. And she made a lot of new friends (and fans at that).
My family also blew my mind with the way they handled the change in our lifestyle due to a rigorous swim season schedule. We weren’t sure how we were going to handle an hour long swim practice five days a week with a six hours meet every Saturday while we were seven months pregnant with our fifth child. But we tried several things and when all was said and done, we made a lot of new friends, had a lot of fun, exposed all of the kids to a wonderful sport and had one of the best family bonding experiences I can think of.
So all of this got me to thinking, what gets into a person that makes them “take the plunge”?
This is the land I have promised you
Every now and again you hear of stories where people do extraordinary, sometimes supernatural, things in response to less than comfortable situations. This situations usually involve the overcoming of some major fear, or some major foe, or some major possible failure.
When I feeling fearful or overwhelmed I like to turn to passages in the Bible that describe poeple overcoming unusual circumstances or at least reasoning to do so. One of those passages is the story of Joshua and Caleb (Numbers 13).
These two fellows were chosen to be spies along with ten other leaders. The spies were given the job of inspecting the land that God had promised them and returning a report of what they has seen. They were sent simply to see what God had in store for them when they received the blessing of their land. Instead, 10 of the men were crippled by what they saw. They returned a report of giants in the land. They were spooked by the warriors that were in the land they were supposed to possess. So they freaked out and told the Isrealites that there was no way that they were going to be able to get into their land.
But Joshua and Caleb told a different story. The basics of that story are: 1) Let us go up at once, 2) and take possession 3) for we are well able to overcome it.
What do we do now, what do we do then, why should we do it. For those days when it seems that you can’t do it, think about how big the situation would seem if you were not going to be here tomorrow. Would it still be as frightening? Would you put it off? Why can’t you do it?
Everyone is given an innate ability to do things that seem to be beyond our natural ability. Yet we manage. Things get done. Obstacles are overcome. Struggles are defeated. Our spiritual design allows us, through faith, to do the impossible. There is no reason to expect otherwise when faced with the impossible.
It’s just like a daughter who thinks she can’t make it. Or a family that can’t fathom the thought of swimming six days a week. It can be done. And praise God, it will be.
Every now and again something comes along that really kicks you in the butt and insistst that you shift your position. Whether it is changes to your family situation, your financial position, your business… whatever, if you are not moving you are stagnant. I heard someone say once that “if you are green you’re growing, if you are ripe you’re rotting”. I suppose that part of me believes that if you set a position to be at, then get there, you better move or you are going to stay there. This, most often, seems to be easier said than done (especially if you comfort zone issues like I do). But no matter the size of your desired comfort zone, sometimes someone says or does something that totally knocks your face in the dirt with a common sense slap of reality that you have no choice. You have to nuke your comfort zone.
Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com is an inspiring person
Few people can say they have pushed themselves to the brink of complete failure, refuse to lose and make a complete reversal into success. Even fewer can say that they did this twice. I am hoping to become one of the folks that can say they did this just once. Bob Parsons, Founder and President of GoDaddy.com, can say that he did this twice. And aspiring entrepreneurs all over the world are a lot better off for his willingness to discuss it.
Bob just gets it. He is willing to lay it all on the line to reach the levels only he can see in his vision. He understands the success of failure and how to quickly adapt to his surroundings when failure comes upon him. He seems to know how to find the right people to support his vision and get them on board with it so together they achieve success. Man, if only that type of character could be put into a pill everyone in the world would be a successful business owner.
Amazing what change can do
Whether you invoke the change or the change is thrust upon you, change in and of itself seems to make people a lot less comfortable with their current surroundings. Of course this is a statement I make using my own personal experience and I cannot broadly make this assumption. But I do believe it is a fair estimate to say that if you do not react well to change than you are probably way to comfortable or miserable with your current lot in life. For me, I am feeling quite a little itch right now.
You see, my wife has just given birth to our fifth child (and first boy I might add). This is such an exciting time for us because our entire household is enjoying the change. Is it tough being tired and living in a dirty house trying to feed an army of children every day? Yeah. But the joy of having him home with us far outweighs the short term struggles brought on my the change. In fact, I am feeling an ever stronger pull to get my business moving along so I can spend more time with the family. Again, either move with the change or spend a long time wondering what could have been.
Read Bob Parsons’ blog
Make it a point to inspire yourself by reading Bob Parsons’ blog. Even if you are not looking to be in business for yourself, his tales of perseverance and weathering trials will motivate you and inspire you to excel in whatever you are doing. There are two blog posts in particular that I would highly recommend. The first post talks about Bob’s experience with forming, building and sustaining the GoDaddy.com vision amidst several setbacks. The second one sort of catalogs the steps he took in developing Parsons Technology (his first company). Both are excellent reading. You will not be disappointed.
I know it seems silly to use this as an anology, but in Disney’s “Finding Nemo” the seemingly dim-witted Dory used a little song to keep her sights fixed. The gist of the song was “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming”. If you don’t believe me ask the nearest four year old. I love that song because it is inspiring and true. No matter what comes at you, just keep swimming.
I hope this helps someone. I know that hearing about how other people have made mistakes, were hit with failure, thought all was lost yet managed to succeed greatly helps me immeasureably. Take care… on second thought, take a risk.
I just wanted to wish everyone who is reading this a happy Independence Day. Today is a day that we get to celebrate our freedom and liberty afforded to us by men and women brave enough and with enough conviction to turn a little band of colonies into the most admired, powerful and envied nation in the world today. People are still fleeing their contries for a chance at a better life in the USA. Hopefully those folks won’t forget what allows them to do that.
War is not nice but it is necessary
As our country is at war, even at this very hour, it seems that various media outlets are painting a rather nasty impression of our president, our armed forces, our troops and our patriots. It is not my intent to get into an opinionated sermon on the goods of being at war. However, I must say that had it not been for countless men and women giving their lives up for this great country we might not have the very rights that allow us to bash what is happening in the world today. Good or bad, had our forefathers and fellow contrymen not gone to war we might still be an oppressed nation today.
Praise God for our troops
Again, I am not trying to be a political powder keg, but I feel it deserves mention. Our troops, and the troops of those forces fighting along side of us right now, are a Godsend. It takes a special kind of person to be able to offer themselves up day after day for the potential improvement of a people that might not even want the improvement. There were some colonists a few hundred years ago that decided to do the same thing and praise the Lord, we are a free nation today. To all you soldiers out there, past and present, I thank God for you.
I suppose there is a lot more that I could say here. But this is neither the time nor the place to get into all that. Have a safe Independence Day holiday. May God bless you and your family.
ORIGINALLY POSTED JUNE 30, 2005.
My wife gave birth yesterday to our fifth child and first son. He was a week past due, but worth every minute of it. It’s sort of a weird thing, but you would think that having been around to see the births of my four other children that I would be used to this type of thing already. Well, I’m not. With every child that my wife has delivered I have been a bundle of nerves. I have been silly with excitement. This one was no exception.
This little guy is way different
Of all of our kids this little fellow is by far the most laid back, quiet, relaxed kid we have had. He was very awake for the first few hours of his life and he hardly made a sound. He cried a few times here and there, but not like some of the other babies that were on the maternity ward floor where we were. He just kind of lays there, being cute and soaking everything in. He gets handled regularly by mom, myself and the nursing staff. But still, he just relaxes through it all. He is so cool.
Time to go
Mom is going to be released from the hospital in a little while. I am getting the house prepared this morning for their arrival and figured I’d take a little break to add a little to the blog. I will definitely put more up later. I mean, his four sisters are certainly going to give me a wealth of things to write about when it comes to having a new brother and all that other good stuff. Anyhow, til next time…
Welcome to my blog! I set this up as a way to better manage my journal. I was on Blogger (several blogs actually) but WordPress’ blog application is a ton better so I have decided to set up another blog. I hope it is useful.
I am going to be trying to move my old posts over to this site from my old blog. I am not sure if I am going to move all the blogs over or just my personal blog. I guess we’ll see as the blog grows.