A colleague sent me an excellent 10 minute video. It’s a segment from Oprah, not a show I typically watch, but the segment is a great reminder and more. Randy Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon Univ. who knows that he only has a few more months to live. He gave a lecture to his class, and in turn to the Oprah audience on the way to live life. Ultimately it comes down to having the courage to be excellent because someday is not a day on the calendar. It’s either now or never. Be excellent my friends!
I love this YouTube Video for one simple reason - I identify with it. I’m someone who have no respect for the status quo. In fact, all the things that the narrator describes, fits me to the T. Enjoy.
Attached is a great commercial with a great message - failing your way to success. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc
My first book was just published. It’s called Speaking of Success. There are other authors involved in this book as well - people like Ken Blanchard, Jack Canfield and Stephen Covey. It’s a book about success, just as the title implies. If you are a person who seeks success or looking to overcome obstacles in your way - this is the book for you. If you have an interest in buying the book - Please go here.
Today my wife and I attended the funeral of Scott R. Ball. Scott was a Pennsylvania State Trooper and Master Seargent with the National Guard. He was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan on Aug. 27th. It was a moving funeral - more moving than I thought it would be. I’m not going take this opportunity to talk about the funeral - you can get the coverage from the news. What I want to take a few minutes to do is write a few words about Scott. I had the privledge of meeting Scott a few times over the last few years. His wife has worked for several years for my father-in-law at this flower shop.
My impression of Scott can be summed up in a short phrase - gentle humility. Here was a guy who was a state trooper and national guardsman and yet he made everyone around him feel comfortable. Here was a guy who died in the line of duty attempting to save the lives of fellow soldiers. I didn’t know Scott very well since I had only met him a handful of times, but even in those few times, I could tell how devoted he was to his family and his wife.
Another way to sum up who Scott was would be in the phrase “quiet courage.” People are passing away each day on this earth, but this is the first person I’ve taken time to write about on this blog. Scott exemplifies what courage is all about. Courage to face danger head on, courage to risk your life for your fellow man, courage to be comfortable in your own skin and be comfortable with who you are and make others around you feel comfortable. I could tell that Scott was all these things just from the few opportunities I had encounters with him. Here truly was a hero.
As regular readers will notice, I’ve been a courage kick lately - writing about it, doing light research on it, etc. Today will be no different. This post is about a different type of courage that I’ve experienced jsut recently. At the end of July I went down to Baltimore with my neighbor for a 14-mile training run. It was a hot day and I struggled through the second half of the run. At one point I stepped on a rock and twisted my ankle. It didn’t bother me immediately. In fact I didn’t feel it until a week later on another long run. That’s when my problems started. Since then I have only been able to run about two miles before experiencing pain.
I’m in the process of getting it taken care of, I’ve gone to my chiropractor and to my message therapist who have both been working to heal the injury. It is progressing, but I’ve experienced a great deal of frustration with not being able to do something that I love for a few weeks now - run distance.
All this leads me to the topic for today - practical courage. I’ve learned that it takes alot of courage to be patient. I must be patient if I am to have a full recovery. I must be patient to wait to run again the way I want to run. Patience, in this essense will get me through this time, by helping me remember the big picture. The big picture isn’t the half marathon I’m scheduled to run in Sept that I probably won’t be able to run. It isn’t the Baltimore marathon scheduled for Oct. 13th either - I’m not sure if I’ll be able to run that. The big picture is being able to enjoy running distances again.
It takes courage to be patient. It takes courage to see past the short term and focus on the long term.
I’ve been doing a great deal of inner searching these last few weeks. I’ve come to know several things - some of which I’ll share here. (Here’s your editorial warning - some of this gets pretty spiritual, so if that’s not your cup of tea, that’s ok, but you probably won’t enjoy this posting.)
One of the things that I have a new knowing about is courage. Courage has always been a topic I have loved. In the past, my understanding of courage was only from a more warrior standpoint - the William Wallace-type of character - someone who stands up to great odds and moves forward anyway looking fear in the eye and facing it - that is courage.
What I’ve also come to know about courage is this - It takes great courage to allow yourself to be. Most of the time we want to fight and resist our nature.
There is a formula for success that I’ve heard many times, but I feel that I now have an new understanding of it - Be. Do. Have. So many times in our society we turn that formula around - Have. Do. Be. If only we have this or that, then we can start to do this or that, and finally we will be successful, or happy, or whatever. When we start to search, we recognize how foolish it is to switch the formula, but we only move to Do. We start believing that we have to do all sorts of things - that there are certain things that we have to do in order to change who we are - our being.
At some point some people experience a change in how they know who they are - their being. They understand the real formula - Be first, then do, then have. All of this requires courage though - the courage to not do, the courage to be, the courage to allow, the courage to face the fear of life, the courage to embrace, the courage to let go of control - of who’s in charge.
Courage in this sense becomes a means to an end. It’s not meant as something that we need to get an understanding of, just something that happens. But it only happens after we recognize who we are - our being.
I recently looked up courage on Wikipedia. Here’s the entry.
There is plenty of information about courage. All sorts of links to items that are courage related. You’ll find information about Aristotle’s thoughts about courage and the Catholic Church’s teachings about courage and other virtues, all the way to social and moral courage, to Tarot cards.
Here’s a great picture of fortitude as depicted by Sandro Botticelli. Enjoy.
