What Drives Us.

Sometimes your job can wear you out.

No kidding right?

The deadlines, stress, boss, whatever…It can suck the life out of you and no amount of vacation can balance the anxiety.  No matter how much you love what you do, it just happens. Even if you work for yourself; the stress is still there.  

Then it happens.  You have a moment.  The thing that reminds you of why you do what you do.  That glimpse of satisfaction or success that swoops in, just in time, to remind us why we take the beating each day.  Like a small ray of sun that passes through the clouds; giving us enough hope and satisfaction to continue to endure.  Those small payoffs are the things that make it all worthwhile.

For me, it’s coaching.  Going to work each day, surrounded with talented people or folks that “know it all”, it’s refreshing to get an opportunity to share my knowledge or experience with someone who is looking to grow or understand something new. Above all, I enjoy the passing along of ideas, experience and perspective.  It’s certainly not an ego thing, but reassurance that people still have a passion for growth and forward momentum.  I want to invest in the future of my craft and in order to do that I need to make sure others, the future, are equipped with some of the knowledge I have figured out along the way.  Not my jaded perspective, but the honest take on where things are and have been.

I employ you to never pass up a coaching opportunity in life.  Just don’t do it out of ego. Do it because you care about the advancement and momentum of others.  Do it because you want to pass the baton or allow others to not have to trip and stumble like you did.  Do it because people passed on opportunities to do it for you.  One of the reasons I started writing was because I wanted to pass things along to those that might gain from my perspective and experience. Especially those who don’t know me or perhaps those who are too afraid or too proud to ask questions.  It feels good when thousands of people read my blogs, but the true satisfaction comes from the things I can’t measure through the analytical back walls of my blog or book sales.  For me, it comes from knowing that others might have been able to push through a wall because of something I wrote or said.   

All we have in this world are our experiences and unique perspective.  It’s important that we share those things with others.  It can be direct or even through a story that pulls from life experience. It doesn’t matter what you use or how you use it to connect.  All that matters is that you are sharing the valuable information that you have to offer and not squandering it and holding it captive.  Knowledge and life lessons do nothing for the world when you take them to the grave, so you might as well unload them on the world while your heart is still beating.

Don’t just wait for the world to ask you for your opinion on things.  Start with asking others to share their knowledge.  No matter how much of an expert we are, knowledge needs to be equally gained and gifted.  There is a fine line between having people connect the dots on their own and the phrase “let them figure it out themselves”.  You want people to advance.  You NEED others to get passed the stumbling blocks that hindered you.  We cannot progress without this happening.  I’m not saying we need to hand it over and spoon feed knowledge to others.  They do need to experience things for themselves, but that doesn’t mean we have to sit and watch them circle the drain because we have a sick desire for some level of hazing.  Manuals and history books are written for a reason.  They help the next group progress.  Your history is uniquely yours and most people will never write a book, so we might as well share what we got.