“At the touch of love, every­one becomes a poet.” ~ Plato

I have watched this video sev­eral times, and it con­tin­ues to be a pow­er­ful exam­ple of what love is all about.  Watch it and be inspired!

“Go con­fi­dently in the direc­tion of your dreams.  Live the life you have imag­ined.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

For inspi­ra­tion, watch this short video by Nike about Lance Arm­strong.  It’s a great exam­ple of what com­mit­ment is all about.

photo credit: jugrote
“But there is suf­fer­ing in life, and there are defeats.  No one can avoid them.  But it’s bet­ter to lose some of the bat­tles in the strug­gles for your dreams than to be defeated with­out ever know­ing what you’re fight­ing for.” ~ Paulo Coelho

Defeat. We’ve all been there. That moment when we’ve lost some­thing we really wanted. Maybe it was a big game you played in as a child. Or maybe it was a job pro­mo­tion you were work­ing toward. Or maybe it was your moment to per­form on stage. Or maybe it was the new life your wed­ding would bring. Or maybe it was the life of a loved one.

Defeat. We’ve all been there, and we’ll be there again. I was there this past week­end. The soc­cer team I coach was play­ing in a tour­na­ment at our village’s sum­mer fes­ti­val. We had a team of excited nine year old boys, ready to con­quer the world (or, at least the first team we played). Were we ever in for a sur­prise. As a team, we have usu­ally done pretty good — win a few, lose a few. But most games are fairly close. Not today. The other team was much more pre­pared and sharp. And before we knew it, we were down by nearly ten goals. By half­time, our boys were exhausted and defeated. And we still had the sec­ond half to play. We went back out, and as the game wore on, you could just see our team giv­ing up. It was the most dif­fi­cult game I have coached. A day that had started so pos­i­tive, had quickly turned dark.

After the game, we talked about our effort, and how we can’t give up. Even in the face of insur­mount­able odds. We were there to play, and that’s what we do for the full fifty min­utes. We left the game with our heads hang­ing a lit­tle lower than I wanted. And, we still had another game in a cou­ple of hours.

The resiliency of kids! They bounced back for the sec­ond game. For the most part, every­one had seemed to have moved on from our ear­lier loss (except for me). In the end, we also lost the sec­ond game, but it was a much closer (and more fun) game.

Defeat. Why couldn’t I give it up? I was stuck on the fact that the other team was older than us, prob­a­bly played in a more select soc­cer league dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son, and just plain played harder out there.

Defeat. I wanted to win. And I felt like we were ganged up on by a team that was bet­ter and older. And I didn’t think it was fair. But the truth is, that’s life. Some­times we’ll be in sit­u­a­tions where life doesn’t seem fair, and we’ll lose. And this can be dif­fi­cult. Dif­fi­cult to accept. Dif­fi­cult to get over.

There are great lessons we learn in defeat. Prob­a­bly greater lessons than those we learn in vic­tory. If we are open to see­ing and accept­ing these lessons. So, look at defeat as an oppor­tu­nity to learn and grow. The fields of defeat are filled with many life lessons.

After some time to reflect on our soc­cer defeat, I feel more inse­cure as a coach. But I’m look­ing at that as a good thing. Good in that I know we have so much room for improve­ment. And that will be my job as we go into the fall sea­son. Find ways to develop our play­ers so they can com­pete at a higher level. And help them to under­stand that what makes us great is work­ing together as a team and not giv­ing up.

Defeat. Embrace your defeats. To this I don’t mean that I hope you lose your job, or don’t get to play in a cham­pi­onship game, or have a bro­ken mar­riage. To this I mean that when defeat finds you, embrace the oppor­tu­nity to learn from the mis­takes you’ve made. Make a real effort to under­stand what hap­pened, and look for ways you can improve.

“Far bet­ter it is to dare mighty things, to win glo­ri­ous tri­umphs even though check­ered by fail­ure, than to rank with those poor spir­its who nei­ther enjoy nor suf­fer much because they live in the gray twi­light that knows nei­ther vic­tory nor defeat.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

So, dare the mighty things you desire in your life.  Go out there and live.  Know that some­times you will be defeated in some of the things you want most.  And know that that is ok.  It makes our lives richer to have expe­ri­enced fail­ure and suc­cess.  Your life is yours to live — live it to the fullest!

photo credit: Vlas­tula

“It is not by mus­cle, speed, or phys­i­cal dex­ter­ity that great things are achieved, but by reflec­tion, force of char­ac­ter, and judge­ment.” ~ Mar­cus Tul­lius Cicero

You get into your SUV and head down the high­way.  With all the time con­straints you have in your life today, you step on the accel­er­a­tor and drive a few miles over the speed limit.  Every­one else is doing it.  And some are going faster.  You won’t get stopped by the local police since there are so many oth­ers that are doing the same thing.

I do that.  I’m sure many of you also do.  We live in a world where we have so much going on, that often­times we’re rushed to get from one spot to the next.  We look at the speed limit as kind of a “guide­line”.  Hey, we’re busy peo­ple and we’ve got stuff to get done.

How about your life?  Is it that way too?  Work.  Fam­ily.  Extracur­ric­u­lar activies.  Vol­un­teer projects.  Daily activies.  It’s enough to put you on over­load sometimes.

What is the speed limit of your life?  Are you always dri­ving on the free­way, push­ing the 65 MPH speed limit?  Men­tally, do you ever slow down and go through some back­roads in your life?

Some­times speed is impor­tant.  We have dead­lines to meet at work or school.  They have to get done, and we just plow through them.  But we also need to take time to slow down in our lives.  To have the life we really want and deserve, we have to under­stand who we are.  What are our dreams?  What are we really pas­sion­ate about?

Dri­ving 70 MPH through life is not going to give us these answers.  In fact, if that’s all we do, then we’re likely just dri­ving our lives really fast down the wrong life high­way.  And where does that get us?  It gets us some­where we don’t really want to be.

So, slow down every once in a while.  Take some of the back­roads through your life.  Visit some of the small towns in your brain.  Get to know them.  Lis­ten to what you are hear­ing.  Then, when you get back out on the high­way of your life, and you’re cruis­ing along, the time you’ve spent slow­ing down will aid you in going in the right direction.

Make it a reg­u­lar occurence to slow down and eval­u­ate where you are in life.  Your life is worth it!

photo credit: san­theo

“The fam­ily. We were a strange lit­tle band of char­ac­ters trudg­ing through life shar­ing dis­eases and tooth­paste, cov­et­ing one another’s desserts, hid­ing sham­poo, bor­row­ing money, lock­ing each other out of our rooms, inflict­ing pain and kiss­ing to heal it in the same instant, lov­ing, laugh­ing, defend­ing, and try­ing to fig­ure out the com­mon thread that bound us all together.” ~ Erma Bombeck

It’s been a whirl­wind week­end, filled with many fam­ily activ­i­ties. The high­light of it, though, was play­ing kick­ball in a fam­ily kick­ball tour­na­ment. Together with a cou­ple of other fam­i­lies we know, we formed a team and com­peted in a fun kick­ball tour­na­ment that was going on at a sum­mer fes­ti­val in our vil­lage. And we came out as cham­pi­ons! But, that was sec­ondary to all the fun that every­one had.

So, how do you make last­ing fam­ily mem­o­ries? I think a big part of it cen­ters around hav­ing fun. And laugh­ing. And being goofy. And in gen­eral just hav­ing a really good time.

Some­times it some­thing that you don’t always do. We occas­sion­ally will play kick­ball in the back­yard, but it’s much more fun with a big­ger group of peo­ple. So, this was more of a one-time thing, and one that we’ll remem­ber for the fun and laugh­ing that went on. We won’t remem­ber all the outs, or kicks. What we’ll remem­ber is the fun things (like our team name), or a com­edy of errors going on in the field, or hang­ing out with friends.

Other times, it’s some­thing you do more often. We have a game I play with the kids at home that we call “garbage”. I’m the garbage man, and they are the trash. I chase them around and get them onto the sofa (our makeshift garbage can). They try to sneak out of the garbage as I’m off chas­ing some­one else, try­ing to get the into the garbage. They all love this game (although it’s get­ting harder to catch them as they get older). And I get a good work­out out of the deal too! There’s always a lot of laugh­ing, and run­ning wild, and just act­ing silly. I always think that one of these days they’ll out­grow this goofi­ness. But then, one of them will ask to play it again, and every­one joins in. And it’s fun (well, and exhaust­ing)! And it’s some­thing I think they’ll remem­ber for a long time.

So, fam­ily time can really be fun time. And mem­o­rable time. And a time to get to know each other bet­ter. Some­times it’s things you might do reg­u­larly, and some­times it things that are more of a one-time thing. And that’s what it’s all about!