Today I want to write about the importance of celebrating the success of others.  To truly defeat mediocrity, we must do what the average person doesn’t do.  One thing I notice quite often is how many people love to be celebrated when they do something great, yet fail to put the same effort into celebrating the success of others when it is their time to shine.

Even worse, is when we witness someone having great success and we find ourselves feeling jealous of them and their accomplishments.  I know that in the past, I did this.  I’d look at the person and come up with a list of all the reasons they were able to do what I had not. Things like, they got this advantage or that, they knew this person, they had more natural talent, they didn’t play fair, they were lucky and list could go on and on.

If you find yourself doing this, please recognize your behavior and stop.  Simply ask yourself, if it was your time to shine, would you want people to celebrate with you or be jealous of you?  The answer is obvious.  So from now on, join me in committing to celebrate the success of others, no matter how big or how small.  If you find yourself feeling jealous or making excuses turn that negative energy around and use it to motivate yourself to reach your goals by memorizing this old saying… “what one man (woman) can do so can another man (woman)”.

I want to end this post by celebrating a major accomplishment that a friend of mine reached this past weekend.

Congratulations David Geschke on your accomplishment of taking one day at a time and remaining sober for the past 27 years!  I admire your persistence and commitment.  I’m sure that it wasn’t always easy for you but you did it!

Today I would like to honor the life of Brittany Ewaskowitz.  Today would have been her 24th Birthday.  Brittany and Jessica were twins that grew up across the street from me while I lived on Emery St.  These little girls and their older brother Danny were very dear to me, like a child, a friend and a niece or nephew all in one.

I was asked to deliver the eulogy at her funeral this past spring.  When I was putting it together I found two quotes that Brittany had posted.  I took the liberty and made the two into one.  I believe it is a fitting lesson for today’s post.

Today, love those in your life a little bit extra and be grateful for the gift that they are.

Here are the quotes…

“Life is too ironic to fully understand it.  It takes sadness to know what happiness is.  Noise to appreciate silence and absence to value presence. Stop waiting for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you, for life.

Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make the most of the moment you are in now.”

Happy 24th Birthday Brittany, I miss you.

You’ve got your day planned.  You’re meeting with the perfect client.  The stars are lining up, there’s no doubt, this is the one you’ve been waiting for. All you need to do is show up, present the information, close the deal and watch your business explode! Sounds good right?  Of course it does, but how you react when your client cancels for the second time that week, just hours before your meeting is more important than anything else that will happen to you that day.

Disappointment is part of life and is also part of business. So what can you do to make sure that a huge disappointment doesn’t ruin the rest of your day?  Here is a list of a few ideas that I put together that I will be implementing and suggest that you do as well.

1. Have a “back up” plan. The only thing that is certain in business and in life is that there are no certainties.  So if you take the time to plan ahead by making a list of what I’ll call “if this, then that’s”, you will always have something else to do and focus your efforts on.  Taking action on your “if this, then that” list will assure that your day won’t be ruined by something unexpected.
2. Stay on an even keel.  This was the advice that my high school baseball coach used to give us over and over again. Staying on an even keel means to not let your emotions get to high or to low.  In my line of work it means to not get too excited or disappointed by a potential business partner whether they have already joined your business or not.  One of my favorite quotes to remind me of this is as follows…”A person’s actions will tell you everything that you need to know”
3. Fix your head. When the “perfect” client cancels or a the “perfect” business partner disappears, its easy to allow ourselves to get fixated on THEIR reasons why.  The problem with doing this is that you will never truly know the answer. You may think it is because they don’t like you, they aren’t interested in your products, that your company isn’t good enough or one of several hundred other reasons but the truth is you will never know.  It may be one of those reasons or it may be something completely unrelated that you have no control over.  My suggestion is that you control the only person that you can, yourself.  You can do this by changing your focus and giving gratitude.  Giving gratitude, for what I do have VS what I do not have, always puts my “head” back to a place where I can be productive.  I started this practice several months back and it NEVER fails.  Simply take 10 minutes  and write down a list of things that you are grateful for. This list can contain everything from having clean water and a toothbrush to being grateful for the good relationships in your life and business.

Finding a way to handle disappointment and rejection will make all the difference between living a life of mediocrity and defeating mediocrity.  As always, if you would like to share some of the ways that you handle disappointment, please add your comments below.

Have a great day!

Kevin

In my past career I was essentially a slave to the phone.  It rang, I answered it.  The key to my success was being available to everyone at almost anytime that they needed me.  I would answer calls at dinner, in my car, on vacation, on a walk, at the lake.  It didn’t matter.  My livelihood was solely based on commission and I put my clients first.  That behavior made me money but took a toll on my friendships, my relationships and my marriage.  Looking back, I would have been wise to set boundaries for myself.  I should have allowed myself the freedom and pleasure of turning the phone off and enjoying the moment that I was in.

Yesterday I became acutely aware that I was once again behaving in the same way.  However this time the calls that I was answering and the messages I was responding to, were not tied to clients.  They were from many people from around the country that are in the same business that I am.  We are all independent of one another but have built great relationships with each other.

If  you know anything about me, you know that I love to help others.  I love solving problems, creating marketing pieces to share, lending an ear, helping with technology issues and the list goes on and on.  Normally I receive one or two calls a day but yesterday I literally talked to or responded to 100 people’s phone calls, text messages, emails or Facebook messages. I was essentially a  full-time support person for my company, for which I was not being paid.  In the mean time, I accomplished none of the personal goals that I set for the day.  I’m not gonna lie, I was frustrated with a capital “F”!!!  That’s when it hit me, I was repeating the same pattern that I had lived in my past.  I was putting everyone else’s priorities before my own.  I realized that I needed to set boundaries and establish my priorities or I would never defeat mediocrity.

Yesterday was a “wake up” call for me.  I believe that everything happens for a reason and I believe that God gave me one day of complete insanity so I would “wake up” and see exactly how much time I have been wasting on any given day.  Well, it worked, and honestly even though I was frustrated by my lack of personal production, I went to bed with a grateful heart and thanked God for the lesson.

Since I will still want to “help others”, how I go about setting my priorities and boundaries will be the subject of a future post.  Until then, I ask that you examine your life.  Do you have your priorities and boundaries in place?  If not, what are you going to do about it?  Remember, the one thing that everyone has in common is time.  We all get 24 hours a day to use as we see fit.  If you want to truly defeat mediocrity and co-create the life of your dreams, you (and I) will need to learn how to use our time wisely.

Have a great day!

Kevin

Since I just returned from an amazing convention for work where many people left there making big promises to themselves and their friends, I thought that today would be the perfect day to discuss the concept of Personal Integrity. Personal Integrity is when your words, your thoughts and your actions are in line with each other.  In other words, you do what you think and say you will.

The interesting thing is that we go in and out of integrity many times each day.  The key is to become aware of the times that we do this and work on making sure that we keep ourselves aligned.  For example.. If you think that you want to lose weight, tell your friends that you are going to lose 15 pounds but go to a birthday party and eat cake, you are out of integrity.

Nobody got hurt in the eating of the cake so it wasn’t really that big of a deal, right?  Well that depends on how often you tell yourself these little white lies.  Yes, when you fall out of integrity, it is the same as lying to yourself.  The problem is that if you lie to yourself too often you begin to lose belief and trust in yourself, just like you’d lose trust in somebody in your life if they were continuously lying to you.  So even though, no one got hurt over that tiny piece of cake, you lost a little faith that you can follow through on the promises that you make to yourself.  Overtime these “broken promises” add up and the result is that it kills our confidence and can lead to sadness, anger, depression and prevent us from moving forward in our lives.

So what’s the answer?  That’s easy.  Live in INTEGRITY.  If you think that you are going to do something, say that you are going to do something, then by all means possible make sure that you take ACTION and do it!  No excuses!

In yesterday’s post I offered a challenge to go out of you way and find 10 ways to serve someone else. I took the challenge and while doing so had several incredible experiences. Today I’d like share one of those experiences with you.

Yesterday I spent my day at the LifeVantage Convention in Phoenix, AZ.  While I love spending time at these events due to the friendships that I have made and the contagious energy in the air, there is one area of an event like this that I struggle with greatly and that is the concept of open seating.

Let me explain.  Open seating is when there are no assigned seats, first come, first served.  While good in concept, I find it has the potential to bring out the worst in people.  Some people will wake up hours before the event and rush over to the convention center to stand in line.  These people will wait by a locked door until the corporate staff allows them into the event.  The opening of doors is followed by repeated announcements to walk not run and that saving seats is prohibited.  As people “speed walk” their way to the area of their choice there is much competition to get the best seats, usually as close to the stage as possible.  Although saving seats is prohibited, it is a common practice.  Sheets of paper are quickly placed on 1 -30 seats to save a place for all your friends.  The practice is not the issue. In fact, I respect the people who wake up early and wait in line, they are truly serving others and I have been a benefactor of many a “saved” seat in my day.

Now that you have a little background, here is what happened yesterday.

I was standing near the front of the room when I heard a commotion to my left.  I looked over and saw a man and a woman, whom I do not know, arguing profusely.  A couple of seconds later I hear the woman call for one of the event coordinators, my former account manager Michael, to come over and resolve the situation.  As the couple continued to argue over saved seats, I couldn’t help but notice how very different they were.  He was a  clean-cut middle-aged white man and she was a beautiful African-American woman who claimed to be in her 60’s.  I could see that Michael had his hands full, so I decided to step in.

Upon entering the situation, I learned quickly that the man had saved the entire front two rows, about 30-40 seats.  He was standing there alone and doing his best to make sure no one took one of the seats that he has reserved for his friends.  She was very frustrated and couldn’t understand why he was unwilling to allow her to have 3 of the seats that he had saved up front.  Trying to remedy to situation I asked them both to remember that we are all a family and that we should try to calmly work it out.  To his credit, the man quickly relinquished three of the seats.

Once the woman took her seat I could see that she was still very “worked up”, so I sat next to her and got to know her better.  It turns out that she didn’t just “want” to sit in the front row, she “had” to.  She went on to explain that her vision is impaired and that sitting further back was not an option because she wouldn’t be able to see the event.  As we talked, we discussed how important it was going to be for her to “let go” of the negative energy surrounding the mornings events so she would be able to enjoy the rest of her day.  She agreed, we exchanged business cards and I went on my way.

Later that night I was sitting in the hotel lobby when she spots me out of the corner of her eye.  She looks over, points at me and says, “you”!  She walks over and proceeds to thank me and tell me “the rest of the story”.  Apparently, later in the day she was seated in a smaller breakout session.  Seats were going fast!  Next to her remain two of the last seats in the room when she see the man that she was arguing with earlier that morning walk through the door.  She makes eye contact with him and gestures for him to come over and sit next to her.  That karmic act of kindness changed everything.  In her own words, they are now “best of friends” .  They exchanged contact info and plan on staying in touch!  WOW!  She thanked me for all my help and went on her way.

To say that her story made my day would be an understatement!   What a difference a small gesture can make.

If you took my challenge yesterday and have a story of your own, please post it in the comments below.  Have a great day!

What is heaven? What is hell? The parable of the Long Spoons explains very well what heaven and hell truly are.One day a man said to God, “God, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.”

God showed the man two doors. Inside the first one, in the middle of the room, was a large round table with a large pot of stew. It smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.

The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. God said, “You have seen Hell.”

Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of wonderful stew that made the man’s mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.

The man said, “I don’t understand.”

God smiled. It is simple, he said, Love only requires one skill. These people learned early on to share and feed one another. While the greedy only think of themselves… [Author unknown
Today I am challenging myself and you to find 10 ways to go out of your way and serve someone else.

Make it a great day!

  
One of the most important concepts that I neglected in my past was the concept of balance.  

If you were to ask most of the people in my life that really knew me 4 years ago, they’d say things like… “Kevin is one of the hardest working people I know.” But they’d NEVER say… “Kevin is so fun to be around.”  In fact, I’d say that most of my friends or family have been annoyed or angry with me at one point in our relationship because I’ve missed an important event, a dinner, a night out or a even a football game, due to work.   To those in my life, I’d like to take this time to apologize and say, I’m sorry.  

To truly defeat mediocrity I’ve realized that BALANCE is a must! I know without a doubt that I can be a financial success.  That I’ve proven to myself.  Yet that NEVER gave me happiness.   If I were to succeed again financially and lose time with my son or not have love, fun, and spirituality in my life, in my mind, I’d be a failure.  In fact, my fear of being “that guy”again has litteraly caused me to be afraid of making money!  

So the challenge for me and  for you, if you’re “playing along”, is to co create our lives with balance.   Work hard, but play hard.  Find time to take care of yourself.  Meditate, relax, go to the beach, laugh.  Slow down! Don’t feel guilty when you take a vacation day. You earned it!  Find time to enjoy your relationships with friends, family and God. 

In honor of “back to the future day” I’ll leave you with this script exchange from Back to the Future 3.

Jennifer Parker: Dr. Brown, I brought this note back from the future and – now it’s erased.

Doc: Of course it’s erased!

Jennifer Parker: But what does that mean?

Doc: It means your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one, both of you.

Marty McFly: [Marty wraps his arm around Jennifer] We will, Doc.

————————–

My promise: From today forward. “I will Defeat Mediocrity in my life.  I will stay balanced and savor the moments that I’m in. I will laugh, live and love.  I will play.  I will work hard. I will continue to develope my spirituality.  I will be a great friend.  I will be the best Dad.”  

I hope that you follow me with a pledge of your own.  I hope that you will take action and find balance in your life too.