Monthly Archives: June 2012

The 3 P’s of Failure…Part 2

28 Thursday Jun 2012

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I want to go even deeper as it relates to the heart and discuss 3 more deadly P’s: Procrastination, Poison, and Pain.

1. Procrastination. I am going to come back and finish this one later…when I finish discussing poison and pain…after my show goes off…right before I go to bed…when my grandma gets out of the hospital…when the kids get in high school, when I save some more money…when I finish my degree…

I think you get my point.

2. Poison. When you become bitter about something or someone, it really eats you up inwardly and causes you to miss out on opportunities to improve your life. The bitterness becomes a self-inflicted poison that clouds your vision, your hearing, and your actions. For example, let’s say you have been betrayed by someone who said they wanted to help you get your business off the ground, but instead they stole your idea, skipped town, and changed their phone number. That hurts. The worse thing you can do is become bitter and make the statement I have heard countless times: “I will never trust anyone again.” You basically just sealed your own coffin of fate. You cannot allow your previous experiences to lock you out of your future. Yes, situations like the one I described above hurt, but you don’t have to get bitter. Trust me, someone is going to show up who really does want to help you, but if you live based on your past hurts and rejections, you will close the door before it even opens.

3. Pain. My pastor says we are conditioned to move away from pain and towards pleasure and I totally understand what she means. It is easy to dream but very difficult to do what you dream about. Afterall, there is no fear of being hurt, rejected, swindled, or denied when you keep your goals and aspirations locked up inside your head. Stepping out there can be painful and we are conditioned to move away from pain and towards pleasure. Once you have felt the pain of being defeated, denied, or rejected, it is really hard to get back out there. I applied to graduate school last year totally certain that I was going to get accepted to not just one of them, but all of them. Actually the opposite happened.

I got rejection letters from not just one of them, but all of them. For a minute I felt really, really disappointed. I had been so confident saying my faith confessions and speaking my way into my destiny. I just knew that I was going to get acceptance letters and have my choice of where I wanted to go to school, but that didn’t happen. I really thought about throwing in the towel regarding pursuing my Ph.D. I begin to tell myself different reasons why I didn’t need to waste time, energy, and money doing research and studying for 5-6 years. The bottom line was I didn’t want to have face the pain of being rejected again.

That’s when Betty Wright’s famous anthem begin playing in my head: “No Pain, No Gain.” That’s right. “In order to get something, you got to give something. In order to be something, you got to go through something.”

Yes, she was talking about preserving a relationship, but the lesson applies to everything that you are fighting for. Pain is synonymous with Gain. Many of us have been centimeters away from success, but we gave up too soon because we were hurt, tired, exhausted, and sore. When you feel pain, dig deep. The finish line is only milliseconds away.

I am applying to graduate school again. I have hushed the “what if’s” in my head and replaced them with “when I”s.” You should try it. Instead of saying “what if I don’t get the promotion”, how about saying “when I get the promotion…” You will be amazed at the results.

Pain is not a message of defeat. It is a message of destiny. Lick your wounds, ice your bruises, and get back out there and fight. No pain, no gain.

One last “P” for you and I’m done: People. If you think you can get over hurdles like procrastination, prejudice, pickiness, pride, poison, and pain by yourself, you are sadly mistaken. Me, myself, and I is a terrible trio. Put someone on your team besides yourself and trust them. You’ve got work to do. Let’s go!

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The 3 P’s of Failure…Part 1

21 Thursday Jun 2012

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There are a lot of doors of opportunity swinging wide open right beside you, but you could be missing out because of a few personal hang-ups that I have experienced and want to share with you. I am only going to discuss 3 P’s to failure in this article, and next week, I will talk about 3 more.

1. Being prejudice Success is colorless, odorless, gender-less. The most successful people normally don’t flaunt it and because of our obsession with things and how people look, we miss opportunities to connect and meet the person that can lead us to our next level. We size people up based on their skin tone and their clothes and what they drive and 9 times out of 10, we are absolutely wrong. The person with the huge house and 2-car garage could be pulling every dollar they have to make the mortgage, while the person in the 1-bedroom apartment is one-month away from paying a ridiculous down payment on their huge house and 2-car garage. Stop missing your opportunities because you are looking at the wrong things.

2. Being picky . My grandma used to say, Beggars can’t be choosy and I know you aren’t a beggar but if you are not where you want to be you might want to start acting like a beggar at least in theory. Sometimes, you only get one chance and that chance normally disguises itself as an “entry-level position”, a “background role with no speaking parts”, or “part-time with no benefits”. I am guilty of turning down opportunities like this. I turned down a coaching offer as a graduate assistant in which my duties would include washing team uniforms and making sure they were hung up in the lockers before games. I turned down an opportunity to be an extra in the movie, Juwanna Mann, as one of the female basketball players. I would have to drive to Charlotte which is a 4-hr drive from Greenville, and they couldn’t tell me how long I would be up there. Yes, the opportunity to coach is still there, but movies? Like I said, some opportunities are one-shot chances. Do you really want to be that picky? Take the job. Learn everything there is to learn, and if you feel that you are getting stuck or have hit a ceiling, leave.

3. Being prideful. When is the last time that you asked someone for help? Seriously? The Internet is great, and books are even better but sometimes the information you desperately need is in the possesion of another human being. I can name countless times when the help I needed was in the same room with me but I felt better pretending rather than being humble enough to say, “hey, my name is …and I recognize that you have done…could I ask you some questions?”

The bottom line is when you don’t like the direction your marriage, your finances, your children, your business, your body or basically your life is going, that is the WORST time to be Prejudice, Picky, or Prideful. Someone out there has the answer to your problem but if you keep acting like you have it altogether, you will miss your opportunity to improve.

Trust me, I have made a living of acting the part and in the mean time others were passing me by while I was pretending to have everything together. Its time out for hurting and hiding in our homes and on the Internet. Take a deep breath and step out. Attend a writer’s workshop, go out and talk to an college admissions counselor, talk to a couple that’s been married for 35 years, join a gym, take a small business class, or join a divorce-care support group. You only get one life to live. Stop faking it and start living.

But you know what? Regardless of what you decide, I’ve already taken the plunge. Prejudice, Pickiness, and Pride have stolen enough from me, and I daresay they have had their fun with you too. See you next week as I discuss 3 more P’s: Procrastination, Poison, and Pain…oh my!