Hi Friend
What an active week. I started off in Ft. Lauderdale with a board for early learning. Tuesday I had a virtual event with TriNet who I’ve been fortunate to work with for a few years. Wednesday I was with the Regional Food Bank where we are doing a Values Refresh. A decade ago, I led that team through discovering and establishing their current values. It’s cool to revisit and refresh!
My daughter returned for the summer! Woot Woot! Thursday I was up early for a 6am virtual session, this time with TriNet’s employees in India. (I’m a global speaker right from my own home!) Then last night I went to the Violent Femmes concert in Tulsa. This was my third time seeing them. It was an absolute blast!
The Femmes were celebrating the 40th anniversary of their first album release, so played it in it’s entirety from start to finish. That is now the only way I want to see bands perform. It was AMAZING. Everybody in the audience sang along with each song. It’s exactly how I listen to it. Experiencing that live was wildly fun!
I have the most sentimental connection with the Femmes. Their concert in the Cleveland Flats the summer of 1986 changed my life forever. Though the guys in the band are the most average looking fellas, their audience was full of punks which I aspired to become. Spiked hair and a dog collar transformed my Junior year of high school and life after.
LIFE ALTERING MOMENTS
Have you had one? Have you had several? I suspect so. What I love about them is the opportunity they gift us. We don’t change or become something different in that moment, but if we use it as a catalyst that experience can be ground zero for transformation. In and of itself, it’s just another common occurrence. It’s what we do after that determines if it’s extraordinary.
It’s like how some people believe “just give it time” and things miraculously change. They don’t. It’s what we dowith that time. I imagine I’ve had more Life Altering Moments that I didn’t do what I needed to after-the-fact and therefore the opportunity was squandered. I was and still am very fond of the saying…
The Opportunity of a Lifetime MUST be Seized in the Lifetime of the Opportunity!
When we peer through the lens of gratitude, you and I can see a gluttony of opportunities. Granted they mostly appear as work, challenges, difficulty, trials and the unexpected and yet they frequently divinely usher usinto a new understanding, season or self that we could not have attained otherwise.
We may not even recognize when it happens, while we’re going through it or the actual impact in the moment, or immediately after. Only in hindsight do we see the trajectory of how significantly our life changed. The single greatest attribute required to benefit from a Life Altering Moment is COURAGE.
Whether the Moment is positive, neutral or negative if we will act with courage the seemingly common or incredibly drastic encounter can elevate to a place of permanent life change!
Instigating Ideas…
1. Describe three Life Altering Moments (that don’t include your family).
2. If you’re currently squandering an opportunity how could you seize it instead?
3. Are you creating life altering opportunities for those in your sphere? How could you?
4. As always, go see live music!
I do what I do in hopes of creating a Life Altering Moment for someone. When I reflect on the entirety of my life after that fateful Femmes show, both personally and professionally I have aspired to create scenarioswhere people’s lives could be altered. No doubt that is my life’s mission.
The Femmes created their own musical category: Acoustic Punk, which never went mainstream. On stage they create amazingly beautiful chaos! The ways we are influenced and influence don’t have to be big, grandiose or even recognized.
CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITIES
What if every week we were offered the chance to have a Life Altering Moment? Would we act with courage? Don’t you feel like we probably are given that chance? Please reflect on and consider this past week. It’s likelythere was an invitation to explore possibilities beyond our current selves.
I hope this week your senses are heightened to moments that possess the DNA to be life altering for you. Some are small, some are big, but they all move us forward like we’re a blister in the sun.