The Fire Within

As many choices we have to make in life it is easy to find yourself living with regrets. You have the memories which pop up, making you wonder if you made the right choices. Saying, "if only" too many times. Choices come up and sometimes we have to make quick decisions, with little information, hoping you have enough to make the right choice. Instantly second guessing yourself the minute there is no going back. We all face choices, and with those choices we have to make decisions. In our life it is guaranteed that some of the choices we make are going to be the wrong ones. Having three girls in various stages I witness first hand the choices they have to make, and know they can and will have an impact on the course of their life. We've all faced them in our lives, and likely continue to in some ways. Who to make friends with. Which activities to join. Which sports to play. Which classes to take. Where to go to college. What should your major be. If you should go to colleg...

When things are going well, you feel great, your confidence is soaring. Confidence leads you to be more energized, bringing high energy usually causes things to go well. Positive energy is a real thing. The more you have the more you send out, the more it comes back to you. But as things are going well it is easy to fall into a trap. Feeling like you have King Midas' touch and you can do no wrong, you start getting cocky and missing things. You can topple very quickly from that mountain top you are on if you aren't careful. When things aren't going well for you, you feel miserable. You feel like everything that can go wrong does. Your confidence wanes with every misstep and problem you face. You become hesitant, overanalyzing every decision and second guessing yourself, expecting your next decision to end in failure causes you to make none. You are caught in a spiral, trapped in a low pit with no way out. Be confident not cocky. Humble but not timid. It is inevitable you wi...

I read an interesting fact posted by @chrisderose  about the show The Wonder Years , which premiered 33 years ago in 1988. The show depicted events 20 years earlier in 1968. A similar show today would be set in 2001. His tweet about this blew up because it is crazy to think about. I, like so many, remember watching that show growing up and it seemed like it was based on events from so long ago. It makes me wonder, did my parents recall those events as easily as I can recall events like 9/11 or the hanging chad of Bush vs. Gore?  I was thinking of music the other day when I realized I was listening to the "oldies" station playing music from the 80's and 90's. I remember growing up listing to music from the 50's and 60's, I spent some time searching for a station that played that era of music and I couldn't find one near me. You could find a channel on Spotify or Amazon Music of course, Alexa would serve it up for me no problem.  Things change as does our pe...

In the US and some other places around the world a second serious wave is happening with COVID-19. We are seeing businesses and activities have to shut down again after months of limitations have already reduced things to a point some are having to close their doors for good. It is interesting watching how people react to changes like this. The outrage and the arguments people have over certain policies are truly astonishing. Yes all of this sucks but the more people don't follow the simple guidelines the longer this continues to spread. You look at countries around the world and some have enacted far stricter policies but they have essentially wiped out the disease and they have mechanisms to quickly identify and contain things before they get out of hand. In America that is never going to happen because we like our freedoms too much.  This virus is going to continue to be a problem until an effective vaccine is available and distributed to the majority of the population. The time...

In my work there is a concept called the project management triangle, it deals with four main qualities you try to balance. Time - The total number of hours it is going to take and over how many days/weeks/months/years. Cost - What it is going to cost in dollars and cents Scope - What features are included Quality - How well put together the product is. There is a tradeoff with this so we typically say as the client you can pick two, but then those doing the work get to set the other two. If you want something fast and cheap, it is not going to have a lot of features and it likely won't be the best quality. If you want something fully featured really fast, it is going to cost you. It is a pretty simple concept, but not one many people probably talk about except maybe a handful of times in their life. I work in software development and it is a common conversation had almost every day. The interesting thing about it though is how much it applies to almost any area of our lives. If yo...

I sure hope you weren't thinking as soon as the election was over things would get back to normal. We shouldn't be shocked by how things are going right now. And we shouldn't think things would be any different had the results gone the other way. Based on how close the election was in so many states it is clear how equally divided we still are. Where we go after the disagreement will tell us what our future is going to look like. Our country is an organization, like so many others. Like any organization it has conflicts and decisions to make. Not everyone is going to agree with every decision. Say you are launching a new product, some think it should be green, some think it should be orange. In most organizations, before you decide on the color, you have a discussion, listing the pros and cons for each choice and trying to make the best decision you can. When the company decides it is going to be green you have people that might not get behind the decision, waiting for the ...

I love this quote from Tim Tebow: I believe that sometimes God gives His toughest assignments to His greatest warriors. — Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) October 26, 2020 It makes me think of all of the kids that face medical issues, attacking them with courage and strength while remaining more joyful than those that have no real issues to complain about. It makes me think of the people who struggle through losing a job and finding a way to provide for their family. Sacrificing, working 2 or 3 jobs to supply what their kids need to succeed. I think of so many people who struggle with things we have no idea about. We all have challenges and battles that we have to face in life. But we are warriors and you have the strength to take on the assignments that you are facing. 

As my kids are getting older it is fun to have more adult conversations with them. My oldest and I were talking recently about COVID and the mandate to wear a mask. She was saying how it was hard to understand why there are so many people that refuse to wear one. For her, she thinks that the longer that it goes on and the more she wears one, the less you even notice it. In the beginning it was weird and different, but time and routine have a way of making the weird and different into something normal, something you don't even notice. Throughout history, and in each of our lives, changes come along that we find bizarre at first, or just very different, but then we get used to it and we don't even notice it. Technology is a great example of this. The computers used in the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 required a significant sized room to house them. The smart phone that you carry around in your pocket is roughly 100 million times more powerful. We get so used to them we don'...

Last week we took my daughter on her first college visit to the University of Nebraska Lincoln. We had been in Lincoln and on the campus a handful of times the past few years. As we drove around a bit then toured the campus my wife and I both commented how, though we couldn't explain it, Lincoln felt like home.  Thinking about that feeling and the word home. The feeling for me is a sense of serenity and butterflies in the stomach. There is just a sense of joy and peace being in that place. Each of us have places that feel like home to us. It can vary for each person. It could be the place you live now. Many people when they go to the town they grew up in have that feeling of being home. For some they have a dream of one day living in New York, Paris or London. Others have that vacation spot they visit once a year and when they are there it is just like home. As I think of my daughter going off to college and the adventure of life beginning for her, the idea of home becomes more pre...

Have you ever realized how much food fits in your refrigerator? It is a lot. I needed to make a repair on our fridge that required defrosting it as there was a heat component that needed to be replaced. For the few days leading up to it my family was lectured how they had to eat something from the fridge any time they were hungry. The day before I was going to start the repair, for lunch I did my part by having the left over chili, a small amount of mac & cheese, a single taco with the left over meet from taco night, a container of yogurt and a slice of cheesecake for dessert. It was my own customized 5 course meal. So I did my part and our fridge had never been so empty. I then gathered every cooler I could find in my house, used all of the ice and ice packs I could find and used freeze pops to help keep things cold knowing they would refreeze just fine.  I was amazed at how much stuff we still had in the fridge even being as empty as it had ever been in the last decade. All I...

I was thinking about the word excited recently and how things can seem unexciting and routine lately. We have our routines, get done the things we need to, but is any of it exciting? Probably not. So what does excite you? What gives you energy? What motivates you? What do you look forward to? If we don't have something that is exciting, if we are just going through the motions in our same boring routine, aren't we just wasting our lives? Fear plays a part because the things that excite us are usually the things that require the most courage. The best example of this is when I met my wife. I realized this was a person I wanted to know more, to date and eventually ask to marry me. Of course it was exciting, and definitely scary. Your heart starts racing, palms get sweaty, wondering how she feels. Scared to put yourself out there for fear of being rejected, wanting to do it anyway because there is just something about her.  Too often we listed to the fear, and we rein ourselves in...

When we told my 7 year old we would be going home the next day from our vacation, she didn't want to go. She just wanted to stay longer. It is fun to get away, take time to visit somewhere new, learn new things, see interesting sights, and learn some history. But few of us can afford to be on vacation our entire lives. We need time to rest and step away from our normal lives to rejuvenate. But the vacation comes to an end and it is time to get back to work. A day of rest now and then is a good thing. The Bible was clear in explaining that you should work for 6 days and rest on the 7th. There is a lot of wisdom in allowing our body and mind to recuperate. It is something we don't often do. Sure most of us only work 5 days a week, but we are running kids all weekend to activities, have house work and yard work to do, pay bills, and countless other errands and tasks needed. In our fast paced world we go all the time, and don't stop. We wonder why we burn out, have high stress ...

I am taking a vacation soon. It has been two years since I took an actual vacation. I take time off, but it is a day here and there, extended weekends, dance competitions, dance competition recovery days, the basics. But not a real full week off going somewhere. I'm excited. I'm also stressed about it. Why is taking a longer vacation so hard? You have your normal work and craziness you deal with all of the time, then you add on top of it the planning and prepping you have to do with work to make sure everything is set for the week you will be out. We won't talk about the flood of emails and chaos you will come back to. Then you also have the planning, packing and checklists to make sure you have everything you need for the vacation itself.  I think I need a new goal of always being prepared to take a week off. What does that look like to not have things so piled up you can step away for a few days and not have anything miss a beat? For most businesses that would indicate yo...

Tough situations happen. Work gets crazy. Kids schedules get hectic. You figure your only options are to figure out how to clone yourself, invent a time machine or give up and sit in the corner crying.  The actual solution is to get through it. Sometimes we just get through it, barely, and that is okay. One step in front of the other. Being able to say you got through another day is a victory. Celebrate that as a small victory and sooner than you think a big victory will come along.

The standard view of entrepreneurship is someone who starts businesses, taking on a higher level of the risk and therefore being entitled to more of the potential rewards. This idea of taking on the risks is interesting, because what is a risk to some people isn't true for others. Risk is like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. I believe someone who is a small business owner probably takes on more risk than an entrepreneur.  Entrepreneurs look to fill a gap they see in the marketplace. The often aren't the inventors, they are the people who see different inventions and advancements and can apply them to different situations. An entrepreneur is able to take a set of processes and apply them to a wide variety of businesses. They often look at how they can start different ventures with the least amount of risk. They aren't risk takers, they see the risks and figure out how to mitigate them. For some people the thought of opening their own business or being an entreprene...

To be a good team member, you have to adapt and be willing to help the team succeed. Sometimes it means doing things which aren't your strengths, or even things you don't like to do. If there is a process in place everyone else follows it is important as a team to follow that process. It is also important for you to remember you are a unique individual. You have different strengths and talents. You might have a different approach than others do. You see this a lot in sports where someone has an unusual stance or throwing style. Everything says it shouldn't work but it is effective for them. The same is true for you, you bring a unique view of things.  You also may see something that is a problem that others don't. Even if you follow the policy you know you are still going to have an issue. You need to be able to speak up, take a stand when something is not right. It is one of many dichotomies in life. You need to be a good team mate, but you also need to be the best ver...

I know every day feels like a battle. That is because it is true. Every day is a battle. When you are in a battle you get tired. Sometimes you feel like you are winning, some times you feel like you are losing. There are even times it feels hopeless, that a part of you just wants to give up. We want to win a battle that is super easy and straight forward. When there isn't a lot of thought or energy needed to coast to victory. But those aren't really battles, those are just practice. Championships are rarely the contest when you are able to put in your second string. Complex problems don't have easy answers, otherwise we would just call them simple problems.  In life you are going to have battles and there aren't going to be easy answers. So you have two choices, you can quit, or you can keep fighting. Fighting, learning, and adapting until you find a way through.You will find your victories, your moments of joy, and then there will be another battle. It may sound pessim...

In my last post about bike riding , I talked about when you are first learning to ride a bike you have to figure out how to go in a straight line. As we progressed in our bike riding proficiency we realize that going straight is important, but just the start. Once you learn how to maintain balance and keep it straight, you have a whole new set of challenges. Those challenges and how to deal with them contain more lessons for us. The first thing you need to do is learn how to stop. I swear every kid I've ever known, no matter how many times you tell them how to stop their bike, when they start going where they don't want to the feet go down. Pedals get tangled with feet, falls happen, things escalate quickly. You have to learn how to break safely, when you get into a situation that isn't safe you need to slow down or stop. If you don't know how to break things can get very dangerous. In life we have to learn to recognize when we need to slow down or even stop. People c...

Stuck at home, finally taking the big leap with my youngest to learn to ride a bike without training wheels. The beauty of having three kids is you've cut your teeth on teaching the first two how to ride, this one is feeling like a piece of cake. A friend of mine gave me the best advice when I was first teaching my kids to ride, and I continue to use it. To balance better you need to go faster. Your natural instinct is to try and go really slow and balance the best you can. But balancing is a lot harder when you are going slow. When you go fast your momentum keeps you up right. The other piece of advice that I repeat often is to make little adjustments, not big ones. To go in a straight line, when you feel yourself starting to go left your instinct is to jerk it back to the right. Which is always an over correction and quickly turns into what looks like someone emphatically shaking their head no as the wheel jerks back and forth. To keep it straight it takes just the slightest of...

There are two main topics at the top of everyone's mind right now with COVID-19. The first is obviously the health and wellness of everyone. The second is the economy and the elements related to it. With good reason as unemployment rates soar to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Many predicted we would be heading towards a recession in 2020, long before the economic downturn from the pandemic. If you've looked at your 401k lately you'll know things have taken a big hit. (If you haven't looked, don't, just know that it is a long term investment and look in 2022.) All of this is just another reminder of our need as individuals to have a solid foundation in financial literacy. Most people are finding more time on their hands, what better way to spend it than to figure out how to understand your personal financial situation and what you need to do differently for the next crisis. There might not be a global pandemic but there will always be job losses, medic...