success or failure?

Your passion started a successful endeavor and it is on the right path. Your efforts are being realized in a positive way – only to take a steep downward turn. All the risk you’ve put into building a successful venture is on the verge of collapse.

Early in my coaching career I coached a junior tennis player who had achieved a #2 ranking in the National 12&U’s. In our first lesson, after returning from a National Indoor tournament in Chicago, I confronted David with what I had observed in his behavior during his match play.

“David, I noticed a pattern emerging on your line calls. When the ball was good,but close to the line, on game and set points, you called them out. Was that on purpose?”

David replied,”My dad said that was okay and told me to do it.

What to do:

1. Pinpoint the problem – in this case, David’s dad, a prominent successful lawyer.
2. Get to the source of the problem – I made a lunch appointment with David’s dad to discuss his decision to tell David it was okay to call balls out, that were in, on key points.
3. Work out a solution – in my case, David’s dad would not give in. I gave him a month, then informed him I could no longer coach David. I believed strongly that David was accepting less than what he could achieve by not cheating.

David went to another coach. He made the Junior David Cup squad and got a full ride to Pepperdine. At an international 18&U tennis tournament, in Repentigny, Quebec, I sat beside the court where David was playing the #1 seed from Italy. David was up 6-3 in the first set tiebreak and serving. Upon serving, the #2 seed’s return ‘kissed’ the back of the line on David’s side-David called it out-was over ruled by the chair umpire-lost the tie break 8-6 and the next set 6-0.

I couldn’t correct my ‘deck of cards’ when it started to fall. Have you encountered a similar failure or success? Were these steps helpful in your process? Please share in the comments.

Passion for Ethiopian food.

definition of passion:

Passion as a noun: a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything.

When I was 15 years old I was riding  my bicycle home from school. We had just moved from a small town of 5000 population to a city of 50,000.

Passing by a water tower  I noticed activity on top of the reservoir, which was a mound of dirt covering a huge tank rising 15-20 feet above ground. On top of the reservoir a group of young people were gathered around a person who was instructing them. They were standing on a large asphalt slab resting on top of the reservoir which had two nets strung across the middle of two marked out rectangles.

Being sports oriented I was curious. Putting the kickstand down on my bike, I walked up the side of the man-constructed hillside. A tall corrugated steel wire fence, standing with a height of 10 feet,  surrounded the concrete slab. Looking through the fence I saw the instructor and her students all had a type of racket in their hands and a bucket of white balls.

Observing my interest, the instructor- an older lady of about 65-70 came over and asked me if I would like to come in and ‘hit a ball’. Putting a tennis racket in my hand, she went on the other side of the net and tossed me a ball. The impact of the ball and the racket coming together in my hand sent an electric, emotional current through me that would change my life. A passion for tennis was born. It was like a light bulb flashed on inside my being that would ultimately change the course of my life.

The lady was Mrs. Isherwood from South Africa and she was conducting a clinic for all interested.

Did you ever experience a life changing experience that ‘lit up’ a passion/desire that changed your life goals?

My Choice

Key Childhood Choice

Think back to your childhood. What passion fueled a key life changing choice when you were young? One of my key choices involved swearing, or the use of expletives.

At age 11, I became more involved with organized sports, more specifically, hockey (a must for an active youth in western Canada with snow in the ground seven months of the year) and little league baseball (could hardly wait for the ground to appear).  With more interaction with my peers in competitive situations,  their language became more ‘colorful’, using language that referred to ‘deities’ in a way that was not positive.

One sunny summer day while walking in a wheat field just outside of town (population of 50 people with three granaries and wheat fields surrounding) I decided to try out some ‘swear’ words. Having heard ‘Jesus’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ used in a negative sense when tempers/emotions flared, I said in a loud voice with no one to hear except the birds and wheat: “Jesus”. Wanting to sound even more authentic and reflecting emotional anger,  I repeated in a more impassioned voice, “Jesus Christ”.

Upon voicing these words as a loud audible, angry expletive, an inner voice immediately kicked in admonishing me. I found myself forming an inviolable aversion to ever choosing to use those specific deity names in an angry, impassioned manner.Right then and there I knew swearing was not a positive choice for me. Even though my personal ‘world view’ was evolving, I had been raised with the view Jesus was God’s son. My internal ‘system/conscience’ rebelled against using ‘the Lord’s name in vain’.

Question?

Why isn’t any other ‘deity’ used in ‘swearing/expletives’?