Today is a special day for me. Today marks the 1 year anniversary of #brianswordsofadvice. I know it is nothing amazing, but I like to think there is something to say about lasting 365 days without missing a daily post. The #brianswordsofadvice started as a thought a little before June 14th of last year (2011) when my good friend and fellow O-leader Colleen Meenan said she pictured me being very insightful with my tweets. That one comment turned into an idea and that idea turned into #brianswordsofadvice.
Today's advice is what I would consider the most important advice I have given throughout the year. It is not only something to remind others, but also to remind myself.
You miss 100% of the life you never live.
This advice came from two different sources of inspiration. The first is my good friend Meaghan Neary who yesterday tweeted "I'd rather swing and bat a zero then not swing at all." Both words of advice have a similar concept.
The second inspiration for today's advice came from my good friend and former teammate Ryan Brown. Ryan is on a journey across America on his bike. He tweeted a quote from Michael Jordan which read "I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something, but I can't accept not trying. " I had texted Ryan wishing him luck and telling him I was very impressed. He responded that there was nothing to be impressed about because he had not accomplished his goal yet. I feel this is a typical runners response (I would have given the same one). However, I also feel there is much to be impressed about with Ryan so far. Mainly, we should be impressed with the fact that he even attempted to accomplish his goal.
These two people made me think about the relationship we have with our lives. I believe all relationships are a two way street. Yes, sometimes we have to give more than we take, but other times we take more than we can give. No relationship is perfectly balanced at every moment, but over the days, weeks and months everything balances out. We rely on others at times and they rely on us at different times. Well, I began to realize our relationship with life isn't much different. With our lives we have a lot of giving and a lot of taking.
Life has a lot to offer, however the only way we can experience everything it does offer is if we start living our lives. Life gives us opportunities that we need to take and by taking those opportunities we are giving back. Ryan took an opportunity and whether or not he succeeds or fails he is still living his life to the fullest. Just as Meaghan's quote mentioned, if you never step up to bat you'll never hit the ball.
We miss 100% of the opportunities we fail to take. We miss out on 100% of the life we never live.
Let's live our lives.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Senior Week
Many schools have a week in between the end of finals and graduation where seniors are allowed to stay on campus and enjoy they're last week in college. It is called senior week. At first you would probably think about your time in college and realize that if you experienced such a situation you would probably drink the whole time. Yes, you are right to think that. The week does have a lot of fun parties and activities that seniors can partake in.
However, senior week stands for much more than one giant party. Many college seniors struggled to make it through this last year with major papers and internships taking up a majority of their time. Our last semesters are very face-paced and can be very stressful. Even in life we find that we are constantly running around moving from one task to the next without stopping in between. Senior week is our opportunity to stop. I did not say it was our opportunity to stop and think (because, well, we aren't really doing much of that). We are just stopping. We are taking in all these last moments with friends and simply enjoying what life has to offer.
Senior week can get a bad reputation, but really it allows us to do what so many never do. Senior week allows us to simply do nothing. It allows us to sit outside in the warm sun and not care what time it is, or be thinking about when that research paper is due. It allows us to sleep in to 10, 11, or 12 and then lay in bed for an extra hour just to relax. It allows us to play volleyball and wiffelball while blasting music so all our neighbors can hear. Senior week allows us to enjoy our lives without a worry in the world.
Why is that so bad?
Isn't that what we all should do every now and then? Once college seniors graduate they are thrown into the real world where break time doesn't come all that often. We all can learn a few lessons from the example this week sets. We all need time to sit back and enjoy life. Whether we are 50 years old and trying to put children through college, or 16 years old trying to graduate high school. All of us need time to ourselves. We all need time to sit back and stare up at the sky for hours. We need time to cherish our loved ones. We need time to relax.
In this fast paced world we need to learn to slow down.
Forget the watch. Forget the cell phones.
Enjoy your life before it speeds by.
However, senior week stands for much more than one giant party. Many college seniors struggled to make it through this last year with major papers and internships taking up a majority of their time. Our last semesters are very face-paced and can be very stressful. Even in life we find that we are constantly running around moving from one task to the next without stopping in between. Senior week is our opportunity to stop. I did not say it was our opportunity to stop and think (because, well, we aren't really doing much of that). We are just stopping. We are taking in all these last moments with friends and simply enjoying what life has to offer.
Senior week can get a bad reputation, but really it allows us to do what so many never do. Senior week allows us to simply do nothing. It allows us to sit outside in the warm sun and not care what time it is, or be thinking about when that research paper is due. It allows us to sleep in to 10, 11, or 12 and then lay in bed for an extra hour just to relax. It allows us to play volleyball and wiffelball while blasting music so all our neighbors can hear. Senior week allows us to enjoy our lives without a worry in the world.
Why is that so bad?
Isn't that what we all should do every now and then? Once college seniors graduate they are thrown into the real world where break time doesn't come all that often. We all can learn a few lessons from the example this week sets. We all need time to sit back and enjoy life. Whether we are 50 years old and trying to put children through college, or 16 years old trying to graduate high school. All of us need time to ourselves. We all need time to sit back and stare up at the sky for hours. We need time to cherish our loved ones. We need time to relax.
In this fast paced world we need to learn to slow down.
Forget the watch. Forget the cell phones.
Enjoy your life before it speeds by.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Failure
It is a word that many enthusiasts frown upon. It is a word that many people don't think belongs in our vocabulary. I am here to tell you otherwise.
You see, even champions fail. Everyone fails. The problem occurs when we let our failures take control of our lives or when we are incapable to seeing our failures as a learning experience. Somewhere along our life timeline we forgot that failure was OK. We forgot that sometimes failure leads us to success.
When we were growing up we learned so many things. We learned how to speak, how to walk, how to ride our bike and so many other things. Was it easy? To be honest, none of us probably remember when we learned how to speak or to walk, but I can almost guarantee you we failed numerous times. Think about when we learned to ride our bikes. How many times did we fall? Probably many. Not only did we fall, but our falls varied in intensity. One day we riding for a few seconds before we stumbled off our bike and caught ourselves before we went face first into the street. Another day we couldn't even get the bike moving. Then one day we fell face first off our bike and scraped up our face, arm, and knee.
We've failed numerous times before, yet as we grow older we seem to forget that. As we grow, we tend to let our failures define who we are and who we are going to be. We dwell on the mistakes we made instead of the choices that left us happy.
Each day we will fail but, like riding our bike, some days these failures will be so trivial that we simply brush them off our shoulders. Other days we will feel like our day has been ridden with failures that we struggle to get through it. Other times our failures will knock us face first into the pavement and cut us up.
What is the point?
The only way we can move forward is if we acknowledge that our failures don't define who we are. When we failed ridding out bike we got back up and tried it again. That is the most valuable lesson we ever could have learned. When we fail we need to brush it off, learn from it, and keep living. Instead of letting our failures eat away at us and remind us of our weaknesses, we need to learn from them and attempt to prevent them from happening again.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Change
Change. It is probably the hardest thing we ever attempt to accomplish in our lives. We look at ourselves and see who we were. Many of us see who we are. Few of us see who we can become. One of my favorite sayings was discovered on a church message board. It read:
"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
Now, on the church message board this saying was meant to carry religious meaning. It is there to remind us that the saints, like us, have sinned in their past but have changed and become the saints they now are. This blog isn't here to discuss religious belief, but I felt the saying can relate to our personal growth as well.
There is who you were. There is who you are. There is who you can become.
The first cannot change. Who we were was who we were and there is nothing we can do to change that. It is who we are and who we wish to become that we can change. I wrote in a previous post about us realizing we have to power to change ourselves. We have the power to become whoever we wish.
And the beauty of it all?
It is never too late. We can be young, middle-aged, or older, but we can always become whoever we want. Our future is in our hands. We have the choice to try and let it pass us by, or we can shape it and make it our own.
We, like the sinners, have a future. This future is as bright as the sun. We can shape it by inspiring to be who we always hoped to become.
Who do you hope to become?
"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
Now, on the church message board this saying was meant to carry religious meaning. It is there to remind us that the saints, like us, have sinned in their past but have changed and become the saints they now are. This blog isn't here to discuss religious belief, but I felt the saying can relate to our personal growth as well.
There is who you were. There is who you are. There is who you can become.
The first cannot change. Who we were was who we were and there is nothing we can do to change that. It is who we are and who we wish to become that we can change. I wrote in a previous post about us realizing we have to power to change ourselves. We have the power to become whoever we wish.
And the beauty of it all?
It is never too late. We can be young, middle-aged, or older, but we can always become whoever we want. Our future is in our hands. We have the choice to try and let it pass us by, or we can shape it and make it our own.
We, like the sinners, have a future. This future is as bright as the sun. We can shape it by inspiring to be who we always hoped to become.
Who do you hope to become?
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Power of words
We have all been insulted by other peoples words. We also all probably insulted other people by using our words. Our words are the strongest weapons we possess. They can build people up or break people down. They can make people smile or make people cry. The impact our words have on other people can often go unnoticed, but then again there are the words "I'm sorry." When we say "I'm sorry", we are usually apologizing for something we said or did. This shows that there are times when we do understand the impact our words have on others. We are able to see that something we said did not make the person we said it to feel very good.
How many times have we apologized to ourselves?
THIS is where the power of our words truly goes unnoticed. We can sometimes see the impact our words have on others, but we can rarely see the impact our words have on us. Our words have stopped us from being who we wish we were. Our words have stopped us from reaching our true potential.
How many times have we told ourselves we can't do something? There is one way our words have stunted out potential growth.
How many times have we told ourselves we weren't good enough? There is another way our words have impacted us.
So, what can we do about this? Well, here is the plan. We try to remove these negative words from our vocabulary. We need to consciously be aware of our thoughts and words. We need to take it one minute, one hour, one day at a time. It won't be easy. We will mess up, but we need to be aware when we are messing up and we need to fix it. Practice makes perfect, so the more we do it the easier is will become.
We have to allows ourselves to believe we can accomplish anything.
We need to believe in our potential.
How many times have we apologized to ourselves?
THIS is where the power of our words truly goes unnoticed. We can sometimes see the impact our words have on others, but we can rarely see the impact our words have on us. Our words have stopped us from being who we wish we were. Our words have stopped us from reaching our true potential.
How many times have we told ourselves we can't do something? There is one way our words have stunted out potential growth.
How many times have we told ourselves we weren't good enough? There is another way our words have impacted us.
So, what can we do about this? Well, here is the plan. We try to remove these negative words from our vocabulary. We need to consciously be aware of our thoughts and words. We need to take it one minute, one hour, one day at a time. It won't be easy. We will mess up, but we need to be aware when we are messing up and we need to fix it. Practice makes perfect, so the more we do it the easier is will become.
We have to allows ourselves to believe we can accomplish anything.
We need to believe in our potential.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Why the new name?
That's right! One at a Time now has a new name!
Building a Better Us!
Yes, the name sounds weird. Shouldn't it be "building a better you"?
No. It shouldn't be "building a better you" because you aren't the only one who needs to be better. We all do. Therefore this blog is about building a better us.
I decided to change the name because I want to blog to have a newer focus. I want the blog to be an opportunity for all of us to grow together. I want to grow with you. I need to grow with you. I figured why not do this together? So we will. Each post will be about opportunities for us to grow as people. Some may be simple short explanations and others may require a lot of work, but we are going to do it....together.
As always, I appreciate your dedication.
Stay tuned for more
Building a Better Us!
Yes, the name sounds weird. Shouldn't it be "building a better you"?
No. It shouldn't be "building a better you" because you aren't the only one who needs to be better. We all do. Therefore this blog is about building a better us.
I decided to change the name because I want to blog to have a newer focus. I want the blog to be an opportunity for all of us to grow together. I want to grow with you. I need to grow with you. I figured why not do this together? So we will. Each post will be about opportunities for us to grow as people. Some may be simple short explanations and others may require a lot of work, but we are going to do it....together.
As always, I appreciate your dedication.
Stay tuned for more
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The First Step
How do we become the best version of ourselves?
We all want to know the answer. The problem is that many times we tend to look outward for the answer. We look to others, we look to movies, we look to music, we look everywhere for that one true answer.
The problem is that we don't look into ourselves.
This was a powerful lesson that I've realized over the past few weeks. You see, I am not perfect. None of us are, but I am trying to become a better person each and every day. If we stop growing then we stop living. I, like most people, always looked for the answer. I always looked for someone who was going to come along and tell me "you can become a better person by doing x,y,z."
These people don't exist. The truth is we all know exactly what we need to do to become a better person. The first thing we need to do it learn that we have the power. We have the control over all of our choices in life. The sooner we discover this, the sooner we realize that we have the power to make ourselves better.
Maybe you are a smoker who is trying to quit. Maybe you are struggling to keep your diet going because that craving for sweets gets you every time. Maybe you are an athlete striving for that last chance at proving your worth. Whatever we are struggling through can be solved by learning that we have the power. We have the power to say no to the cigarette, or the candy, or the negative thoughts we may have.
We have the power to say no and we have the power to say yes. We are in complete control of our lives even at time when it seems like we aren't. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can take the next step in our personal growth.
Realizing we have the power over ourselves is the first step.
Are you willing to take it?
We all want to know the answer. The problem is that many times we tend to look outward for the answer. We look to others, we look to movies, we look to music, we look everywhere for that one true answer.
The problem is that we don't look into ourselves.
This was a powerful lesson that I've realized over the past few weeks. You see, I am not perfect. None of us are, but I am trying to become a better person each and every day. If we stop growing then we stop living. I, like most people, always looked for the answer. I always looked for someone who was going to come along and tell me "you can become a better person by doing x,y,z."
These people don't exist. The truth is we all know exactly what we need to do to become a better person. The first thing we need to do it learn that we have the power. We have the control over all of our choices in life. The sooner we discover this, the sooner we realize that we have the power to make ourselves better.
Maybe you are a smoker who is trying to quit. Maybe you are struggling to keep your diet going because that craving for sweets gets you every time. Maybe you are an athlete striving for that last chance at proving your worth. Whatever we are struggling through can be solved by learning that we have the power. We have the power to say no to the cigarette, or the candy, or the negative thoughts we may have.
We have the power to say no and we have the power to say yes. We are in complete control of our lives even at time when it seems like we aren't. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can take the next step in our personal growth.
Realizing we have the power over ourselves is the first step.
Are you willing to take it?
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