This has been a challenging year for me so far. First I have been working on this blog from my daughter’s hospital room. Jess is my world. She is my only child and I do everything I can for her, so I’m here in a hospital room all day trying to write while getting up to get her things. This blog is not about Jess but about being here in the hospital with her and how it’s impacted my daily routine. This experience is like what I wrote about last week: a distraction in life. In fact it was because I feel so behind that I wrote the blog on starting over in the first place. I felt a need to start over for the year in some ways and that’s why I wrote the blog.
This year has given me challenges. Just when I had reset my goals and tried to be like my blog mentor, Steve Scott, who last year posted a new blog every day, even while traveling around the world, I found my life turned upside down by interruptions. This year I had hoped to have four to five posts a week but this is the first week that I really got started on it.
Each day I start out with my own routine, reading, listening to some good Rock music, maybe even a hit song or two that isn’t really Rock. Today I was jamming out to a link sent by my home town rock station on Twitter. I was able to listen to a 5-second bit of every number one song from 1956 to 1992. I was really fired up by that – and by reading words of wisdom from my greatest source of wisdom, the Bible, as part of my personal 40-day challenge to get deeper into wisdom.
Well, I then switched to an email from a well-meaning friend. He says that my online presence is not professional. While I respect this man and what he has done in business, it brings me to a point today. Are you wound up so tight in this tough economy that you are afraid to loosen up and have fun? We’ll call my friend Jim (it was my dad’s nickname but I want to protect my friend’s name and not have you all come down on him). The world out there seems to be making it harder and harder to make a living, to hold down a good job, or to even be a professional. Jim is very good at his job, so I’m pretty sure he will not have to be looking for a job in this rough economy.
I actually thought that maybe he doesn’t need to be following me online, but he’s the type of person that I am actually trying to work with. You see, I was once one of those professionals who thought you need to act your age and not your shoe size. Then I met a great professional, Zig Ziglar, who could motivate a crowd from a stage, and be just as great of a motivator with you one-on-one. Using what Zig taught me, and with my brother Nate’s influence, I realized I’m OK as a relaxed, take a chill pill, take off your shoes and put your feet up kind of guy. It was when I learned to relax in life that I came into my groove. So my message for today is “Relax.”
Now, I understand some of the people who read this, some of you to whom I speak at events, are professional people. That is your job. But there is a difference between most of those professional people I meet and my friend Jim. I’ve taken the time to learn about your life. Maybe you have kids, a wife, a family, and you are excited about LIFE, not about a job. We all need to do things to make a living. So I encourage you to do something you love, and be yourself doing it. I could not tell you if Jim is married, has kids, still has his mom or dad around, nothing. He is always serious about work, and never has a smile on his face, never talks about any hobbies.
What is your life about? Today reflect on this: what is your life about? As the Bible says, there is a time for everything under the sun. Yes, I enjoy my life, I enjoy my work. But I’m sitting with my daughter when she is sick. Last month I was helping my mom in the cold Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania after my dad passed. I love my life, but my family matters to me, and sometimes that means making adjustments to my ideal life. So, tomorrow what will change in your life? Do you really enjoy your life? Will you bring joy to those you meet just by the fact you enjoy, while I still enjoy it?
If you need one-on-one help finding what motivates you or figuring out how to balance your work and your family and all the other important things in life, contact me to help you. With that I’m off to get a nurse for Jess. Thanks for reading. I’m Tim Gillette, Rocker Life Coach. Live… Love… Rock on.
