Success Stories

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will." - Vince Lombardi

Yes, this post does have to do with sports, but that's not what it's actually about. I promise I have something interesting to say if you keep reading.

Tonight, I was watching a little bit of baseball in the background and saw that the Saint Louis Cardinals came back from a 6-0 deficit in game 5 to win and advance to the next round. They were down 2 runs and to their last out, but ended up winning by 2, anyway, on one of the best comebacks I've ever seen.

If you're not familiar with this team's story, they just won the World Series last year. After that, their manager, one of the best managers of all time, decided to retire and leave the team scrambling for somebody to replace him. On top of that, their best hitter, Albert Pujols, one of the greatest hitters of all time and the team's clear leader, decided he wanted more money, and so he left them to go to the Los Angeles Angels.

They were left without a leader. They were left without a manager. The competition was getting better and they were seemingly getting worse. But, somehow, even with all the background noise going on, the Cardinals found a way to win. They didn't fall apart when it looked like things weren't going their way.

I hate being preachy when I'm blogging. It seems cheesy and fake to me. But, I do think there's something to be learned from a team that doesn't give up after seemingly falling apart. I think we fail to realize that our success is not indefinitely tied to our circumstances.

 It's possible to do just as much with less if you put in more work than those who are supposed to be better than you. It is possible, I promise. I know of a kid who wasn't considered to be the thinnest, strongest, or the coolest person in his school. Supposedly, he wasn't supposed to be able to be any of that. But, then he started to run everyday. He started to push himself, to lift weights. He tried out for the football team, joined the basketball team, and worked harder than just about every single person his age. What happened between then and now? He became one of the best football players on his team, one of the best basketball players on his team, and is the third best runner on his varsity cross country team in only his second year of high after sitting out most the first year with an injury. He had people tell him he couldn't do it, they laughed at him, but didn't let that affect him. He willed himself to be successful.

If you find that you've just lost the best manager and hitter in the league and you're struggling just to stay afloat, or if things somehow get bad enough that your girlfriend breaks up with you, you lose your job, and you fail three tests in the same week, you don't have to be affected by it. Things will get better for you. I promise. Just keep working hard and doing everything you can to better your situation. You may not have the success equal to being the best team in baseball, but you can and will make yourself successful if you want it and work hard enough for it.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate all your support and will try harder to keep up with this blog better than I have been.

I would recommend taking a few minutes to watch this video if you can. Probably one of the most inspirational videos I've seen.

Talking With Children and Small Compliments

Have you ever worked with young kids who think, since you're an adult, you know and can do everything and anything they need? Sometimes, even when there's nothing you could do, they insist that you fix their problem. Since you're an adult and know a lot more than them, you're supposed to know everything. The possibility that you might not is almost unfathomable. Talking with young children is, essentially, what I do for a living now. 

The job I've been working lately has not been the easiest job I've ever had, for sure. I work at a call center called Vivint doing tech support. In other words, customers call in and need me to fix something for them. They're a lot like children, since they think you must know all the answers and can fix every conceivable problem. And they're not always in the most patient or happy of moods, since it's usually the case that their alarm system has been malfunctioning somehow or their service has not been good. Every day, there's a lot I have to deal with. Sometimes I wish I could just tell them there's nothing I can do and walk away. But yeah, I'd probably get fired for that one. haha

However, yesterday actually ended up being pretty good. It wasn't anything that happened during most the day, the shift was mostly just normal. But, at the end of the night, right when I was exhausted and about to go home, somebody else called in to my phone line. At this point, I was pretty unhappy that I couldn't leave and didn't want to answer the call. If I answered it, that meant I'd get out late, and I really just wanted to be done. 

I ended up being surprised. The individual calling in wasn't happy with his situation, he had been having continual troubles with the system and didn't know what to do. In fact, he seemed to understand that I was having trouble helping him. And yet, while on the call, he actually became happier. He said that I was the nicest person he had ever talked to about his security system, that he was about ready to have it taken out if he didn't get somebody friendly this time. It wasn't necessarily that I was the best, it was just that he said it seemed like I actually cared and wanted to help him. 

That last call made my week, since it was the first time at this job that I actually felt successful. I'd never felt confident that I could even be competent working at the call center, and I was given just a little bit of hope last night. If you ever get the chance to give somebody a small compliment, you might be surprised at the effect it could have. In this case, it made the difference to where I went home in a good mood and felt good about my work for the first time since I started there.

The best thing about talking with small children and customers is that, once in a while, even when you don't feel that you're good enough to anybody else, they can give you the confidence to feel that you're great at what you do. 

90 Degrees And Still Going

It's hot here in Provo. I decided to go for a run tonight, and once I decide that means I'm going to do it. I'm really stubborn to the point that I follow through with just about everything I decide on, even if it's gonna be miserable.

Well, funny story..... right after I decided to go on a run, I walked outside and found out it was incredibly hot still!  My first thought was, "Man, Provo really sucks." I mean, you'd think it would be a bit cooler out by 8 at night, but apparently not. I looked at a sign a few minutes into my run and saw it was still 90 degrees..... So, just in case you were wondering, you're not gonna go for a nice cool run here during the Summer. haha

I do have somewhere I'm going with this. Yeah, running can be miserable sometimes. But, what makes it less miserable, what really makes it so you can keep your pace and go on, is your attitude about it. If you're wondering the secret to running, it has very little to do with being athletic or having a runner's body. That has a little to do with it, but it's mostly just what you think about while you're going. You HAVE to keep positive. The minute you start getting frustrated or think about how much you hate it, that's when you start to notice that it's hot out, that you're tired, your feet hurt, you're getting cramps. The only way to be a good runner is to be an optimist. Instead of noticing what hurts or what's not going well, you think about keeping up a good pace, the pretty view at the top of the hill you're climbing, how happy you're gonna be to finish the run, or what's waiting for you when you're done.

Why do I bring this up? It's might sound dumb, but it's something simple so many people don't realize. It doesn't just apply to running. I blogged last time about finding something meaningful in life. But, when I think about it, none of this is going to matter unless you have the right attitude. If you don't think you're going to be happy, then you're not! It's just not going to happen. The only way to enjoy your life, to feel good about yourself, is to decide that you're going to. You can always find something to be miserable about, but ALL that it is going to do is MAKE you miserable and slow you down.

Just like when you're running, a bad attitude will do absolutely nothing else for you besides making you sad. You start to notice that maybe you don't have as many friends as you want, that you don't look as good as you like, that you're stressed out, or even that you're just not the person you want to be. Even if any of it's true, thinking about it gets you nowhere. Thinking about how you're going to make things better and the view "at the top of the hill" you're climbing is going to make you feel better, and you'll be happier about where you are.

I can promise you that having a good attitude about where you are and keeping away from negatives thoughts WILL make you happy, whether you're running a marathon or trying to get through a day working at McDonald's. I can also promise you that, as long as you think the view from the top of the hill is going to be amazing, it really will be.

This is a huge part of my philosophy on life, and I hope maybe something I've written can help at least one person. 

Finding Meaning

I really don't have enough time to write a blog post right now. I've been pretty busy with work lately and training to do much of anything else.

But, tonight I was running and thinking a lot about life and how many people aren't happy. It just seems like a  lot of people really don't care about anything they're doing. And, I feel like sometimes I need to write about something important. Something people actually might need to hear.

If I was to tell everybody something, something regardless of where they're from or who they want to be.... I'd say find something that you value. Find something that means something to you, and pursue it. Don't go around life wondering what you're gonna do, continuing to follow what you think other people want of you. That's not gonna make you happy, listening to everybody else, following the crowd, looking at what the person next to you wants and not even asking what you value.

Spend some time thinking about it. Find what you want to be and what means something to you. It's just sad to me seeing so many people who don't have anything important to them, with very little purpose to their life or any real goals. They seem so sad. And, I don't think anybody deserves anything else than to be truly happy.

I've found a lot of meaning to my life and feel like I'm relatively happy right now. I really hope everybody who reads this can find a way to do the same.

P.S. If you're ever unsure of a direction to go, I would love to share with you what's been able to help me. Click on the link I posted labeled "my faith," or just ask me anytime.

Sleep?

Some people sleep at night. Most people sleep at night. That's usually not me. I'm typically the person who sleeps during the day and stays awake most the night. It's been this way most my life.

When I was 2, I still remember being awake in my crib at night scared to death while unable to sleep. I'd sit there and wonder what was out in the dark while I was trapped in a cage.

At 5, I played around my room at night sometimes while my parents and family were in bed. I didn't know why people wanted to sleep so badly while I just wanted to have fun.

By the time I was 9, I just played video games at night when I couldn't sleep. Like most boys my age, I was pretty much obsessed with the video game systems I owned, so I enjoyed not sleeping. I was in school, so I got enough sleep to function..... just usually not as much as everybody else.

When I was 15, my life was completely crazy and I was often up doing homework until late at night. I was determined to get the grades needed to be accepted into BYU, so I could actually use the time I spent awake being productive and getting things done. Being something of an insomniac helped as much as it hurt. I definitely was exhausted during school most days and wanted to go home and sleep.

Three years later, at 18, I was a freshman in college, and felt like I was 9 again. Staying up late was fun again, since there were so many people up and everybody was always doing something. Every once in a while, I'd pull an all-nighter to work on a paper or get studying done, but it was mostly just fun.

Fast forward to now. I'm 22, and I only have about a year left in college. Sleeplessness has become a bit more of a real obstacle with actually having to work and be more responsible for my finances and life. I've been able to dodge it a little bit by working later hours, but it can't go on forever. Soon enough, I really will have to learn how to sleep at night and function during the day. I think the time in my life has finally come where I have to undertake that task and grow up a little bit.

I'm not sure how I will start sleeping after a whole life of relatively sleepless nights..... I'm going to try and figure it out, though.

Living Off Cereal and Sandwiches

I went grocery shopping tonight. Just about every time I've gone grocery shopping for about the past three years, I've bought the same exact things. Tonight wasn't much different. I wasn't sure what else to buy, so I just went ahead and bought cereal, milk, apple juice, and canned fruit. The canned fruit was a bit different, I don't usually even get that creative. Haha I'm just not very original at shopping I guess, and I've found what I like. For the past three years, the list has almost always included:

Milk

Eggs

Cereal

Apple Juice (or, sometimes, a different type of juice to mix it up a bit)

Macaroni and Cheese

Hamburger Helper

Hamburger

Grapes

Oatmeal

Bread

Lunch Meat

Sliced Cheese

Sometimes, like tonight I might buy something extra. Usually, though, if I think about getting something else, I'll sit there for about five minutes and wonder what else I really need. I'll usually be too indecisive to make a decision quickly, and grocery shopping takes way too long. So, I've just gone with just about the same things every time.

 The more I think about it, the more I realize how weird this is. I don't know how I'm still alive. haha I guess my parents help me with food once in a while, so that keeps me going sometimes. I really am just living off pretty much cereal and sandwiches.

Honestly, I don't think this changes much until I get married. I've somehow kept myself living, so I guess it works. 

"Please Walk Instead of Run"

Today, I was working at Dippin' Dots in Seven Peaks scooping ice cream for people.

It's not such a bad job: you really just sit inside a small, air-conditioned shack and scoop ice cream for several hours. Honestly, sitting in an air-conditioned room for my job helping people is much better than sitting in a hot apartment all day while bored to death.

Anyway, I heard something I thought was really funny while I was running an errand. These two kids go running past me carrying a 2-seater tube and one of them yells out, "I don't care about that sign that says please walk instead of run!" Then, they just continue running on their way to wherever they were going.

I wasn't even sure what to take from this. The kid had basically just yelled out to everybody he didn't want to follow the rules. It just seemed so pointless. Honestly, it seems like such a simple thing, but I feel like it's an attitude which has infected our entire American culture. It's not unusual for people to blatantly disregard rules and announce to the whole world that what they are doing is blatant. Disregarding rules for the sake of showing your individuality and rebelliousness is something people commonly do because it seems like the cool thing to do. Ironically, by doing that, it seems they are actually just following a new norm of rebellious behavior, thus, going completely against their own intentions.

I recently saw a discussion on Facebook about whether it's okay to avoid saying the pledge of allegiance with everybody else. Isn't this the same argument? It's usually just somebody refusing to stand since they don't want to be like everybody else and want to show freedom of speech. Why would it be okay not to stand during the Pledge? What is the importance of freedom of speech if it's not something we're even willing to stand and support. Maybe if you're from another country, I'm not quite sure about that. However, it just doesn't make sense to me that so many people choose to do something for the sake of rebelling.

I'm fascinated by this point of view, nevertheless. Maybe somebody else could provide a better commentary than I do, I just sometimes wonder about the attitude our culture has taken toward blatant rebellion.