Stuck – Stagnate – Die
We are born, we work, we die.
If this is your timeline … we need to talk. Unfortunately, most people live their whole life working for someone else’s dreams, while their personal dreams die on the vine. How many people dream of breaking their bodies down day after day for a paycheck? Oh, Lord, please have me in so much pain that I can’t live a complete life. How many people pray this prayer every night? That’s right NONE!!!
So why do we do this? Why do we get into a job that is not what we had always dreamt of? Why do we toil for people who don’t care about our dreams day after day, year after year? I understand we need to make ends meet. But at what point did you decide your dreams weren’t important?
The normal pattern is that we get out of school and go to work so we can be on our own.
Some people take a “job” just until they have saved enough to open their own company. But then life gets in the way, they get a little ahead and they buy a car, or they get a bigger place to live. And then they meet that person who they are meant to be with for the rest of their lives. And then they get stuck in that “temporary” job. They can’t leave because they have the bills coming in. Maybe they started a family. The opportunity comes to move up in the company but that will mean you will have to travel or God forbid, you will have to move. So, they turn down the advancement, and they stagnate. After a while, they become part of the furniture in the office. New people come in and move on to better jobs, but they got stuck, they stagnated and now their dreams have died … and then they retire after 35 years at that temporary job.
I don’t know where you are along this path. Are you in the temporary job? Then make sure you don’t forget your dream. You don’t need a new car, you don’t need a bigger place to live, you don’t need all those clothes, you don’t need to go out every weekend, spending money you need to be saving.
But other people have nicer cars, dwelling, clothes … so what … they are not you; they don’t have your dreams. Resist – Resist – RESIST!!! Fight off your internal narrative that is telling you that “you can’t achieve that dream.”
Maybe it’s a family member, maybe it’s someone that you THINK is a friend. Too many times these people who try to talk us out of our dreams are afraid we will achieve more and become successful. What does that say about them, they had the same upbringing, the same education, the same opportunities as you, but if you leave them on your way up, who will they be miserable with? If your inner circle isn’t constantly pushing you to be your best then you need to reexamine who is in your circle. If they are your best friends because they lived in your same neighborhood, maybe they are only your friends because of proximity. I have very few friends from where I grew up. My circle has always been the ones who asked me, “What’s next?”
Maybe you are in the second stage.
You have been at your present job for a while and you really like the profession. But now you will need to make a professional step. You’ve been told you’ve earned a promotion, but to accept it you will need to move to another city.
I had this happen to me. I had been married for three years and I had the opportunity to leave the teaching job I was at, to become a graduate assistant at the University of Arkansas. This seems like an easy decision but there were strings attached.
We didn’t have children, yet, because we both understood it would be easier to move up in my profession if it were just her and I. Next issue, we lived rent-free in her grandparent’s house, who had passed away. A huge issue that needed to be confronted was that my wife and her mother had just opened their own business in town. For us to leave, they would have to sell their business. You think that was the big one, right? Not even close. The job I was looking at paid $400 a month, ten months of the year and I would work 12–15-hour days, while also taking classes. To put this into perspective rent was $450 a month, 12 months of the year. I would earn 4,000 a year and rent alone would cost us $5,400.
I was never good at math, but those numbers don’t bode well. Add on to that, gas, insurance, utilities, and meals, and we were in a tough situation. My wife took a job at a preschool, which helped us make ends meet … barely. I earned my Master’s degree. But the big win out of all of this was that because I took this job, I made connections that helped me to move into my next five jobs.
My next job was at a college prep school, thanks to the academic counselor, Joe Spivey, at the University who was an alumnus at Subiaco Academy. After that Scotty Conley hired me at Trinity Valley Community College. Scotty was the linebacker coach at the University of Arkansas while I was there and was looking for a strength coach and an offensive line coach, both he knew I could handle from our time together. After that, John Stucky, the former head strength coach at Arkansas called me after my first season at Trinity Valley and asked me to join him as the Associate Head Strength Coach at the University of Tennessee. Three years later John’s good friend, Pete Carroll, called him to hire John’s top assistant to go with him to the University of Southern California. When Pete had the chance to move to Seattle to coach the Seahawks, he brought me with him as part of his staff.
If my wife had thrown her heels in the ground and wanted to hold on to a business that was a pastime, not a passion, and had we not taken the financial risk to become a graduate assistant, none of the rest would have happened. I wouldn’t have met Joe, Scotty, John, or Pete. All of which helped me along my path to accomplish what had been my goal since I was a small child: to win championships and eventually a Super Bowl.
The key to this was that my wife and I were a team in this process.
She sold her business and went to work and became the breadwinner for the year and a half I was at the UofA. We both accepted the struggle that came with the “leap of faith”. In the end, we both have reaped the benefits of the success of making the physical, financial, and professional move.
Realize that this wasn’t as “haphazard” as I made it sound. Before we made our final decision to make the move, we went through my Risk Assessment System. You can find a deeper explanation in Chapter Six of my new book Move or Die.
A thumbnail of this system is that there are five steps that each job/opportunity must satisfy.
1). Why did the opportunity open?
2). Whom will I be working with?
3). What is the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? (Good parts of the job/bad parts/hard parts)
4). Can I make a difference?
5). How will this affect my family?
The University of Arkansas job opened because the previous GA had moved up to the assistant’s position when the former assistant took a head strength coaching job at another college. So, there was movement within the system.
I would be working with the top strength and conditioning coach in college sports, John Stucky. He was a grinder, in that when you were on the floor, you would be working, or looking for work (cleaning and oiling machinery). But he was also willing to teach you all that he knew. He was humble and hungry and he passed that on to his assistants.
The good part of the job was that I was working with major college athletes in football, basketball, and track & field. Not only would I be with the football staff but also with the legendary basketball coach Nolan Richardson but also with the world-renowned track & field coach, John McDonald. Coach Richardson would lead his team to the Collegiate National Championship and Coach McDonald’s famous recruiting technique was to walk up to a high school athlete with a box full of National Championship rings and say, “If you want one of these, you’ll come run with us.”
The bad part was that the long hours of not only being on the floor, but then writing up assignments to earn my degree would take me out of the house for most of the day and part of the evening.
The ugly part was that my wife was separated from her family for the first time in her life. We were on the other side of the state, but it was a heck of a transition and a “welcome” to the life of a coach’s wife.
As far as my making a difference, I knew my work ethic and my background in working with athletes in a weight room situation would not be a hindrance. I knew the more I learned the better I could serve the athletes I worked with daily.
The transition from a high school coach to a college coach was a great challenge for my wife and me. But it was good for us in the long run. We learned that after surviving this experience we could survive anything that the coaching profession could throw at us. We had some struggles in other jobs, but none as drastic as this one.
I had no idea “how” things were going to work out when I took the GA position with Coach Stucky at the University of Arkansas, but I knew it would give me a chance. I knew I needed my Master’s Degree. I know I needed contacts. And I knew I needed the experience.
I could have gotten my Master’s Degree while teaching. Actually, I did start the process to get my Secondary Administration Degree at Arkansas State University. But one day I was standing with the Assistant Principal at the high school and a group of kids passed by, all were very nice and greeted both of us. After they had passed the assistant principal looked at me and said, “Now who were those kids?” I laughed and said they were the Senior Class President, the Student Council President, and some of the top scholars in the school. He shook his head and said, “I don’t get to work those kids, I’m so busy being the disciplinarian.” Right there I said, “That’s enough of that path.”
In the end, going to the University of Arkansas was the right choice for me and my family. Had we not made this decision everything in our life would be different today. I remember a quote I read from Muhammad Ali: “He who is not courageous enough to take risks, will accomplish nothing in life.”
I knew where I wanted to go, was light years from where I was. In order to get closer to my dreams, I needed to risk, temporarily, our comfort. To both Louon and myself, going to the University of Arkansas was going to work out for us. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said, “Faith is taking the first step, even though you don’t see the whole staircase.”
Even though we didn’t know how things would turn out, the most important thing we had was that we TRUSTED ourselves and in each other, that we would make it through the challenge that came with taking the GA position.
Take calculated risks. Always!!
