Happy Sunday Everyone:
I was referred to two teachers buying a home. In my preliminary conversation with the husband I asked him where he taught and what grade. He teaches in a fairly rough neighborhood, and he teaches juniors and seniors. I asked him what % of the kids were “good” kids, and would have to admit, I wasn’t expecting what he came back with. He said, “90-95% of my kids are great kids, they just have things harder in some ways but I teach them every day that we can get bitter or we can get better”. We can get bitter or we can get better!! He wasn’t talking to me like he was trying to enlighten me, he was just speaking from the heart, and how he felt about “his” kids. I was expecting him to go off on the school systems, the troubled kids, the state of affairs etc….instead he was positive, optimistic, hopeful, etc….just the kind of person you want teaching our youth. I came home and told Kim about his comment “we can get bitter or we can get better”, and then started thinking more about the pride of ownership I sensed he had for what he does every day, and the care he puts into his work.
Some things my conversation with him had me thinking about.
1. “my kids”-He used the words with pride of ownership. Total responsibility for “his kids”. What if we looked at our teams, our roles, our companies, with total pride of ownership? what would happen? We would get better.
2. The quote “we can get bitter or we can get better”-take excuses and throw them out the door. We all deal with this every day, whether its learning from our mistakes or simply not being as fortunate or lucky as someone else, we focus on getting better, not being bitter….not always easy to do, but the concept is so freaking simple.
3. Gratitude for people like him. I am motivated by success, by competition, by money, and at times, by changing people’s lives w/ coaching. I take great satisfaction in this but if you took away the former, I’m not sure I would allocate my time to the latter. People like him do this every day without the money, without the material success. There are teachers and coaches in the world, like this guy, that change people’s lives, I see it in my own boys lives…there are teachers and coaches that change them, and then there are those that mail it in. The ones that change lives deserve a heartfelt “thank you”. When is the last time you thanked one of the special teachers/coaches for changing your kids life? Meeting this guy, caused me to send Thomas’s baseball coach a note, simply saying “you made my kid love a sport he didn’t love before, thank you!! “. These people aren’t motivated by accolades, but being recognized for a job well done doesn’t suck either.
I got off the phone with this guy happier than when I started, pretty cool stuff.
Have a great rest of the day.