Happy Sunday Everyone:
I have massive gratitude for my entire family, my faith, my friends, my students, my coach, my team, my clients, my referral partners, my company. I have massive gratitude for morning runs, morning rituals, great days, great mornings, motivated mornings, sleepful nights, gratitude journals, books on tape, books in general, the girl from Ipanema radio on pandora. I am grateful for tuesday morning with Don, monthly breakfasts with Dave, and Erica. I am grateful that friends want to help, and friends that tell you they need help. I am grateful for team members who do their best. I am grateful for my parents, and the relationship i have with them. I am grateful for associating myself with people who have changed my life for the better. I am grateful for vulnerability, for small egos, for no agendas, for happy people, for people who want to see you do your best. I am grateful for the joy my boys bring me. I am grateful for Kim, who, somehow understands me, loves my strengths and forgives my weaknesses (18 years tomorrow). I am grateful for the lessons i learn from every person on this email. I am grateful for people sharing their struggles with me. I am more grateful today than any other day in my life because i’m thinking about it more.
Why did i just do that? Why did i just write that? I did that because our dear friends drove their beautiful 29 year old daughter to the airport last Sunday to visit her fiancé in Australia. She never woke up, she passed away on the plane. Her amazing fiancé waiting at the airport for his girl. Tuesday was her 30th birthday. Total loss for our friends. Shocking. Crushing. Heart breaking, tears as i type. I have experienced some tragedy, but at 42 years old, i have never witnessed a situation where dear friends, people i love, are left with the loss of their child. And what do we all do about it? how do you help? I have some ideas but thats not the point of this email. My point is that we live our lives hearing, but not caring about cliche’s we have all heard so many times; “you can’t take it with you”, “are you going to wish you worked harder on your death bed”, “don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do, and say today”, “life is too short not to be happy”. All of those cliche’s came from someone else’s real life situation, but its far enough away from us, we don’t pay attention….This one for me, is front and center, and it is changing the way i think. My buddy, Jeremy, at the last summit, commented in a presentation, “how we live our days is how we live our lives”. We need to live our days with joy and gratitude. If we live our days with joy and gratitude, if we focus on what is good/great in our lives, if we can jumble off the list above in 3 minutes, we have a much better chance of living a joyful life, which will leave us on our deathbeds with little regrets. No one escapes death, its not a morbid statement, its a very simple fact, we are all going to be in/on our death beds at some point in time. How great would it be if we took tragic losses like Lauren’s passing, and turned it into a win for all of us, by helping us focus on gratitude and joy TODAY, and recognizing, this life, could end tomorrow. This experience has been a rebalance of priorities, and a recognition of how screwed up my own priorities can get. It’s a reality check when Jack’s not quite throwing the ball the way i think he should, or Thomas is asking me too many questions…Thomas asking too many questions is a blessing, and questioning Jack’s arm is stupid, small, and silly….but when I can think of Lauren, as I’m about to tell Jack about his arm (after yesterdays game), and I stop, and instead say “great game, buddy, i love you”, i then have massive gratitude for Lauren, and I thank her, and i pay it forward to Jack, who then has more joy. Thankfully, I genuinely believe Lauren lived each one of her 10,950 days on this earth as they should be lived; with purpose, with fun, with love, and with joy. Her parents will survive this tragedy by focusing on the joy she brought them, and the gratitude they have for the time they had with her, nothing else.
I pray, and hope, each one of us would act on this, and choose to find the good, the blessing, and the joy of our lives, and be happy, and grateful, and joyful, and pay it forward.