“I’d Like To Thank Me…”
Snoop’s Message Is One We Can All Learn From
November 19th, 2018 was a speech that had everyone scratching their heads a little bit.
This was the day that Snoop Dogg received his star at the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.
After thanking numerous people for their support over the years for their efforts in helping him get to the point he was at, Snoop finally took a turn that received mostly laughs because people thought it was a joke:
He thanked himself.
“I want to thank me for believing in me, I want to thank me for doing all this hard work. I wanna thank me for having no days off. I wanna thank me for never quitting. I wanna thank me for always being a giver and trying to give more than I receive. I wanna thank me for trying to do more right than wrong. I wanna thank me for being me at all times, Snoop Dogg you a bad motherf**ker.”
If you watch the video again, people laughed like it was a joke.
Hell, even he chuckled.
News outlets decided to run that 50 seconds worth of video as some sort of abnormality that someone would actually thank themselves during a speech.
When I watched it I thought the same thing.
Now I view it differently.
A lot differently.
Along this journey of life, there will be a lot of people that will be there to assist you when you are down, just starting out, struggling, and succeeding. These individuals will offer assistance and guidance and send you on your way to be a better version of yourself at work or personally.
Here’s the catch: it’s up to you to take the advice and guidance then decide to work your ass off to build on it to be who you want to be and what you want.
When success is found in any certain area we tend to glamorize the guidance and message more than the hard work we put in to make the dream a reality.
During my time as a trainer I would use this line to my employees when they thanked me for the advice: “You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink it, we will see in a week or two how impactful it was.”
The advice and guidance I gave was generally the same (maybe phrased differently for impact depending on the individual or audience), but the results varied from person to person.
Why? How?
Simply put, the people that took what could have made them successful and implemented it became more successful than the ones that decided to procrastinate or not do it at all.
THEY DID THE WORK, not me. I just offered the guidance.
Their direct success was based off of their work ethic built off of what they were told to do to help make them successful.
The best part? Through their effort, trial and error, they inadvertently taught ME how to be a better mentor and coach.
Yes, the message is important, but the implementation of that message will always be the most important.
For both parties involved.
THE ACTION.
That treadmill in the corner of your room that has become a clothes hanger? You bought it with the intention to use it to move and help get you more active, not to hang clothes. It’s function never changed, but the way you chose to use it determined it’s usefulness.
It’s not the treadmill’s fault it’s holding 3 pairs of jeans and a couple of button downs.
The results you achieve, both good and bad, will be a direct reflection of the effort you put into it.
There are answers out there, some of them you will not want to listen to because doing the right thing is HARD WORK…along the line you will doubt, lose focus, and not want to continue.
You will have the people closest to you say you’re nuts for doing what you do.
“To a coward, courage always looks like stupidity.”- Bill Maher
You owe it to yourself to try.
Try celebrating the small victories and being thankful for the opportunity to try again instead of thinking that obstacle is too big to get through: a lot of time the brick wall you’re staring at from the front is as thin as paper if you stop looking at it from the angle you currently are.
The message here is that it’s easy to give up, and it’s so tempting to do so every day…because motivation will only get you so far.
It’s the discipline that propels you forward.
Stop living the “Bottle Rocket Life” that I penned around this time last year:
Instant gratification is great, but don’t expect it often. Wake up today and build off of what you learned yesterday, you could just surprise yourself.
In the end, you may wind up giving yourself the ultimate form of self love: you will thank yourself for not quitting when you wanted to.
