My Motto
I was recently reading a book that asked a very interesting question. The question was simply stated, if you were made to leave your house for 40 hours a week, you couldn’t talk to your family, you couldn’t access social media, you couldn’t go to work, you couldn’t watch movies or tv, what would you do? In other words, what could you not be stopped from doing?
It took me a couple of minutes before I could come up with an idea of how to answer that question. I thought about all the passions I have in life, my interests, the things that consume a majority of my time; this was a tough one. After a lot of soul-searching and contemplation I landed on three things learn, create, and share. Learn. Create. Share. Those are the three things nobody could stop me from doing.
I want to break down why I chose these three things and why they make up the motto of my blog under my logo. These three concepts have significant meaning and history to my life.
Learn
I love to learn new things. I recently took the Gallup Strengths Finder Test. This test asks a series of questions about how you think and process things in life and when it is all done it will quantify 5 top strengths. If you pay more money you can have your top 34 strengths. Rounding out my top 5 is the attribute called Learner. The first line of this quality is this, “chances are you probably register for the most difficult rather than the easiest classes” I’ll proceed to give you a little backstory on my life. In college, I majored in youth ministries. Most people in my class actually wanted to become a pastor at some point in their life but didn’t want to put in the work, namely take Greek for 4 semesters. However, I was a youth ministry major with no interest in becoming a pastor but had an intense passion to learn Greek; it was fascinating to me. So at the end of my “four years of college” I wound up with a double major in the time it took most people to finish only one major. I love to learn. I often am quizzing people around me at work to gain and glean more and more knowledge about anything from technology, to food, to finances. Before I buy something you can count on me researching the product countless of hours. As a result of this intense research, my wife often says my Google searches are more powerful than hers. If I ever stop learning it would be as if I stopped breathing.
Create
To me there is magic in creating something. Think about it for a moment, to create something is to put something into the world that before had not existed. There is magic in creating. This blog is a way for me to “create” something every week of my life. Over the years I have been involved in creating anything from websites, videos, YouTube channels, photos, page layouts, flyers, banners, postcards, business cards, and Christmas cards. My wife and I have now “created” two babies; my daughter Grace and our daughter that is soon to be born. That is not only magical but a miracle. If I were to go a week without creating something I would feel awkward and incomplete.
Share
This is the key to it all and I think this is where a lot of people get hung up. If I were to learn something but never share it I would die a lonely smart person who has never left an impact on anybody. If I create something but only for my eyes there might be a temporary satisfaction in a job well done but the joy in creating is letting others experience and use your creation. Nothing brings me more joy then when I hear people using, getting pleasure, or finding meaning from something that I have created. The hard thing about this concept is if I only create something to share and only focus on getting a reaction from somebody then often my work will be subpar.
I have a confession to make to all of you, are you ready? I am a HUGE Taylor Swift fan, HUGE! My daughter from a very young age has loved dancing around the house to “Shake it off” Everybody I work with looks at me with a smile when a Taylor Swift song comes on the speakers. At any given time, even when I’m alone, I can be caught listening to Taylor. Go ahead judge me, I know, but I will continue to like her music. Now I know you are asking yourself, what does Taylor Swift have to do with any of this, great question. Recently I read an article where Taylor talked about some really impactful thoughts about work. This interview was from Ben Sullivan, ASOS Magazine, and BuzzFeed, she said…
“Work isn’t about just showing up, it’s about so much more than that. It’s up to you to take risks — you have to decide that you want to get better and you want to learn. When you reach a certain level of success, which you inevitably will in your life if you work hard, people become OK with anything you create. Only you will be the one who pushes you and decides what the next level will be.”
I love the part where she talks about at a certain point the only person who will continue to push you to the next level is yourself. I could not agree more with her thoughts on this.
So I leave you with a couple thoughts and challenges. I pose the same question to you that was posed to me…
- If you were made to leave your house for 40 hours a week, you couldn’t talk to your family, you couldn’t access social media, you couldn’t go to work, you couldn’t watch movies or tv, what would you do? In other words, what could you not be stopped from doing?
- Once you find out the thing or things that you couldn’t stop doing, how are you now going to live your life differently?
- Like the interview with Taylor Swift, what are some risks that you are not taking that are hindering you from going to the next level?
Feel free to leave a comment below with some of your answers. I would love to engage my audience around these topics.
