Good Morning, Team! It’s Friday!
In the past few weeks, I’ve run across a large number of strong personalities that made me feel…normal.
What do I think qualifies someone to earn the title of fighter? Here are some examples:
•The education administrator who navigated through a significant gender bias to influence the process and lead larger volumes of children to maximize their future by better choices, earlier.
•The business owner who persevered through decades of building a brand in architecture only to be forced to fight to a near-death, four-year legal match for the business and emotional freedom with the thought-to-be life partner.
•The owner-operator who demonstrated loyalty to a fault to a business partner who responded by taking advantage, misinforming, benefitting from the out-of-balance relationship and finally walking away from an anemic and failed transition.
•The physical education instructor working to help people take control of their out-of-control bodies but frustrated to a high level by the half-hearted posers wasting energy while lugging around their tubs of goo.
•The talent recruiter who modeled the way for future business partners by speaking up in her workplace when things weren’t handled correctly, providing direct and candid feedback professionally and ultimately moving on to a new company to influence an industry in a new way where her efforts were supported and appreciated.
What’s the common denominator? Are each predestined to wage war every day? If so, why?
I think it is because each one cares to a degree most fail to understand. Perhaps cares “too much”. When you have a persevering passion that mows over political correctness because the results-orientation is so intense…is it wrong?
I think it requires that we ask ourselves:
•For what cause?
•And what cost?
I admire the fighter. Raise a glass and celebrate the fighter in your circle today. When you care so deeply about something that you are willing to do what it takes to make it right…jump in the ring!
As Teddy Roosevelt wrote:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Have a blessed weekend!
Tenacious Cadence 