Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

Ever heard?

“The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree”

“Chip off the old block”

“Spitting image”

“Cast in the same mold”

“Cut from the same cloth”

If we do nothing to change the trajectory, we might end up just like our parents. 

“Like father, like son”

Is that ok? Preferred? Preventable?

I must admit, as I have aged, I looked in the mirror one day and thought to myself, “Dad?!”

Without surgery, we typically can’t do a lot to change the way we appear…but we don’t have to resolve to emulate our predecessors path or follow the same curve as it were.

•My father started college, but didn’t finish.

•He also started his own business, but struggled scaling it.

•He was a problem solver, but could have had much larger impact if he got out of his own way.

Each parent wants a better future for their children than their parents had. They are begging us to bend the curve, not just follow it.

What are you doing to chart your own course?

Here is “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley (1875):

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

It’s up to each of us to be the captain of our soul. Not to parrot or mimic or walk in the shadow of others, even a namesake.

Bend the heredity curve. Be yourself. Make your own mistakes but live the life you were meant to have. 

Have a blessed weekend!

Eric