Always Follow Your Path
Throwback Thursday Memory!
I used to get teased by some jocks in high school for singing in high school choirs. Some years later I was invited to sing the National Anthem at Double Day Field at MLB All-Star Game. Ken Griffey Jr. came up afterward and said, “great job,” and took a photo with me.
Always follow your path. Other people’s opinion of you is none of your business. -JR
#dream #jump #hurdleadversity
Join John LIVE most Thursdays at 7am Mountain Time on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.
Life’s Interruptions
Have you ever been interrupted? Like, when you are making a great point and someone interrupts you! Or you are giving a presentation and someone’s cell phone rings with one of those fancy ringtones. Or, you are about to propose to your lady friend at a fancy restaurant and the host or hostess tells you that your lights are still on in the car!
How rude.
Well I have been interrupted many times in my life and probably more times than I care to admit, I have been the one doing the interrupting.
Ever since I discovered that someone said January is appreciation month, I have been looking for things to be thankful for. Today, I am learning to appreciate life’s interruptions.
Someone interrupting your thought process is just one way an interruption can occur, but what about life events?
But what are some other ways we might be interrupted. Maybe you become ill and can’t get to work or school? Or, your car breaks down when you are rushing to an appointment. Or maybe still, you are making waffles and the waffle iron won’t come on – interrupting your time to get some breakfast!
Interruptions can make us feel frustrated and impatient.
I remember a day when I was rushing to get to our church. I could not find my keys anywhere. I looked all over the house for them. I looked in my pants pockets and dresser drawers. I was becoming frustrated because I did not want to be late.
They finally turned up in the pants I was wearing in my left pocket. Since my left leg is artificial I could not feel the keys against my skin.
I got in the car and drove off to the church only to get stuck behind an accident. More frustration ensued. And, now I am starting to become impatient.
However, after I passed the wreck, I thought about that accident. It looked as if it happened about 10 minutes prior to my arrival. Almost the exact amount of time it took for me, back at the house, to discover my car keys were in my pocket. If I had found those keys 10 minutes earlier, that might have been me in that accident as well.
In our frustration and impatience many times we do not realize what the interruption might be saving us from?
In Our Daily Bread, on Jan 28th, Julie Ackerman Link wrote, “inconvenience could be God’s way of protecting us from some unseen danger, or it could be an opportunity to demonstrate God’s grace and forgiveness. It might be the start of something even better than we had planned. Or it could be a test to see how we respond to adversity. ”
In the terrorist attack on 911, I lost three friends in the Pentagon. And, in the tragedy of all the lives lost that day, there were many more that were saved, many of them by an inconvenience.
Greer Epstein of Morgan Stanley, who worked in the World Trade Center on the 67th floor, never took breaks. But on 9-11 at 9:00 am a co-worker interrupted her and coaxed her into a smoke break down on outside the building. One of the planes crashed into her office.
A scheduling error interrupted a flight attendant from getting on Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center.
Many others were late going to work at the Pentagon. When asked why they were running late many replied they were interrupted by procrastination!
So, the next time you can’t find your keys, or your car breaks down unexpectedly, or you find yourself sick, think about what the interruption might be keeping you from or the lesson it may be teaching you.
An Excerpt From Goals By Gary Ryan Blair
The odds that you’ll succeed without taking action are about the same as winning the lottery without buying a ticket!
For those times when you feel trapped, stressed, or in a prison of your own making, take purposeful action. It’s your Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.
In real estate, it’s location, location, location. In goal-setting, it’s action, action, action.
You can’t just stick out your thumb and hitchhike your way to success, you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and do the work that needs to be done.
Be seduced by the attractiveness of your goal. Inaction leads to impotence. Taking purposeful action immunizes you from “Goal Parkinson’s,” a long, slow goodbye to your dreams, talents and destiny.
A quality life is accomplished when thoughtful attention, goal setting, and purposeful action click into position. Whether your dream is to be or not to be is largely dependent upon your actions.
The cure for the ills of procrastination is a heavy prescription of action, until the day arrives when your dreams and their achievement are one in the same. When that day arrives, dream bigger dreams and take more action.
A good plan will almost always get you in the door, but it is action that seals the deal. So you want a guarantee? Well here it is: Without purposeful action, the only guarantee is failure and mediocrity!
Don’t tiptoe toward your goal, walk confidently before it waltzes off into the arms of neglect. Dreams become reality through one simple mode of transportation: purposeful action.
The continuation of bad habits, such as procrastination and poor follow through, is like having an addiction to weapons of mass destruction.
It is tragically un-hip to procrastinate. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people never display their true potential; it never has an opening night…never makes a debut.
The bulk of potential resides deep within each individual just waiting to come out, and it stays there because people are afraid. The mechanics of achieving a goal makes it easy for people to relate to the necessity of action. But when action is not purposeful, it can be an Achilles heel.
When we operate without planning, we remain forever scattered and confused. You’re always busy, but not much gets accomplished. Without a deeper appreciation and application of planning the most you can expect is marginal improvement.
Intimidate your fears through purposeful goal-directed activity. Since when is being the underdog any reason for not pursuing your dreams? Remember, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight…it’s the fight in the dog!
Don’t just pursue your goal… inhabit it. Wear it, act it, live it, taste it! Get committed – take action. Life is not a scratch-and-sniff test!
When you set a goal, there’s a distance between your current reality and desired reality. Procrastination increases the distance and minimizes the chances of achievement. Procrastination is the mother of regret. It postpones the future, aborts liftoff at the last minutes.
Unless you take action to achieve your goals, life becomes a constant series of postponements, cancellations, and missed opportunities.
You will never attain your goals simply by thinking and talking about them. You must take action as all success comes down to execution.
– An excerpt from Goals by Gary Ryan Blair
Lessons from the Overhead Bin
After I lost my leg I swam for phyiscal therapy. After 18 months I fluked up and made the Paralympic swim team in 1996 and found myself immersed in a world of disability that I never knew existed.
Atlanta, Georgia was where both the Olympic and Paralympic games would take place with the latter taking place just two weeks after the former. I did not know what to expect at the Paralympic games because for most of my life I had tried to make the Olympic Team. So, I began to learn as much as I could about these games.
I discovered that the Paralympic games derived there name from the word “parallel” and not “paraplegic” like I initially thought and are for people with physical disabilities and visual impairments and not for person with cognitive disabilities like the Special Olympics. They are also the second largest sporting event in the world behind the Olympics.
A series of test events were taking place in Atlanta to ensure that all the sport systems were ready to go for the games.
I remember going to one of these test events very vividly. Well, it was not the event that I remember but rather the incident prior to us getting to the event. The incident blew my mind and changed the way I saw my new world of disability.
About 50 of my new teammates who had made the Paralympic Team and who were members of the track and field team, the wheelchair basketball team and the swim team were at the gate waiting area at Dulles International airport. We were waiting for the flight to board to Atlanta.
As I sat there I took a long hard look at the people (my teammates) who were around me. I looked at my new teammates. All of them had something that society thought, and I for that matter, was wrong with them. They were all “disabled.”
I thought to myself was I really now part of this group? “I mean really, I am a four time all-American; I have twice been to the Olympic trials; I was the fastest hurdler in the Army and ranked as high as 9th in the country. I am not handicapped, I am not crippled. I am not disabled. No, I’m normal. I don’t belong with this team!
Yet, here I was.
I was coming face to face with a prejudice that I never even knew existed in me. I was beginning to feel ashamed of being identified with this population of “special” people. I found myself tolerating my teammates and not appreciating them.
As I struggled with these thoughts I knew that my teammates did not want to be tolerated they wanted to be appreciated and accepted for who they were on their own merits.
As I was lost in my thoughts I heard the gate agent make the boarding announcement. She said, “Will all the people that have a physical disability or need extra time and assistance to walk down the jet bridge please get up and board the aircraft at this time?”
So 50 of us got up and began to walk down this jet bridge!
I’m no dummy and I quickly realized that this was a “perk.”
I took my seat around the 14th row. When I was settled, I looked up and noticed that one of the Wheelchair basketball players was coming on the plane. He stood about 6’6″. Not so unique you might think. But in this case he was a bilateral amputee. The great thing about being a bilateral amputee is you can be 6’6″ but when you take your artificial legs off, which he did, you can also be 4’3″.
As he took his seat at the 7th row his teammates helped place his artificial legs in the overhead bin!
I had never seen anything like this before! But I get it….more leg room.
The flight attendant asked him if he was ok. To which he replied in the affirmative. She turned her back to him and went back to the front of the cabin to greet all the AB’s (abled-bodied) people, on the plane.
When her back was turned, his teammates quickly grabbed him (since he was now 4 feet 3 inches tall) and placed him in the overhead bin right next to his legs!
I was blown away!
Then his teammates closed the bin door!
So now I’m very intrigued about what’s going to happen next.
The passengers were now boarding the flight. Some frequent flyers were filing past the 7th row to take their seats while other were placing their bags in first class bins. I focused my attention on one man who looked very important because he was on his cell phone and had an oversized (won’t fit under the seat in front of you) briefcase with him and he stopped at the 7th row!
I am on pins and needles about what’s going to take place, and the rest of my teammates are quite as church mice! They are acting like they have done this 1000 times before.
The unsuspecting man reaches up for the latch to open the bin door. He quickly pulls the latch open and the egg shell white door swings up toward the ceiling of the cabin.
When the door opens up the basketball player pops out and quickly flies’ down to his seat! That man was so startled he jumped from the 7th row back to the 14th row where I was sitting! All of his papers from his briefcase were all over the plane!
I told him, “Man, your seat’s up there with that guy!”
I laughed just as hard as any of my other teammates. It was then that I realized that people with disabilities are just like anyone else. And, the one with the disability was me because I was the one not thinking about my new group with dignity and respect. I was not thinking about their capabilities. I was the one holding myself back by my ignorance.
That day I was inspired. That inspiration caused action in my life.
And at the end of the day, that is what everyone wants.
So here’s to changing our perspective and looking at life with a different lens. Do more than tolerate respect and appreciate others!
Proper Introductions John Register, Inspirational Catalyst
Hello fellow bloggers. I don’t even know if that is a proper greeting for this first time blog. My name is John Register and I am a newbie to blogging. However, I took it up because a good friend of mine, well I hope him to be a good friend of mine, told me that I should share some of my experiences as well as my viewpoints and positive outlooks on life’s challenges with more than just a few friends. After much deliberation I decided that he was right and that I would now write.
The focus of my blogs will be mostly on finding the inspiration and motivational in the moments in life that are challenges to us. I believe that there is something to be said and learned from on the topic of inspiration.
I used to shrug this term, “Inspiration,” off. It always felt cheesy. I mean after all I know the real me and the person who they think I am, may not be the person that I think I am. Yet, all the time, after each one of my keynote presentations someone will come up to me and tell me that my presentation was such an inspiration.
Other will write me months later and tell me how what I said caused them to change their direction in life. That is some serious weight.
It took me a while to understand that just because I walk out the door wearing shorts, someone is inspired. Someones life is changed.
The amazing thing is that this is not just true of me, it is true of each one of us! When you walk out of your door each morning you have the opportunity to inspire someone. You have a opporutnity to truly positively impact someones life!
Well before I go too far down the inspirational road I had better tell you a little something about myself.
I am a two-time and two sport Paralympic Athlete who was once a United States Olympic hopeful in the 400m hurdles. I still remain, unless someone tells me otherwise, a 4x All American and graduate of the University of Arkansas. Go Hogs!! (Ooo – Pig – Sooie)
I was also a soldier for 6 years and served in the United States Army. I saw combat in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Well, there was not much combat in that War. I came out of the war without a scratch to my body. My mind on the other hand was messed up for about 7 months according to my wife of now 23 years.
So, how does an All-American athlete, Army Veteran, two-time Olympic Trials candidate become a Paralympian (athlete with a physical disability); well simple, I lost my left leg in a track and field accident. Kind-of crazy huh? That story will be another blog I’m sure.
From the loss of my leg to the point of winning the silver medal at the Paralympic Games in Sydney Australia I found out that life continues to happen! And, we all have a choice as to whether we are going to fully engage in it or sit on the sidelines. I choose (we all have a choice) to engage and to help others engage.
So, I hope I have perked your interest enough to come back and visit my second blog. Which probably will be entitled, “Inspirational Lessons from an Airplane Overhead Bin.”
Stay tuned and see you soon!