Gratefulness Part Two...how saying "Thank You" introduced me to Zig Ziglar

I wrote several months ago about how my period of homelessness helped me be grateful for everything. And I mean everything. For the most part, there is little in my life that gets me down for very long, at least where possessions or my situation are concerned. I have a small townhome that I rent. I used to own a beautiful little ranch house on five acres in Tennessee but that was gone after the collapse of the mortgage industry. I miss that house, sometimes to the point that I shed tears. It was my home.

But I also spent almost six years living in my car after that collapse. I was in my mid- forties. I could not find work and I could not leave Nashville, where I lived, because my daughter needed me.

When you’ve had nothing, truly nothing, you appreciate everything. Zig Ziglar used to say, “If you aren’t thankful for what you have, it won’t be long before you find you have nothing to be thankful for.”

Speaking of Zig…

He’s the real reason I’m writing this today.

In 2011 I was three years into my terrible ordeal. I was travelling back and forth to Houston, for job training. I had reluctantly decided –momentarily anyway- to leave town and pursue a job. (I did not stay there…my daughter’s world continued to crumble and she needed her daddy to at least be in the same town she was in.) Two years before, in 2009, a friend of mine had given me Zig’s classic three-box set pictured here.

                                                            

                                                                         

She knew I needed what was in there, but I was in no mood for motivational speakers. While I had certainly heard of Zig, I had never heard him speak, and I assumed he was just another guy who repelled down from the ceiling, and used a lot of words that rhymed with “achieve.”

So the cassette tapes (remember those?) sat in my storage locker for three years until May of 2011. I was packing for the fourteen hour drive to Houston and decided I would give them a listen. “Nothing seems to be working,” I thought, “I might as well see what Zig has to say.”

It changed my life.

Not thirty minutes outside of Nashville, I had to steer my truck onto the shoulder of the road. I was in tears and it wasn’t safe to drive. Zig had just offered one of the phrases he was so known for; “Failure is an event…not a person.” I could not help but cry. By this time I had been homeless for three years. I lost my home, my career, my sense of pride and my fatherhood. (My wife and I had divorced many years before and she had remarried so at least my daughter had a place to live, but I couldn’t see her overnight anymore) I was a shattered man and worse…I wondered if there was ever going to be a brighter day again. I had begun to lose hope that the future would bring change and I was seeing myself as a failure. Not as a good, hardworking man who had failed…as a failure.

I listened intently the rest of that drive to Houston. In fact I was almost through it for the second time when I arrived in the dirty little Thirty-eight-dollars-a-day efficiency motel. It was everything you’d expect for the price. The first night I was there, there were a dozen crickets in the room, chirping loudly and keeping me awake. I managed to find them all and, umm, “get rid of them” but the next night, more arrived in their place. What astounded me was I was in a second floor room. How another dozen crickets managed to hop up two flights of steps and get into my room was beyond me. It felt biblical in its plague-ish nature.

But that hardly mattered to me. I was busy in job training and in every spare moment I would listen to Zig in the tape player in my weathered old GMC Yukon.

My outlook changed almost overnight. I wrote down the affirmation statement, modified it a little to fit my situation and my goals, and started saying it out loud to my reflection in the mirror, twice a day.

My attitude changed. I had hope within just a day or two. I was so thankful for those tapes and for the kindness of my friend Teresa who knew I was going to need them and gave them to me.

I was so grateful in fact that I took a chance. I wanted Zig to know my story, and to know how much he’d helped me. Literally, saving my life. I was so desperate at that time that maybe one more defeat would have been my breaking point. It was Memorial Day weekend 2011. I woke on Saturday morning, found Ziglar.com, and wrote an email to Zig, telling him where I was and what my world was like at the time. I told him how I’d come to get those tapes and how they’d changed my life during that long drive to Texas.

I had no idea if he would ever see my email. I figured I’d just get some computer generated auto-response.

But I felt great about letting somebody there know about my situation and how they’d helped me. I said a heart-felt “Thank you!” to whomever would read the email and I went on about my business.

That was Saturday. Monday was Memorial Day and I spent it watching TV in the motel room, and studying my college classes. (I was finishing my Bachelor’s degree through my alma mater’s online program at the time) Tuesday morning, I left for my training in downtown Houston and went about my day. During our first break in the morning, probably around ten, I checked email on my phone and to my amazement I had no less than four emails from folks at Ziglar Corp. The first was from Laurie Magers, Zig’s assistant, who assured me that she would make certain he read the email and thanking me for writing to them. She told me she would let everyone else know, and they would all be praying for me.

About an hour after that, I received a wonderful email from Bryan Flanagan, who told me he was praying for me, reminding me I was not a failure, and telling me “You are one of our family now…you can do this.” Funny enough, I believed him. I could tell he meant it. And he did.

About thirty minutes after that, I received a wonderful message from Julie Ziglar Norman, Zig’s daughter. Julie was so kind and told me she had called her dad and told him my story. He was excited, she told me, and he was so glad I let them all know about the tapes and how they’d helped me.

Julie emailed me again about an hour later. “Dad would love to meet you,” she said, “If you’re ever in Dallas, let us know.”

Are you kidding?

I emailed her back and said, “I can be in Dallas tomorrow if you want!” Julie responded back –laughing no doubt- and said “Let me check dad’s schedule and we’ll arrange it.”

We settled on July 7^th. And so, on July 6, 2011, I set out from Nashville TN in my beaten and worn 1996 GMC Yukon, and arrived at my hotel in Dallas. The next day I drove to Ziglar Corp offices in Plano and I met the man who literally helped to save my life in the midst of the worst, darkest time I’d endured.

I was so honored. Zig walked me around the office and introduced me to everyone there. We stopped at his wall of gratitude and he recounted every name on that wall and told me every story behind each face. How they’d touched his life, and how they helped him and what he learned from them.

                                                                             

                           

Then we went to lunch at his favorite Chinese restaurant which I believe was called “Yao Fuzi.” I sat there, not talking much, just soaking in every word this wonderful, incredible man had to offer. His conversation was punctuated with some of the things he was always known to say, mostly that he adored his beloved wife “The Red Head” and “If she ever leaves me…I’m going with her!”

I laughed and I smiled for a very long time. I felt like I was with family. I knew, without a doubt, these folks cared. I had hope.

I took hope with me from that meeting and started snowballing it as best I could. It took another year for me to graduate. It took three years from that lunch meeting to even find a job and a home again. But I had hope.

I had hope because I was sitting at lunch with a master of hopefulness. I had this because I took the time to say “Thank you.” Even though I thought for sure he’d never get the message.

There is something more to this story. Something about the way we can pass hope along to someone whose “hope account” is in deficit. There’s another component to the story.

Those three cassette box sets are dear to me. Dear because they changed my life. Dear because they started me on the road back to hope and happiness. And special because they became the foundation upon which the second –and I say the best- half of my life has been built.

And they are special because they came from Zig himself.

The story is this: My friend Teresa, who gave them to me, is a successful hair stylist in Nashville. Naomi Judd was one of her customers. Teresa’s husband passed away in the 1990’s at a young age. About a year after he passed, Naomi was going out on an extended book / speaking tour. She asked Teresa if she would go along as her stylist / assistant. I think Naomi instinctively knew Teresa needed to get away for a while. Her grief had been heavy, as you could imagine.

Naomi agreed to pay her a sum of money that made it impossible to say No, and so Teresa shut down her business and went on the road.

They were in Tampa, Florida speaking at a large motivational speaker’s summit and Zig happened to be on the bill.

One morning, Teresa rose early, as is her habit, and went down to breakfast alone. She was sitting by herself, away from others, grieving her beloved husband deeply. She’d been there a long while, not noticing anyone or anything going on around her. She was interrupted by a kindly man, who said;

“You look like you need a friend.”

It was Zig.

Teresa opened up about her loss and her missing her husband. Zig empathized with her. This was not many years after losing one of his own daughter’s lung disease. They talked, he got her to smile, and then he handed her three box sets of cassettes.

The very ones she gave to me some ten years later.

I will never part with those cassettes. They barely work anymore. They squeal when you get near the end of the tape. I’ve had to repair one or two already. I have memorized every word on them, and still they are dear to me. They feel like a tiny bit of Zig is in there with the eighteen cassettes the boxes hold.

They gave me hope. Zig himself had given them in hope to someone who passed the gift along.

I wouldn’t take a million dollars for them.

Hope is a priceless commodity. Hope makes a homeless man decide not to quit. Hope makes a lonely woman smile even though her heart is broken. Hope was behind every word spoken by the wonderful Zig Ziglar.

Hope is what people hear on my voice mail at work. (They will literally call my desk to hear my message) Hope is what people love about my often-funny answer when they see me in the hallway and ask “How you doin’?”

Hope is what they feel when I stop and ask them how they are doing and wait to hear their answer.

Hope is costless and priceless.

Thankfulness is a key that unlocks a world of hope and a universe of friendships. Thankfulness like what I expressed from that small, cricket-inhabited, noisy, cheap efficiency in Houston, over Memorial Day weekend 2011, when I said a simple “Thank You,” and got –in return- a friend in Zig Ziglar and his entire family and staff.

Tell someone “Thank you” today. Give them some hope.

Whatever it is they do in this world, they will do it better and with a smile on their face.

Believe me, I know.

                                                                  High Hopes!

                                                                        Craig  

                                                                                       

No excuses...just keep trying. How my grandmother taught me about perseverance.

My maternal grandmother was an amazing woman. She was born in Northeast Philadelphia in 1901. Her parents had immigrated here, and she was their eldest child. For whatever reason –whether their Old World traditions or just the necessity of another set of hands to help in the kitchen- she never attended school beyond the third grade.

This bothered her terribly and she saw herself as not much more than illiterate for a large portion of her life. She married and had two children. She never learned to drive, never ventured anywhere that my grandfather couldn’t take her…when he was sober enough to drive.

She possessed one of the most beautiful singing voices I have ever heard. It was angelic. It was sweet, clear and perfect in pitch. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of music and could sing songs of virtually any style or genre.

Her life was limited. She didn’t accomplish a lot as you and I might view it. To me she was a saint. She kept me alive when I was a little boy and my unmarried mother was working and still trying to have something of the social life that nineteen year old young women have.

Her lack of reading skills and vocabulary bothered her greatly and finally one day she decided to do something about it. Long before I was born…sometime after WWII, she bought herself a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. It was almost 3 inches thick. It had a hard cover and print as tiny as the font in a phone book. She kept it on a table next to the chair in the little window-box that bumped out from the dining room. It was her favorite place to sit and read. She had a table radio, tuned to the local Christian radio station sitting on a doily on that same table.

Sometime in the late 40’s she decided that the only way she could address the lack of a vocabulary was to read the dictionary. So she did. The whole thing. Cover to cover.

She wrote down any word she didn’t know and memorized the word and the definition.

As with anyone with natural intelligence, once she finished the dictionary, she thirsted for more. In 1953, at a time when encyclopedia salesmen still sold their products door-to-door, (In a time when we actually used an encyclopedia) she saw another opportunity. She couldn’t get to the library because she couldn’t drive. But this man showed up at the door one day, selling what, to her, was a ticket to a world of knowledge she might never have entered. She bought the entire set.

It came in several boxes, along with a very modern-looking glass bookcase. My grandmother dove into volume one, page one of the Funk and Wagnall’s New World Encyclopedia. It took her over two years, during which she raised two children, took care of her ailing elderly mother who had moved in with her, took in laundry and ironing to make up for the money that an alcoholic husband was losing at the bar, and did her best to keep the lights lit and belly’s full. She read every volume. Every word of every article about topics that she had never heard of before.

I can’t imagine what that must have felt like. Her world had seemed so small until that point. Not much existed beyond the distance she could walk from her house on the outskirts of Philadelphia, or the odd occasion when my grandfather would drive her. Suddenly that world expanded into the infinite.  The encyclopedia expanded her mind and her imagination. Her vocabulary exploded to the point that, by the time I was born in 1963 I would venture a guess that she had a Master’s level education. She was a fountain of knowledge. She remembered everything she read. Her mind drank it in like a sponge and stored it like a bank vault. I don’t remember the woman who only had a third grade education and the vocabulary to match. I only knew the woman who would dazzle me with her lexicon when we played Scrabble for hours at the dining room table. She’d come up with a “Twenty Point word” and I would challenge her “Mom-mom…that’s not a word!” and she would break out that trusty Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and show me the word and make me read it to her and remember the definition. She was a champion at Scrabble and at crossword puzzles as well. It was her only outlet for the vast knowledge she’d gained.

I marvel at this still. She read an entire encyclopedia.

That’s 32 volumes, each over 500 pages. Because it’s all she could do.

Well it’s not really all she could have done. She could have decided it was just her lot in life. She could have decided that there just wasn’t any opportunity for a woman in her time. That it took money and certain social standing to get an education. That this life was all she had and so why try to improve it? She could have descended into bitterness and hopelessness, and the shame and embarrassment of illiteracy. She could have reacted to the situation of her life. Instead she responded.

She saw what was available. What she could do. And then she did it.

I have no doubt it saved her life. And years later, it saved mine.

In 2009, after the first year of homelessness, (almost four more would follow) I decided that the only hope I had to improve my situation was to finish my degree. So I enrolled at my alma mater, in their distance learning program and I set about fixing my life.

I studied at the library. I studied at the local Panera restaurant because they had free wifi. I studied at the Fed-Ex office because they were open 24 hours. I studied by flashlight in the torn-up front seat of that 1995 Volvo 850, where I also slept. My studies were the only good thing I had going on in my life at the time. The only measurable success I had at a dark, difficult time. Each semester I could look at my final grades and see progress toward a goal that was literally giving me a reason to go on.

In May of 2012, I completed my bachelor’s degree and walked with my class. I was still homeless, but for the first time in four years I had succeeded at something.

Four years further on and I am working at that same alma mater, where my daughter is now a freshman. I have just a little more invested in my job here than most, because of what this place provided for me when my life was so bad.

I did what I could do to improve myself. I could have resorted to section 8 housing, foodstamps, and a lifetime of entitlements. Instead I played on the one string that was still holding a tune.

I gained more than an education…much more. I gained resilience, strength, vision. I gained the ability to tell my daughter that when the going gets tough, you put your head down, tighten your grip and try harder. I cried. I shivered in the cold. I thought, at times, that it wasn’t worth it or that it wouldn’t make any difference. But I never gave in to the urge to quit.

I can look back on that difficult walk with pride and self-respect. I did it when the world said I could not.

We see evidence everywhere that this generation demands people to cater to them. To give them “safe spaces” and tolerance and diversity mandates and quotas. What they need is grit. What they need is to tighten those laces, wipe the sweat from their brow, and spit in the eye of whatever is resisting their success and say “I don’t care who you are or what you say or how you try to stop me…I will not quit!”

Instead they want us to pass laws to make the world treat them with kid gloves. They have no stories like mine or my grandmother’s to draw from when the world comes to kick their butt –and it will. They have no archetype of success in the midst of failure from which to build their plan for rebuilding.

This world is hard and tough. It’s tougher if you aren’t tough on yourself. Victory that comes easy is not really a victory. When things get you down and the world has dealt you a crappy hand, play it anyway!

Buy yourself a set of encyclopedias, turn your car into a study hall, and kick those obstacles in the teeth!

Perseverance will take you anywhere…quitting leaves you right where you are.

                                          High Hopes!

                                              Craig

                                                   

Handwritten notes, building friendships, and the death of humanity in the workplace. (And in our lives)

                                                                            

Are we all little islands now? Little pockets of isolation, connected only by 140 characters or a ‘like” button?

We’ve met thousands of people on social media, and we don’t know any of them.

Not really.

When I was a kid, I knew which steps creaked in Tommy Riccio’s house, which of our moms made the best spaghetti sauce, and which dads told the funniest jokes.

Now…I couldn’t tell you five interesting things about more than maybe six or eight people on my Facebook friends list. Twitter, even less.

We’re desperately wanting to connect and all we have at our disposal is perhaps the loneliest, shallowest means of communication ever invented.

Remember when we wrote real letters, and sent them in real envelopes and the person would read them again and again because it was special to get a letter?

Now we “ping” “bing” “Tweet” “pin” and a host of other stupid trendy terms that took the place of connection. I recently saw this first hand. Without going into details, I watched as a guy was hired for a position because he had a certain skill set. The odd thing was, there was a guy with the same skill set, but with about ten more years’ experience and even greater success history right there in the department. The guy was never even asked. The bosses never even glanced at his resume after he was hired. If they had, they would have discovered that they had a multiple award winner already on their payroll. A simple conversation would have revealed that not only was he eager to impart that wisdom…he would have done so for nothing, simply because he loves that sort of coaching. Instead, they hired an outsider because they overlooked the resource they already had. Why? Perhaps because nobody gets to know each other anymore?

I have a customer base at my job as a BRM in the It department at Liberty University.

I have probably a dozen key contacts in those various departments. Just sitting here thinking, I bet I could come up with something for almost every one of them. Something that goes beyond my business connection and shows that I know them as people.

This one loves Christian music. This one loves Christmas. That one loves to talk about his family. This one loves personal development books. I know them. I remember one incident after I had only been on the job about six months. I made the statement that one certain customer, “never asks for much, but what he does ask for, he really wants.” My boss looked at me in amazement. I had come to understand that very quickly. My assessment of this guy was absolutely correct and my boss was impressed that I picked up on it so soon.

People work for a paycheck, but they perform for something much more.

They perform for pride, for the sense of doing a great job, for the satisfaction of turning out the lights at the end of a day and feeling like there wasn’t anything they could have done better. They want to feel like they are being used to the best of their ability. They also want to feel like they are seen. Like they are noticed and viewed as a resource and a valuable asset…not just a position filled. The guy with the wonderful set of skills that went unnoticed and ultimately got overlooked as a provider for the training they were seeking, got over it eventually. But it did something inside his heart. He went away feeling like he didn’t really have any value. Not really. He does a great job, but his bosses don’t know the first thing about him and that’s a shame. He’s an amazing guy with a ton of insight. I get a lot from him when we speak. He’s a big boy and he got over it, but I might always wonder how he would have flourished had his bosses even gotten to know him enough to get his input on the topic, much less hired someone else.

This all comes back to connection. There are managers who think that it weakens their position to make a connection with their people in anything beyond a surface, nondescript manner. Then there are those who draw the best out of their people because they took the time to get to know them well enough to see the best within them.

We need to connect. We need handshakes and smiles and eye contact. We need this from the top down. We need to rid ourselves of the habit of thinking and feeling in 140 characters. Of speaking for the sake of an invisible like button. We need to stop looking at the man in the mirror and seeing only a selfie.

We can’t build a department or a company where everyone is on the same page, with the same goal if we are a company made up of little isolated islands. Once a year team-building isn’t the answer either…it’s creating a culture of team and family. It’s setting aside 30 minutes each day to review a few employee files and remember some birthdays, and ask about some kids. It’s knowing your people, and your coworkers well enough to know what other skills they have that haven’t even been explored yet.

It’s breaking free from this virtual reality lifestyle we have and getting back to humanity.

This keeps tanks full, faces smiling, and personal growth exploding.

And people feeling like humans again. I'm trying this more and more each day in my job. I try to really know my customer base, build trust based on genuine care, concern, and a desire to see them reach their goals on our campus. This endears them to my heart and makes them more than their title says they are. Business practice might shun the idea, but I find it vital, and my customers truly love being seen, noticed, and cared for. They know, even if I can't give them exactly what they are asking for, that I want them to succeed. They know this because they know I care for them as people first. 
This is the only way to do customer service. 


                                                               High Hopes!

                                                                     Craig

                                                                        

Training the CULTURE in your workplace. Why personal development matters as much as professional development.

                                                                          

Corporations spend billions each year training their people to do the job they were hired to do. This is obviously necessary, but are they missing the biggest point? With such a heavy focus on job training and process training, are we missing culture training? We all know how "one bad apple" can spoil the whole basket, and the same is true in a company. Has professional development taken too high a place at the expense of personal development?

We place so much emphasis on the "almighty process" that we practically give permission for some employees to perform with a bad attitude. In that case, (in my mind) no matter how good at the task the employee is, he is doing his job poorly. It was true in my ten years in mortgage banking. The processors and underwriters, who were tough, sharp, sticklers for regulations, and methodical but who had the great "I want to help you make this work" attitude were always the most productive and closed the highest volume. The L.O. who behaved like a prima donna because he had a good month last month, but turned in incomplete files, was rude to his customers, and bad with his follow-up never seemed to get referral business, and often jumped from one company to the next. He was mercurial in his production. But the guy who did his job thoroughly, and who made good friends from his customers, regardless of their credit score or the size of the home they were buying...that guy went far in the business.

In IT it is similar. It is a tech driven world we live in and more and more the IT providers out there -whether in house or outsourced- know how vital they, and the service they provide, are to the end user. They may never say it, but they communicate "Oh yeah...imagine your life if I don't fix this for you, or develop this webpage, or upload this patch..." every time they are contacted. Everyone from a CSR to an engineer can relay the same message if they aren't trained on culture.  

What is the culture of customer service in your company? Most employees from upper management down to the maintenance staff can recite the corporate mission statement. Most of them know the "roles and goals." But can they define the proper culture of the business? Can you? Have you spent countless hours training and emphasizing and reinforcing the "steps to the process" and the mission statement  but never defined how you want the culture of your company to look? Have you clearly outlined the 1 year, 5 year 10 year goals etc, and ignored the basics of "I want my people known for treating a customer like this..."  Have you considered culture training? Should you?

One example in closing. I have Sprint wireless service. I have had them for 5 years. when I moved to Lynchburg, I switched to Verizon briefly (leaving my Sprint account open because it was only one month from end of contract) because Sprint did not have LTE service here at the time. The Verizon experience was the most horrible example of customer service I have ever seen. They were terrible. They were deceptive and shady and when I called to ask for help they were arrogant and rude. You know what I did? I went back to Sprint! Would you like to know why? Because Sprint's culture of customer service was OUTSTANDING! I have never...not once since starting with them in May 2011, had a bad experience with them, either on the phone or in a store. They are kind, they are patient, they are polite, they LISTEN, they don't tell me I'm not having a problem when I called because I AM! I went back to them -even though I knew I was getting slower service- because I want to be treated decently. Not special treatment, not royal treatment...just decent treatment.  They got LTE service here about two months ago so in the end I won. But even without it, I was happier where I was being respected and treated kindly. 

Verizon's system was better. Their beloved, "almighty process" was faster and bigger. But they were gigantic jerks and I'd rather have slow data speeds with a kind, helpful support staff. That's life. We do business with those we like. I had a boss once who said "You make friends out of your customers, not customers from your friends." and he was right. Management MUST emphasize culture as much or more than they do mission. The number one goal must be delivering GREAT customer service, regardless of the outcome of the process. Some things can't be fixed. Some software just won't work with your network. Some borrowers just weren't going to qualify for that loan. But the biggest question that needs to be answered is "Would you do business with them again and would you want your family doing business with them?" and if it's not answered positively...your process sucks and you are Verizon. 

Get that bat off your shoulder!

You hear it a million times, the admonition not to quit.  

“If you quit, you’ll have gone as far as you can go, but if you don’t quit, you never know what might happen.”

Doc Falwell used to always tell us: “A man is not measured by what it takes to knock him down, but by what it takes to keep him down.”

I’ve never been a quitter, this much is for certain. I refused to quit on my daughter even though it meant living in my car for several years. I refused to quit on finishing my degree even though I completed it during those homeless years and studying was infinitely more difficult because of my situation.

I refused to quit on my dreams of being a writer, and I have written five books now with three more in various stages of completion. My daughter is a college freshman and that is an expensive undertaking, even with her tuition paid as part of my job. There are still books to buy and fees and clothes and shoes and next fall she’ll move on campus and there will be room and board that I have to pay. So I push myself and have a side business doing carpentry in just about every available free moment

I’m not complaining. In fact…I’m enormously thankful for the skill I have that lets me earn a lot more than if I was delivering pizza or stocking shelves. I am thankful for the huge tuition check that I don’t have to write each year.

Quitting has never really been in my DNA.

I only ever really quit on myself once. One summer, when I was 13, I was cut by the baseball team I had tried out for. I grew up a pretty good ball player and that was the only year in my life that I was ever cut.

I sat out that long, miserable summer and missed the game terribly. I missed my team mates. I missed the uniforms and the way the glove felt. I missed crouching behind the plate and calling the game.

For the first time in my entire life, I wasn’t good enough and it broke my heart. It also shattered my confidence.

The following summer I was drafted by a different team and I made the cut. I was the same guy on the outside but inside I was broken and frightened. I lived in the horrible shadow of that one baseball -free summer and the thought of ever being cut again haunted me so badly that I did the unthinkable…I lost confidence and froze.

I had been a feared hitter, capable of hitting for average as well as power. I hit prodigious home runs only two years before, but that one summer off after getting cut, tore my brimming confidence from my soul. I spent two seasons, playing for “Lafayette Radio” and Coach Russ Staats, and never swung my bat even once.

Somewhere in my mind I had reasoned that if I didn’t fail I wouldn’t get cut and if I  never struck out, then I would never fail.

So I never tried.

In the middle of that second season of standing like a statue at home plate, game after game, Coach Staats must have figured out what was going on. Before one particular at-bat, he grabbed me, put a hand on each shoulder, looked me in the eye and said in exasperation: “Swing the damned bat!”

But I couldn’t.

I finished my “Senior League” eligibility without even having garnered a batting average. I went 0-for-two-summers. I was afraid of failing, and I quit.

The next year, I didn’t play any baseball except for pickup games at school. And a funny thing happened. I got my groove back.

Without anyone depending on my talent, or keeping score, I discovered my ability to hit a baseball again. The next year, in twelfth grade, my small private school started a baseball team. We drew from all over the area and so we had a ton of talent. I was the starting catcher and a devastating hitter. I batted .280 with multiple HR’s, lead the team in RBI’s and hits with runners in scoring position. I found my power too, hitting several tape-measure bombs. Once I realized that I still could hit the ball, I lost the fear of failure. Once I lost the fear of failure, I could not possibly quit. I enjoyed the best final season of all the baseball I played in my youth.

I drew a lot of lessons from that part of my life. I’ve seen a lot of good friends walk through life with that bat stuck to their shoulder because they were afraid to strike out. Nobody told them it was okay to fail, but it was never okay to fail to try.  

It is never, ever okay to quit.

I know it was hard studying by flashlight in my car. But I feel an attachment to, and a sense of accomplishment from my education that maybe I would not have otherwise.

I know sleeping in my car and feeling shame and embarrassment was painful. But my daughter saw how much her daddy loved her and how devoted he was to simply being her dad.

I know working 80-90 hours a week sometimes is tough, but it makes every small financial victory that much sweeter. If I had quit on any of these things, who knows if I would ever have recovered my confidence?

I was driving in the middle of a fourteen hour road trip, about five years ago. I had just started listening to Zig Zigler’s wonderful “Qualities of Success” seminar, and Zig made a statement for which he had become quite famous. He said “Failure is an event…not a person.”

I had to steer my truck onto the shoulder of the road, because the tears were making it hard to see.

I was homeless. I was broken. I had lost my home, my career, most of the time I could spend with my precious little girl, even our two dogs were gone. I was doubting God and losing hope. I felt like a failure. I was ready to quit. Zig’s kind, encouraging, fatherly declaration that I was not what I thought I was, literally saved my life. I began the long road back.

I have won many hard-fought victories, these last seven years. Had I quit, I never would have won any of them. I’d be stuck someplace, with that bat still riveted to my shoulder, afraid of the pain of being cut, and fearing failure so bad that I stopped trying.

Wherever you are in life right now, this does not have to be the final stop. If you are doing well…think of how much better tomorrow is going to be! If you have failed, remember…you are not a failure. You merely failed at something.

Your best is just around the bend. You haven’t peaked yet.

The one and only way to become a quitter is to quit. So never quit.

When people speak of you, let it be with a hint of awe for all the things you chose to endure in order to be the winner you were put here to be. Live lessons of endurance, integrity, and determination for your kids and grand kids and coworkers and friends to learn from. Be a walking example of never giving up. Encourage someone else, and in that, you will find the encouragement that you need to complete the day’s tasks.

Get that bat off your shoulder, and swing for those fences.

And never ever quit!

                                                             High Hopes!

                                                                            Craig

                                      

Losing our humanity in a tech-driven world.

I came across this and it hit home.

There were a lot of times in my journey as a homeless man that I questioned the value of my life. I never got to the point that I thought I'd take my own life, but I certainly lost hope more than once.

What I missed the most...other than my daughter...was just the contact with other people. The interaction with other human beings that reminded me that I was a human being.

This article, and this story, reminds me of those days. Technology has given us the ability to send mail immediately, respond to that mail in seconds, research facts, download coupons, and remind ourselves when our kids' birthday is. 

But none of that can replace a hand on a shoulder, or a handwritten note that arrives at just the right time. Emails and Tweets and pins and likes on Facebook can't replace a conversation and a cup of coffee. (Regular coffee...not some $6 Frappalattecino) Staring at a monitor is not the same as looking someone in the eye. 

This reminds us that humans still need humanity. We need connection and interaction. Read this, and then do something with the way it makes you feel.

Student Buys Homeless man a cup of coffee...click link to read

High Hopes!

Craig

                                                                       

How Homelessness taught me Gratefulness...(a lesson for everyone)

                                             

                 "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 

Maybe the most important attitude for anyone to have, to teach our kids, to be known for…is gratitude. But it’s such a hard attitude to develop. It’s so hard to be truly grateful in our Western culture where we have so darned much. How can we be truly grateful for our food when we seldom ever suffer real hunger? How can we be grateful for health when the finest healthcare in the world is available to us and most of us would say we have been essentially healthy most of our lives? How many of us have ever been truly grateful for having a home and a bed and a safe haven from the pressures of the world?

Sadly, perhaps the only way to ever truly appreciate these things is to lose them all, or never have them in the first place.

I went through an extended period where I would not say “Grace” before meals because I had come to realize that I was only going through the motions and was not really thankful for my “Daily Bread.”

Homelessness changed all that.

What is a home? Is it four walls and a roof? Is it a designer address in a pricey neighborhood where just your zip code will get you into clubs and restaurants that wouldn’t admit you otherwise? Is it a cabin in the woods?

For me, home was my five acres in the country. I have owned two homes in my lifetime, both while I was living in TN. My first house was special because it was my first house. It was nice, but certainly not my “dream home.”

My second home was everything I’d ever wanted. A 2500 square foot ranch house on five pastoral acres. I had a detached garage where I could build furniture and work on my cars. I could plant a garden. Our two beautiful Springer Spaniels could frolic in the yard. On winter nights I would stand under the stars at midnight and peer into the Milky Way and pray and feel as if God were looking down. In the summers, the grass was alive with lightning bugs and my daughter and I would capture them in glass jars to serve as a nightlight in her bedroom.

No matter how bad my day, how much pressure I felt at my office, how good or bad things were at the moment, when I turned that key and shut the door behind me, the world was kept at bay, outside of those four safe walls. The sound of the latch reverberated with security and sanctuary. I had my chair and my glass for tea. My coffee mug in the morning, the sheets on my bed smelled of fresh air and sunshine.

There was pride in owning my own place. I was an adult now. A homeowner. I was a dad and I was providing my daughter with a wonderful place to explore and discover and contemplate.

And then it was gone…

Even as I typed that last line a lump formed in my throat. I miss my home. I miss those two beautiful Springer Spaniels and that garden and those long, cold walks with God beneath the canopy of a million stars.

I lost that house on January 27, 2008. It seems like a lifetime ago and perhaps it was.

The years that followed were the most heartbreaking, frustrating, painful years I’ve known. The first two years I was homeless, I slept in a 1995 Volvo 850. I am 6’ 4” and that is a small car. I hid it in tall overgrowth so nobody would see me. When you have a home, you are welcome. When you’re homeless, you are a trespasser. When you have a home, you have comfort, safety, security, warmth or cool, food, clean clothes, a bathroom. You have your favorite chair and your favorite coffee mug and you can sit on your porch on cool spring evenings and watch the stars come out.

A homeless person has none of that.

It was 5 ½ years before I’d have a home again. I have a two bedroom townhome that I rent here in Lynchburg. It is small, cramped, devoid of all but the most essential furniture for my daughter and myself. I rent, I do not own it. But it is home. I am welcome. I can shower, cook, wash clothes, and watch TV. I have a bed again. We have a small kitchen table where each morning I drink coffee (from my coffee maker…the only appliance I retained from home ownership after almost 6 years in various storage facilities.) We have a dog. My daughter is a freshman in college and I have a good career here at Liberty University. I stay busy with my side business, building decks and doing trim and finish work. I am writing more books and speaking to groups big and small about the things I endured for my daughter’s sake.

But there was one morning…

We hadn’t been here long, just a few days. I still didn’t have a bed yet. We’d come here with only enough money for two months’ rent and some groceries and necessities. My daughter had a brand new bed someone had given us before we left Nashville, but I had nothing but the foam bedroll I had been sleeping on in my truck. (The Volvo died in 2011 and I purchased a 1996 GMC Yukon, which was far more comfortable for sleeping in) I had almost nothing for furniture…an old couch someone had given us, that rickety kitchen table. But I sat there very early on that first Saturday morning, my daughter was asleep upstairs and I was looking around my kitchen, considering where I had been for the last 6 years. How many mornings I woke up to single digit temperatures and frost inside my car windows. How many times I was at the mercy of public restrooms, or the county rec center being open in order to just take a shower. I thought of how I had to buy coffee at Dunkin Donuts and now I was drinking my own coffee in my own mug in my own kitchen again. I was getting ready to make strawberry pancakes for my daughter for the first time in those six years. My daughter was with me again. We had almost nothing, but when looked at in perspective…I had everything.

That Saturday morning, I broke down and wept. I am fighting tears right now as I write. The gratitude was so deep in my heart that morning that it moved me. I prayed my way around that kitchen. “God thank you for my table and chairs. Thank you for this cup of coffee and my coffee maker that somehow survived six years and multiple storage sheds. Thank you that Morgan is sleeping upstairs. Thank you that I have an upstairs…”

I have never been as grateful as I was that first Saturday when I finally had something again after six years of literally having nothing.

The truth is that almost no one who reads this will ever experience that sort of overwhelming, encompassing loss. I’m glad you won’t. Losing your home is the worst feeling imaginable. Only losing a loved one could be worse. Our home is our hub. Our Headquarters. The fixed end of our compass. Without a home -as simple as it might be- we are adrift on the sea. I had come home to the safe harbor of this small house in Lynchburg and I was more grateful than I’d ever been.

So how can someone replicate that I their own life without experiencing the loss firsthand?

I’m not sure.

I remember reading a marriage book one time and it said that the counselor started marital counseling for his clients by having them write an obituary for the other. Sometimes, just penning the words you would say if they were really gone is enough to spur appreciation. Maybe you could try that. Imagine writing a eulogy for your spouse.

Write a letter to your child…the letter you’ll give them as they drive off to college someday. The next time your beloved dog comes over and lays her head on your lap and lets out a plaintive sigh, begging for just a scratch behind the ears, imagine not being able to do that anymore.

The other – and I think better- way to build your gratitude, and take your eyes off of all that you’d don’t have is to take out a sheet of paper and list everything you really love about the things you do have. What are the best things about your job? Your family? Your boss? Your friends? List everything. Do they pay you well? If not, does the check bounce or do you at least never have to worry about the bank calling you with bad news? Does your boss value your input? Do you have great co-workers who make your tasks easier? Are the difficult coworkers at least pleasant? If not…do they at least bathe and wear clean clothes? It sounds funny but you need to build the habit of finding something good and then being truly grateful for it.

Your kids aren’t perfect but are they good kids? Are they healthy? Do they do reasonably well in school? Your wife isn’t the best driver but she’s a great wife, she’s your best friend, she gave you wonderful children, she cheers your successes and rallies you when you have a tough day. Your husband works hard, protects his family, sacrifices himself for the good of the kids, he’s faithful, he may not be the best talker but he lets you know he loves you.

You don’t have the biggest house but you are sleeping indoors tonight? If it’s cold you can turn on the heat. If you’re dirty you can shower. You can clean your clothes when you need too without a pocketful of quarters.

You won’t be hiding your car in dense overgrowth behind a church so nobody finds you and you can get a few hours of restless sleep.

There is so much to be grateful for but we miss it if we don’t practice gratefulness.

The great Zig Zigler always said: “If you aren’t thankful for what you have, soon you’ll find you have nothing to be thankful for.”

Be thankful for everything!

                                            High Hopes!

                                                 Craig