Dr. Kenney’s Friday 5 Spot
On Fridays I like to share experiences I’ve had during the week with patients and in my personal life that I’ve found significant. I like to share them in hopes that you might find value in them and have something resonate with you in your life.
A great lesson. About a decade ago, I began to challenge myself by signing up for difficult races. One such event was the Pike’s Peak Ascent, which is 13.1 miles from Manitou Springs to the top of Pike’s Peak. During that race, I got altitude sickness about ten miles in and proceeded to vomit every few feet for the remaining three miles which took me multiple hours to complete. It was the sickest I had ever felt, and I ended up losing over ten pounds during the race. At the time, I was extremely embarrassed with my time and didn’t want to tell anyone I had even competed. However, that day taught me a valuable lesson.
Often, your greatest successes will not be pretty. In fact, you are likely to be the proudest of yourself when you find a way to overcome your worst and weakest moments. After that race, the shame I felt over my time was soon replaced by pride. People asked me why I didn’t quit, and I realized it had never even occurred to me to do so and that was significant. I had a terrible race that taught me I was developing grit and resiliency that I hadn’t possessed previously. That difficult day on the mountain gave me the confidence to attempt far tougher endeavors not only in my racing but in life as well.
Something coaching has taught me. As a football coach, it is my responsibility to create strategies that put my team in a position to succeed and win. When I first began coaching, I often had game plans that were fundamentally sound but with which my players would struggle to execute. I would often become frustrated, and this was not helpful to them or me. Over time and after some ugly defeats, I ended up learning a great lesson.
As a leader, it is my responsibility to make sure those I’m leading know what to do and how to do it. If I design something to be utilized by others but no one else can grasp it, it’s a problem for me and not them. The best strategy in the world that they cannot understand or follow is ineffective. Instead, I have found greater success with keeping things simple, mastering the basics, and then adding complexity in slowly from there. This creates greater knowledge, confidence, and an easier path to growth. If no one understands where you’re coming from, try simplifying things and progressing from there, it will help.
A great reminder. A patient of mine is running the Leadville 100 this weekend, which is one hundred miles of straight running at an elevation of over 2 miles above sea level the entire race (go Clint!). I ran the same race in 2019 myself as my first attempt to run that far. Unfortunately, on that day I was dropped from for being 6-minutes too slow at a cutoff point. My race ended unexpectedly at mile fifty and my family, friends, and pacers were all there to see me fail. Worst, my oldest son was twelve at the time and was going to run the final thirteen miles with me to the finish line. We had both dreamt of that for months, but it was not to be.
As I went to bed feeling terrible about myself, I took the time to ask my son if he would wake up early and run thirteen miles with me in the morning. I wanted to at least fulfill that part of my goal and have that time with him as we’d planned. We ended up running for 3 hours up and down trails at Copper Mountain and it is one of my fondest memories with my son. In life, you will fail often; I certainly have. However, you will always have opportunities to turn that failure into something positive. When my race imploded, I had an opportunity to show my son a valuable lesson. When things go badly, do not let them define you, get up and keep trying.
Something I believe. I was speaking to someone this week about how business is like a football game. As a business, you have a product or service to sell, so you are the offense. Just like in football, however, the other team is not going to just let you score by handing you stacks of money. Thus, you will have to contend with defense in the form of difficult people, problems, questions, and hesitations. To become successful, you must have a good offense that effectively responds to whatever the defense throws at you. Life works the same way.
We all want to thrive in our careers, relationships, finances, hobbies, and more. However, not everything will cooperate along the way. Things will break, unfortunate events will occur, there will be surprises, and more. Attaining what we desire is not about avoiding these things but rather, dealing with them. Things go awry for all of us at times, the best of us don’t feel sorry for ourselves or quit when this occurs. Instead, just as in football, we adjust, deal with what opposes us, and continue advancing forward.
Some quotes I Love.
“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.” – John F. Kennedy
“In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.” – Henry David Thoreau
“It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.” – Anatole France