The Thought for the Day – J.C. Watts
The American dream is not about money. It is about using your abilities and being the best you can be. – J.C. Watts
J.C. Watts was a member of Congress for eight years and today’s quote comes from a speech he gave at the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego. I was a newspaper reporter in a small town a couple of hours east of San Diego at the time and happened to be at the convention that night. Watts retired from Congress in 2003 and some might recall his college football career as a quarterback at the University of Oklahoma where he led the Sooners to a couple of Orange Bowl victories.
Today’s quote is one of the few in my collection that was actually heard in person and has always struck as the basic proposition of what this country is about: you’re born and you die and in between you have 24 hours every day to make something good happen for yourself.
Some take advantage of this opportunity and work hard to develop the talents and interests they were born with. These people live from the inside out, spending their time following their instincts.
Others don’t. They squander their time by ignoring their talents and frittering away their time on this planet. They spend most of their time ignoring their instincts, preferring to react to outside influences.
It is about using your abilities and being the best you can be…
All of us can do something well. It’s one of the earliest lessons we can remember learning, having it reinforced regularly both at the Lutheran school we went to and where we played sports.
It is also one of the most valuable, teaching us not to waste our time on things we don’t do well and focus on what we are good at. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, sees fit to ensure that we enjoy what we do well. It is her way of telling us this is what we should be doing with our lives.
The happiest lives are spent by those who get the most out of talents they were issued at birth, who work hard to get the most out of their talents and who follow their hearts and trust their instincts. Our hearts tell us where we want to go, naturally and intuitively. If we listen closely, it requires little effort to hear what it is telling us.
Our instincts will show us how to get there. It’s nature’s foolproof plan for a good life.
Not only is it important that we get the most out of our talents, but it is equally important we encourage those younger than us to do the same thing. Nobody benefits when someone squanders their life.
The Diary of a Nobody – Drivel From Sparrow!
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Thursday, April 21
Very slow today at work…Ariel, the operator, called off, so I was able to sit in the back at the PBX desk and, of all things, do some training I had actually done when I was hired but the system never credited me with…I actually had to sit through it all again and I printed out the final page of each session, usually my score on the quiz, and saved it to show it’d been done…One of them was the sexual harassment video, which is not short…The PBX desk is right next to the desk where the housekeepers are run from…It’s called rooms control and today Scott, a vet like me and a good guy and an assistant housekeeping manager, was doing rooms control.
Hey Scott, this babe is withholding some work stuff from this guy until he comes over to her place for dinner and puts out…
Scott leans over and looks at screen.
Sparrow: I mean, there’s a problems with this???
Scott glances up at me: I don’t see one, Sparrow…
I spent no small amount of time answering Scott’s phone, too…It’s always a housekeeper reporting they are done with something and awaiting further instructions and they all speak Spanish, a language I am only vaguely familiar with, but I got to dust off most of my Spanish…Works like ready (listo), where (donde) and OK (OK) all rolled off my tongue…From the front office I could hear both Araceli and Milena giggling.
Got an email from Stanko, the post adjutant today, too…He told me he tried to make contact with a young who applied to go to our Boys State program this summer…Stanko also said he would be out of town and could I try to follow up with the kid???…Well, sure, I’d be happy too, which made me laff because Stanko has always been under the impression that his email or cell phone won’t work outside of town and I am the only one who can possibly deal with things while he is gone.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
The Thought for the Day – Bob Myers
You can’t ensure success, but you can deserve it. You can’t guarantee results, but you can put in the effort to achieve them. – Bob Myers
Bob Myers is the general manager of the Golden State Warriors, a professional basketball team based in Oakland, California. A year ago they won the National Basketball Association championship and are in the playoffs again this season after winning an NBA-record 73 games in the regular season.
Myers did not play for John Wooden at UCLA – Coach had been long retired – but like any UCLA player who wanted to, he knew Coach and drew inspiration from him. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of Wooden can see his influence in today’s quote.
You can’t ensure success…
Life is too random to ensure anything except dying one day. This is tough to accept sometimes. You set a goal and work to make that goal happen and then something completely unforeseen that you have no control over happens and you are denied what you worked for. Or, perhaps, fortune conspires to reward your efforts with what you’ve always dreamed of. Both happen daily. It’s the way the world is built.
There are no guarantees in this life. All we can do is have a plan, preferably one in concert with our talents and ambitions, and try our best to execute that plan.
You can’t guarantee results, but you can put in the effort to achieve them…
The effort required to be our very best, to get the results our hearts hold dear, is immense. Usually, however, it is not the actual labor itself that is the hard part. If we are following our hearts and trusting our instincts we are doing something we have a knack for and the work is usually enjoyable.
The hard part is doing what needs to be done every single day. Because success demands singleness of purpose. We cannot be on our path a few days a week, or only during the summer. We must do what we were meant to do every day. We can’t expect more, but we must demand nothing less.
If our goal is based on external factors – money, fame, status – then we may never be completely satisfied. We deserve better. Everyone is entitled to a satisfying life and when our goals come from the inside, when we put the effort in to accomplish what is important to us, then we will find the life we are looking for.