Daniel Nava is an out fielder for the Boston Red Sox. He was called up to the majors in June of 2010. On his very first at bat, on June 12 of the year, he swung at the very first pitch he was offered, and he hit a grand slam. It really doesn’t get any better than that.
Now as a baseball player, I’m sure it was pretty easy for him to understand that he wasn’t going to do that every time he got up to bat. Even taking the grand slam possibility out of it, I think the record for home runs in consecutive at-bats by the same player is something like five or six. And since no one has made a serious challenge at batting over .400 for a season in a long time, players have to prepared for the fact that they likely make an out six of every ten times they get to bat. But not everything is baseball.
Musical artists that have a tremendous first album are almost cursed with the sophomore slump when their second release comes out. Does that make them any worse than an artist that struggles in anonymity for years, maybe decades, before they find that elusive level of high success?. Macauley Culkin was world famous before he was ten years old. John Mahoney was sixty three before the world “discovered” him as the father on “Fraiser”. Both of them are considered successful. Even in the every day working world, a phrase has been getting kicked around for several years: “Setting someone up for success”, as in “I’m going to make sure you have all the things you need to be successful at your job.
But how do you measure success? Back in the world of baseball, it’s pretty easy. There are wins and losses, E.R.A.’s and R.B.I’s. From there it’s a slippery slope. Certain professions may objective benchmarks (production quotas, litigious success) but most end up in the very subjective world of “Do you work well with others?” in your quarterly review. And that’s just in the professional world. What about our personal lives?
In the “Desiderata” it tells us not to compare ourselves with others. because there will always be greater and lesser persons than ourselves. I like to take that even further. The only person I need to compare myself to is myself, and the only person I need to be better than is myself. And that’s the formula. Am I better now than I was? Is yes, I’m successful. If not, well then….
The reason I started to focus on this again was that if you notice it’s Tuesday and not Monday. I promised myself and all of you read this that I’d be posting a new blog every Monday. I could blame the holiday weekend, I could blame the lingering cold, but ultimately I didn’t do what I said I would, and that’s a measurable level of being unsuccessful. I established a deadline and I failed to meet it. A common theme in my life, and one I’ve established as a necessary issue to work on this summer, but it doesn’t change the fact that, in this endeavor, I failed.
Think about your life, not just your job or your family, but the totality of it, how you live. And think about how you used to. What’s different? People don’t often take the time to reflect, and they’re missing a great opportunity, not only to say “Gee, I wish this was different” but also to see the positive strides in their life, the strides they have taken so that they, and those around them, live in a better world. Give yourself that time to recognize what you have accomplished, and notice the feelings and the energy it brings up in you. You’ve worked for it, you’ve earned it. Enjoy it.
And just be ready. Because you never know when someone will ask you to step up for the first time and knock one out of the park.
PopcornJackTerry 