Beginnng with the end in mind

Beginning with the end in mind

Today during the service at Center Church I was thinking about how my childhood influences shaped me. I remember being four or five years old and watching my father try and smother my mother to death with his bare hands while my sister just 13 months younger than me stood and watched. As soon as he took his hand off of her mouth for a minute my sister Jill moved to protect out mother and I was right with her. We protected my father from hurting her any more that day. After that I became much more aggressive, when my father and I would play fight I wouldn’t be playing. I would try and take my old man out. Looking back on it, I was mirroring my father in how aggressive he was with my mother.  I too that level of play to school on the playground and wrestling with my cousin Rodney. It made me hustle on the baseball field and basketball court. It is what allowed me to fight way beyond my experience in the boxing ring and it came in handy going through BUD/s and in the SEAL Teams.

When I got into sales I learned that I had to ratchet it back. I still could push towards the close but I had to change my words. It wasn’t easy. I remember reading the scripts and there would be a trial close “Is that fair enough?” I didn’t talk like that but eventually I learn that saying it that way was more receptive than “Here is what we are going to do” which is what I usually said when I was making someone do what I wanted them to do.

So I handed off the Trail Life enrollment package to Pastor Steven at Center Church and he got up and preached about “Love”. I was already thinking about how I became who I was and realized I didn’t have any example of love in my life growing up. I got glimpses of love or genuine concern from Roy Jones Sr. my boxing coach and some of my mentors in the SEAL Teams. They would express approval when I did the right thing so I wanted to do more. Van Hall my first Assistance Officer in Charge was a former Chief at SEAL Team Six and he would get on my about my shooting. I am not going to say what he would say but my whole first deployment I was determined to get him to quit saying it. Then we were in the same platoon heading to Panama and I went up against him for a magazine change drill and I bet him. He got all excited for me beating him. He knew what he was doing.

As I am doing my course work for my associates in mathematics I am not only thinking of how I can teach the had case young men I want to reach a more effective way to understand math and science, to keep themselves in shape and how to stand up like a man but also how to look at others differently and discern their true value, desires, talents and help them identify those little barriers that keep them from seeing their successes and fulfillment of not just their destiny but how to uplift others and understand that by discovering those things in others and paying forward that understanding they will become leaders and create legacies rather than causing emotional barricades which consume energy for decades and generations. By worrying less about how someone treats us during our first encounter but more about how they feel when we show them how to break barriers, then we will not only experience the recognition and acknowledgement for being the one who helped them but the satisfaction of knowing we is wasn’t just because they are being nice to us.