04/30/2019
Defining Moments...that turning point in your life when you must decide.
We all have them, defining momements in our lives, some of us more than others. I've had several over my life: leaving home, graduating college, moving to Denver, getting married, having kids, etc. This past year I've had several moments that have directly impacted my job, my career. As I write this post several of my friends are being laid off as a result of a business merger. Maybe this post can give you some hope and hopefully it will give you some things to help you think through and process the events unfolding around you.
December 2017 was an especially difficult time for me personally. I was stressed, losing weight because of the stress, my blood sugars were out of control (I'm a Type 1 Diabetic), depressed because I felt completely out of control, a close co-worker had lost her husband to cancer, another co-worker was dealing with serious health issues and the business I had helped build was going in a different direction without me. Don't get me wrong, I still had a job. However, for years my now business partner and I had been working to eventually take ownership of the company we helped build for 17 plus years and we were discovering the painful and difficult truth that was no longer an offer or option being extended to us.
On a particularly bad day, I abuptly left work. I had never just walked out for any reason in the past. I was suddenly confronted by some hard truths that I could not deal with being in the office. I realized I had to go somewhere, anywhere, to think and deal with all the emotions that had been building up. My first reaction was to find someone and head to the bar. Not to get drunk, but to have a beer and clear my head. I needed to forget all about the day's events and all the little negative things that had been happening every day for months. I just wanted to forget!
For whatever reason, I didn't go to the bar or have a beer. I ended up heading to my kids school. When I walked out of the office, I immediately called my wife and she kindly requested I meet her at the kids school to pick up our son when he was done volunteering. Usually I was too busy at work to help pick the kids up from school and since I was suddenly taking the afternoon off, she was hoping I could help while she took our daughter to gymnastics.
Feeling depressed and a little sorry for myself, I arrived and walked in to the gym full of about 150 kids. This is not the place I imagined I would be to help drown my sorrows. It was busy, loud, chaotic...I was about to leave when I stepped back and took stock of my setting, and it happened, one of those "A-ha moments".
You see, my kids along with about 150 of their classmates were dedicating their time after school giving back to their community. They were there drawing pictures, writing cards, putting care packages together for other kids who were fighting for their lives against cancer. I learned that when kids go through chemo-therapy, they are often isolated from their friends and family enduring hours of boredom, loneliness, and often times, pain. Most foods taste terrible which is why the gift baskets were filled with sour candies because they actually tasted good to the cancer patients.
Suddenly I realized my problems, my bad day, weeks and months, while real and difficult to me, could be solved. I could handle them. I realized there were hundreds of kids and individuals going through so much more than I was going through. My then boss called at that moment to inquire as to where I was and why had I left work so abruptly. Being in that place, at that moment, and receiving that phone call made me realize I needed to make a change and it probably meant i would need to leave my job and start my own business. I realized life was so much bigger than me and my sorrow. I knew I would be making a change that would affect me, my wife, my kids, my co-workers, and my clients, but for the first time I realized this was a necessary and good thing.
With this as one of our motivations, my now business partner and I started our own company a little over a year ago. He and I are bound by a commitment to our families, to each other in mutual respect, and to the service of our clients. We are driven by the need to serve others to the best of our ability using our combined experience of over 40 years in this industry to help others achieve ther financial goals and dreams. We do this realizing life is so much bigger and about so much more than just us.
That was one of my defining moments, my lightning bolt, my a-ha moments. If this resonated with you we'd like to hear from you and hear about one of your a-ha moments and the affect it's had on you.
