Looking Back – Why Didn’t This Change My Thinking?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Looking back, I can’t tell you why this did not change my thinking. It really should have, yet it didn’t as I continued to put work and other things before my family.

I’m listening to Gary Vaynerchuk’s book “Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion” and in it he gives a list of his 3 top priorities in his life

1. Family must always come first – In fact he says it should actually be first, second, third and fourth
2. Work Hard
3. Live your passion

All I was doing was #2. I had no priorities and I had no passion, no wonder my thinking never changed

The Story

I was a Director for a very large distribution company, had worked myself up from being hired as a warehouse clerk/delivery van driver over the course of 10 years, had recently been asked to move to Memphis to run the company’s largest facility and soon after received a promotion to where I was overseeing the two largest facilities in the company. Things were looking good, right?

About a year or so later, the company took on a customer that wanted us to do all of their warehousing for them, and the warehouse that we were going to put their product in was the one back in Chicago, the facility that I had moved away from but then inherited again after my promotion.

So I went up there to get the program running, thinking that it would only be a few weeks away from home, turned out to be a total of 6 months away, seeing my family only twice during that time as we were working 7 days a week from 6 AM until Midnight most of the time.

In March I received a call from my son who was 11 or 12 at the time saying that he had been picked to be on a team that was going to travel to Nashville, TN to play in the Junior Southern Olympic Hockey tournament, and wanted to know if I would be able to be there. He was so excited when I told him that I would make sure that I would be able to go, that it made me instantly call my boss in California and tell him that I would need to leave Chicago for that weekend, but that I would go right back there after the tournament was over. Didn’t really give him an option to say no, but I think he understood as he had kids of his own.

Well the weekend was upcoming and we were having a lot of issues with this new customer and integrating them into our system, in a word the operation was a mess. But I told the customer where I was going and that I had to leave for a few days and they said that they understood and would see me on Monday, and I left for Memphis.

As soon as I got to the airport in Memphis, my phone rang. It was my boss. He said that the customer had called his boss and told them that I had left and that there was no one there in charge. He pleaded with me to go back to Chicago ASAP, mostly to cover his own ___. I told him that I would be back on Monday and that they would be fine over the weekend as I left specific instructions on what needed to be done while I was gone.

Drove home and as soon as I walked in the door, the phone rang again. It was the Sr VP of Operations calling me to tell me that I had to go back ASAP, that the customer was very upset and that I never should have “Abandoned ship” like that. Those were his very words, “The Captain abandoned the ship”

I was convinced that if I did not head back to Chicago right then and there, that I would probably not have a job for very long. So I told Michelle this and she said that she understood, but that I had to be the one to tell our son.

I called him into the bedroom and told him what was going on, and I will never forget his face and the look of anger and disappointment as he stormed out of the room and into the garage, slamming doors behind him. I just sat on the bed and started to cry. It was actually the first time that Michelle ever had seen me cry, but there was nothing else for me to do.

So I grabbed my suitcase, which never was unpacked and headed back to the airport to get a rental car to make that 10 hour drive back to Chicago, trying to make sense of everything that was going on and trying to figure out where my anger was directed, was it at the company, my boss…..or at myself for letting this happen?

Turns out that Josh (our son) scored the winning goal in a shootout that earned his team a bronze medal, which I actually found when we were cleaning out the house a few months back. And I missed it all. But rather than telling myself that this kind of thing would never happen again, I just kept going as if this is how the real world is, that life sucks and you just have to deal with it.

Life Doesn’t Suck

Life is what you make of it. Not what others make of it for you, but what YOU make of it. Like I said, you would have thought that something like this would have made me think about things differently, and it actually did. It made me colder and more distant from the people who loved me. Made me feel like no matter how well I was doing, that it really didn’t matter. That no matter how hard I tried, I was never going to be the master of my own destiny.

Today I know differently. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. That this happened at a time in my life that I was weak, and that eventually I would wake up to discover that life is not about making the most money, it is not about promotions and raises, it is about learning to appreciate the little things in life. It is about being grateful, truly grateful for all that I do have, instead of worrying about what I don’t have.

It is about learning to live for today, it is about finding my passion and dedicating my life to pursuing it.

It is about family. And today I have so many families to be grateful for.

Of course there is my blood family, Michelle and the kids, my sisters and mom, Michelle’s brothers and parents.

But we also have a supportive family in the groups of people that are helping me to beat my addictions and helping Michelle to understand them.

And most recently, there is a group of friends that I consider an extended family that I have met through Empower Network and iPAS2, that are so supportive and just plain fun to be around and get to know while we are learning and growing in our new home business. I am going to get back to Nashville for our next event, and it is going to be awesome!

Onward and Upward!

Take Care

Mark

FB = www.facebook.com/marknmichelle0925
Skype = mark.eaves14
Phone = 662-336-1814 e-mail = michelle@marknmichelle.com or mark@marknmichelle.com