It’s almost the end of January, and I think I have written ‘2015’ by mistake for the last time, I hope. Looking forward to what the Lord has in store for this new 12 months…my wife celebrates her 40th birthday, my littlest kiddos will go to first grade, my oldest son Shawn competes to play quarterback in the SEC and we keep leukemia at bay! Well, that’s my plan anyway! And it’s important to have a plan, if for no other reason than to chart the deviation from it. They say that if you don’t know where you are going, you will never get there. So I have always made an outline for each year and then work from there. It started as business plan for contacts and deals and potential income, but eventually I realized that I had this great plan for finance, but almost NO PLAN for the rest of my life, and in particular the relationships that I wanted to grow, like my marriage and my fatherhood and certain friendships. So for the past 20 plus years, I now write an annual life plan, and it starts with a narrative on how to grow my faith, then how I want to impact and grow my relationship with each family member and it goes from there. Now it ends with a business plan on finance and deals, which is still important, but I now have it in the right order of priority!
My book THE QB MENTOR was officially released last week and is available in Barnes and Noble and on Amazon, which is very exciting. I look forward to seeing what the Lord has planned for the book and the interviews and book signings that are being requested. We have sold hundreds of advance copies and people bless me with their encouragement, support and reports that the book inspires them and their family.
Coach Wilson continues his classes with quarterbacks, both locally and nationally. Coach had probably the three greatest and most accomplished high school quarterbacks ever to come out of Durham, NC in class over the holidays when Shawn, Vad and Kendall went through ten sessions. All three are division one scholarship quarterbacks and two of them won high school state championships during their careers.
It was a great couple of weeks, with the NFL playoffs and the college National Championship game mixed between the quarterback classes. Coach uses every moment to teach and encourage. The theme of his last session was a combination of "inches are everywhere" and "effort is free." Coach quoted the classic scene from the movie Any Given Sunday where Al Pacino, playing an iconic head coach of an NFL team, gives an impassioned speech to his team saying that inches are the difference between winning and losing, between life and death. That scene fires up every football player every time! Coach Wilson then implored the boys with the reality that effort is free and can be invested to make dreams come true! The group was so fired up they even came to do a session of hot yoga with me. Whatever it takes!
Truth be told, I get as much out of the classes from THE QB MENTOR as the quarterbacks do. Realizing I have to focus on the things I can control, and not worry about the bigger things in life that are out of my control, especially with this cancer that slows me down every day. I continue to focus on my fatherhood of my 3 littles, getting them to and from school every day and making sure our rides are filled with stories and laughter and being available and focused for our family dinners and bath time. I guess that’s my application of "inches are everywhere" in my life, making sure that I don’t overlook even the smallest moments to be a good husband and father. Perhaps that’s will be my motto for 2016. INCHES ARE EVERYWHERE! Ask yourself what will be your 2016 motto? And feel free to let me know what INCHES ARE EVERYWHERE looks like in your life.
Amen and AMEN.