Looking back on my life, it is hard to pinpoint
turning points that led to life altering behaviors as this requires a ton of self-reflection
and thinking about what I am today. With
that being said, there are a few events that come to mind rather quickly, and
all had direct impacts in how I operate daily.
In chronological order, they were the baseball incident, my parent’s
divorce, and my first real experience as a leader.
This first memory was probably the easiest to identify as its ramifications played a part in almost every day of my life between when it happened until I was 19. Without getting into too many details (that is saved for the GA), I was hit in the face by a line drive that resulted in me not being allowed to play contact sports for a year. At first I was pretty bummed about the having to sit out, but I quickly started to look for other things to do. My parents offered to take me down to the pool and try swimming. Needless to say I loved it and quickly devoted my life to it. As I have discussed in previous topics, I credit swimming with giving me endurance (mental endurance lasted, the physical endurance long ago dried up), competitiveness, and a drive to succeed.
Next was my parent’s divorce. Prior to it, I had held my dad and very high esteem, however when details started to come out around the divorce, I learned that he was one of the most cowardly, untrustworthy, and unfaithful men on the planet. From this experience I learned that being truthful is a quality that you must have – not should – in order for you to be truly respected. Also, I learned about honor – when you give your word that is your word. To this day my wife still gets a little irritated with me when I insist on following through when I say I am going to do something. A quick example just to clarify – today there was supposed to be decent surf but when I woke up and checked the reports I knew the surf was going to be crummy; with that being said I had told a guy I would be down at the beach at 0645 - my wife said why bother but I had to go since I told him I would be there.
Finally, my first real experience with leadership taught me many things about being a leader. I was tossed into a leadership position in my first assignment out of boot camp. To this day I would argue that having to be in charge of a group of your peers is one of the most challenging assignments that can be given to a potential leader. At first I was incredibly uneasy with the assignment however I also quickly learned to enjoy the challenge of it. I strongly believe that this event directly led to me getting picked up for a commissioning program which resulted in where I am today. To this day I probably have more experience with leadership than most of my peers because I spent the first year of my leadership training doing so in a peer environment. I learned how to motivate people (specifically that different motivational techniques must be applied on different people), how to censor someone in a manner that is not confrontational, and how to lead by setting the example – all things that I still utilize today.
In closing, there are probably a hundred events that played their parts in developing me into what I am today. My wife has had probably the largest impact on my life; however her impact has been over the course of many years vice the venerable fork in the road type of situation. The 3 above events were all events that resulted in a drastic change in my life and were events that continue to have an impact on me today.
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