LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up." Rocky Balboa

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

OK, this is the final quote and thought from Sylvester Stallone. Next month I want to talk about IMPACT and I'll share some great quotes that will get you thinking.

Today though we'll finish with this final thought from "Rocky Balboa", and it circles back to the core of the Rocky franchise: Never Give Up!

I think that's the message that I first experienced when I watched Rocky, it's the idea of Rocky doing something that everyone else said was impossible, and he just refused to believe that, instead, he kept working towards the impossible until he was able to achieve it. He just wanted to go the distance.

"Yo Adrian, I did it!"

That's the cry of success.

This quote reminds us that we will never have a chance of succeeding if we don't try.

I remember the day I decided to "run for office" to be the Student Body President my senior year of high school. I had always wondered what that would be like, to go through a campaign, an election, and then serve as a representative.

I signed up on a whim, told my parents about it, forgot to mention it to my friends, and off I went, creating a campaign based on some promise I can't even remember.

I don't remember the other 2 people I was running against, but I don't remember being afraid of losing. If I had lost, I would have just found something else to do, so it wasn't fear that kept me from jumping in, it was the honest belief that I could make a difference.

I jumped into the campaign, and I won.

And honestly, I learned a lot about leadership that year from those in office with me and from our staff advisor, Randy. It was a great experience and I felt that we did some good, so I ran again in college and again, had a great experience.

Watching the election campaign process here in the U.S. right now is crazy, and I often wonder what would compel someone to dive into a public race and have it thrown all over the world to see. I hope it's that same idea that they can make a difference someplace!

I'm glad I took the risk and ran for office. I'm sure there are other opportunities that I missed along the way for a variety of reasons.

What's something you jumped in to do, maybe against some great odds? How did that turn out for you?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"Success is usually the culmination of controlling failures."Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

I'm going to continue some quotes from Sylvester Stallone this month simply as a way to prompt some deeper thinking.

I shared about his book I just read, The Steps, and I shared about how at the age of 12 years old, this movie had a profound impact on my life. It's been fun to revisit it a little bit and I look forward to Stallone's new movie coming out in November, "I Play Rocky", which is his story.

You can read my past few posts on Rocky HERE.

Thanks for letting dive into this for a few weeks. It's been fun and inspirational to camp here a little bit.

The quote above really summarizes Stallone's perspective on life, and it's really a story of resilience. In his book, he talks a lot about his failure. He talks about ideas he had, opportunities he messed up, dreams that died, risks he took in life and in reading his book, I realized that his journey was not a jump to success quickly. What we saw and heard was a long-shot movie idea that caught the attention of the world and won an Oscar. What we didn't see was the journey it took for him to get there, to write that screenplay, to pitch the idea, to fight for it, to have it almost thrown away over and over again.

He talks about his failure.

I'm not sure we talk about that enough. I know for me, I want to "manage the narrative" around my failure so that it doesn't sound so bad or so that I can spin it into the positive.

Here's the reality: Failure is Hard.

I used to say to leaders, "If you fail, then....." I'd give them some canned advice or some inspirational quote.

Some years ago, I switched to, "When you fail, then....".

WE ALL FAIL. We don't all get it right all the time. We make mistakes, we say the wrong thing, we make the wrong move, a decision backfires, we hurt peoples feelings, we invest in the wrong person or the wrong company, we miss the communication and we do this over and over again.

I like these 2 words from Stallone's quote:

First he says CULMINATION. I think what he's saying is that success or victory usually comes at the end of a long series of events. Very seldom does something just work great the first time. It's usually the result of a lot of hard work, many failures and pivots, and then as we gain perspective, we find our way, which might lead to a win. It's a process.

The second word he uses is CONTROLLING. I think he's telling us that how we respond to these failures, how we navigate through them, around them and beyond them is really important. We can't avoid failure, but we can control how we respond and react to failure. This is true for our own failure and that of those on our teams.

If you have experienced failure, WELCOME! You are not Alone! Now what are you going to do with what you've learned?

Are you able to talk about your failure freely or are you embarrassed by it?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"I believe any success in life is made by going into an area with a blind, furious optimism." Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

I'm going to continue some quotes from Sylvester Stallone this month simply as a way to prompt some deeper thinking.

I finished his book The Steps this past week. It's his early story of growing up, and it ends with him winning the Oscar for Best Picture in 1977 for Rocky. The journey to get there was long, somewhat dark, but a true story of perseverance!

In this quote, he focuses on three words, and I think there's something there for us. "Blind - Furious - Optimism". This is what this says to me:

BLIND:

Stallone says over and over, "don't let the odds stop you", even when things look bleak, don't focus on your chance of failure, don't be "blind" to the opportunities around you, don't be careless. Stallone worked for years and years writing, re-writing, learning and failing before he wrote the screenplay for Rocky in just 3 days. He worked hard to get to this point, especially as everyone around him told him he'd never succeed.

FURIOUS:

This idea from Stallone is about intensity. He would say you have to bring an aggressive effort to everything you do, willing to work hard, willing to fight for what you believe in. This isn't a passive hope that things will work out, but a relentless pursuit of something you believe in.

OPTIMISM:

Stallone defines this as "believing in the outcome before there's evidence for it." Belief comes first, the results follow.

I don't know about you, but these three words are really challenging to me today. I'm doing a little self-audit to see how these words are currently playing out in my life and I'm challenged, but I'm also inspired.

Stallone's personal story and journey describe what these words meant to him, and I guess I need to determine what they mean to me.

It seems at times that I am OK simply rolling through life, through work, through relationships, through challenges with a lack of intensity, a lack of focus and I can easily get lulled to just "cruise" by the steady state of the calendar that just keeps moving forward, one project, one event at a time.

That's not what I want or how I want to live.

What would my life reflect if I was a little more BLIND to the obstacles facing me, and I saw a vision of what could be?

What would my next project look like if I applied some FURIOUS energy to it, putting all my effort into it instead of just a little bit?

How would I lead if instead of a general toxic sense of OPTIMISM, I truly believed in the vision and purpose before it actually became a reaility?

Cue the Rocky theme HERE.

Do you find yourself drifting to sleep at a time when you should be fully engaged, completely focused and excited about what you're doing and who your called to be?