Sometimes It’s the Little Things

I watched Scott Stratten’s (@unmarketing) TEDxOakville talk entitled Keep Going Until We Stop (watch the video). To say the least it had a profound effect on me, and for a number of reasons, least of which is I could so profoundly relate to what Scott was saying.

Ask anyone that knows me well, and they’ll tell you I am a driven individual. Not in the popularity contest or NASCAR sort of way. Driven in that I demand more of myself, much more than I do of anyone else. I am driven to be the best I can be at whatever it is I have chosen to focus on. and like Scott in the video, I just keep going until I stop. The sequence of events Scott laid out in his talk, well, I can’t touch that. But it took a power outage from a wind storm, and an unintended argument with one of my oldest friends to make me realize like Scott said, sometimes, you just have to stop to keep going.

The emotion with which Scott spoke had me on the verge of tears for the entire talk. my unintended argument this morning was my wake up call. While a number of things in my life right now are driving me crazy, there are two things in my life are going right. Those two things aren’t actually things, but rather people, my wife, and one of my closest friends Joe.

They always let me know when I get too wound up in things and need to back away, or like Scott and the forgotten brakes, I’ll just keep on chugging on focused on solving this problem or that and not paying attention to what I should have been. And like Scott, it won’t dawn on me until that “oh shit” moment that I forgot to stop and deal with that, instead I just kept on going.

I, like my sister, and my father before me, am a classic type A workaholic. I find that as I get older the lessons my dad taught me so early on, be dependable, work hard, don’t stop keep going, keep trying to be the best, and others like them, that while they have indeed served me well throughout life, have also lead me to see a remarkable amount of the ‘early’ Scott that he talks about in his video, and to see an awful lot of my father in the me I am now.

All to often we forget that it’s the little things that are so vastly important. A hug from a friend, a smile when you’re down, the laughter of a memory shared among friends so close that they’re almost family, these things. Sure there are other ‘little things’, but these little things are different for each person. It’s up to you to figure out what your ‘little things’ are. And once you figure that out, remember what Scott said in his talk, “sometimes we just have to stop in order to keep going,”

Thanks for link to the video Scott. Once again, you’ve taught me something I needed to know.