Draw Your Lines in the Sand

Draw Your Lines in the Sand

🎲 Sipping my coffee this morning, I came across tidbits news from NBA that Filipino-American Coach Erik Spoelstra just achieved another milestone, becoming the 6th winningest coach in the NBA Regular Season, overtaking Phil Jackson, one of the NBA's most successful all-time coach and executive ever in NBA history.  Indeed, I realized this was another major milestone for Coach Erik.

25 years ago, Coach Erik was just a videographer till one day, the Pat Riley, the revered 'Godfather' in the NBA asked him to go to his office, really in 'Godfather' Style, with the office blinds down, with the office room dimly lighted.  And Pat curtly told Coach Erik that the day has come for him to pass the torch over to him.  That it was like him being at the bird's nest and he's about to push Coach Erik off the branch, so he gotta learn how to fly that damn quick.

And even before Pat Riley came over and lorded it over at Miami Heat, then Coach Stan Van Gundy was prophetic enough to tell Erik that he has the makings of an NBA Coach, so he's got to start thinking differently and open up his mind to that.  That day was indeed coming.  And Pat Riley frankly told him to 'take a couple of days to get your S-H-I-T together because the press conference was slated for the next Monday.  Today, hearing from all the pundits in the NBA, we can safely say that Erik Spoelstra had his 
stuff together since then, successfully drawing his line in the sand.

The formula of Erik Spoelstra's success can be credited on just 2 ingredients, namely, that JOB SATISFACTION and his RELATIONSHIPS at work.  Those are the icings on the cake that topped up his purposely 25 years with Miami Heat till to date.  What this tells us is that you can't have everything you want instantaneously, no senor.  There ain't any application for that.  Nothing is downloaded from Apps Store.  That end to end process towards achieving success will be agonizingly slow, meandering, uncomfortable and sometimes messy [when you get bruised along the way].  

But ooops, we're not done in sharing this insightful experience of Erik Spoelstra.  A few months ago, he got interviewed by the crazy basketball media from the Philippines and he was asked he can fly over back to Manila to visit his Filipino relatives and at the same time, host a couple of basketball clinics.  His curt reply:  so sorry, I want to take advantage of the summer break [from the gruelling year-round NBA calendar by 

spending quality time with his growing up toddler and new-born baby.  That's just the perfect manifestation of WORK-LIFE BALANCE.  Here you have a successful NBA coach and yet, at the height of his success, he won't give up the quality time he can spend with his family.

What this success story tells us is that we should feed our minds with everything POSITIVE.  We may seem lost because we're seemingly lost with the stress and noise inside us.  But as this poster goes, 'your mind is your garden, your thoughts are the seeds, you can grow flowers OR you can grow weeds.  Would you settle for the weeds in lieu of the flowers ?  Think about it folks. We gotta align.📌

Work-Life Balance

 

Work-Life Balance

Way before we heard about COVID-19, by so much decibels we have been hearing Work-Life Balance [WLB] both in our workplace and in our homes.

Listening to our families, they would ask us, where is your WLB please ?

Fast-forward, two [2] months after we all got holed up in our homes in the face of this global pandemic, surely you would hear some of our senior executives challenging us with the same refrain, where is your WLB please ?

So, let's call a spade a spade, there's no way out to this. We are now painted in a corner. We are now pushed in a corner.

We're asked and challenged, how's our balancing act based on the WLB mantra ?

Today is a classic case for me. I had scheduled business skype calls but I had to wiggle out and figure out things because today happens to be the 11th birthday of our daughter, our precious princess !

Hmmmm.......Way back, I used to report to a senior boss [reputed as a taskmaster] way back my HSBC days in Hong Kong & Singapore and there's just NO WAY you can't tell him that you don't have the time because he will retort back: MAKE TIME !

And that's how I did today. I notified my bosses that I'll take an early lunch break [by 11am] and be back by 1pm because I got to 'walk the talk', I got to prove that WLB works. And in the nick of time, before 1pm tipped-in, I was back home, got a our dining table filled with the foodies to excite our princess, our birthday celebrant today. And after the 'photo-ops', up I rushed to my 1pm skype call.

Without beating my chest, let this message resonate across [regardless if we are facing COVID or not]................ that FAMILY MATTERS !