Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

kwmccarthy

Which Team Experience Would Best Serve Your Business and Life?

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This On-Purpose Business Minute originally aired in September of 2009 when I was trying to help my daughter, Anne, decide about college sports opportunities. This week I was speaking with a long-time friend about an almost identical dilemma his daughters face so I thought it was appropriate to reach out for crowd wisdom, especially those of you who might have had college sports experiences.

This On-Purpose Business Minute invites your wisdom in the comment section. Help my friend’s daughters and other high school and college athletes better ponder their decisions about college sports programs. Share your perspectives and insights by answering this question:

Which Team Experience Would Best Serve Your Business and Life?

  • To be the 26th player on a national championship caliber team? Or
  • To be a four-year starter at a smaller college?

Learn more about the UNC Women’s Soccer Program by watching the video trailer to Winning Isn’t Everything. This is a great example of an On-Purpose Team!

By the way, Anne decided to focus on her academics while at UNC Chapel Hill and not play soccer. She graduated in three years and has a great job with Automattic, the creators of WordPress, the platform for this website as a matter of fact.

As fate would have it, she arrived on the UNC campus as a freshman and on activities day discovered there was a women’s rugby club team. Fascinated, she joined the club, excelled and took to it. In fact, because of her promise shown in the fall of her freshman year, she earned an invitation to attend the College All-American & National Team training camp. She played rugby for a couple of years until she tore an ACL in her knee at a match at the University of South Carolina. Judith and I were at that match and I saw her go down on the field after making a tackle. I thought her shoulder was hurt, not her leg.

While recovering from the surgery she better realized the physical risks of rugby along with the demands of being a college athlete. She elected to stop playing her last year to focus on her studies. Today, she plays pick up soccer, her sport where she was an All-State Player in Florida; and she remains an avid fan of rugby.

Are You Making Half-Hearted Attempts?

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Seven years ago, the decision to quietly add Health Coaching to our services at On-Purpose Partners was made, and it has been eye-opening for our traditional On-Purpose® coaching work with clients. The difference is the “BS Factor” is so much easier to detect with health coaching — either the client is gaining health or not. It is literally right out front and easily measured.

The scales don’t lie, but we do. Recently, one of our clients shared that he came to realize he would look in the mirror and see himself as thin. At 6′ 2″ and over 340 pounds — and NOT playing in the NFL — he was deceiving himself. Therefore, with high integrity, he could “lie” to others about his growing health problems because he didn’t “really” have one. Denial is dangerous to our health and well-being.

I was just as guilty gambling with my health! For too many years, I would look in the KWM Before and Aftermirror and see all the “muscles” I had gained over the years. Who was I fooling? Today, I’m soooo thankful for my health that I can’t NOT share good health with others. Ah, the making of a zealot!

I still battle with a tendency to eat unhealthy because I, like so many of us, find that food = comfort, legal pleasure, and “control.” Sweets, especially carbs in the forms of ice cream, chocolate, candy, and bread are my old coping mechanisms. I can’t afford to be half-hearted about my health.

Half-hearted attempts reflect delayed decisions and unproductive rationales.

  • “I’ll get around to being healthy.”
  • “That hot fudge sundae won’t kill me.”
  • “If I don’t call that client today …”

God gave us a whole heart so why make half-hearted attempts with it? Your purpose is symbolized by your heart.

Here’s the essence of the problem: when we don’t know who we are, why we exist, where we are going with our lives, and what’s important, then we’re not right with ourselves.

This being out of personal integrity stirs unhealthy emotions. The vast majority of us “drug” ourselves to dull the pain. My drug of choice is sweets. For others it may be alcohol, shopping, gambling, exercise, drugs (legal and illegal), sexual activities, gaming, sports, and so forth. Running from ourselves only gets us lost further from where we started.

The result: we’re half-hearted, too busy, and spread too thin even as the spread is widening between who we are and who we’ve become.

Get in touch with your identity via your purpose, especially. Invest the time to also clarify your vision, mission, and values. You’ll be prepared to be more fully engaged in your life. When you better know who you are, you’ll discover half-hearted attempts are episodes in your life, but they no longer define your life. You are literally a better person!

When you more regularly have the benefit of whole-hearted living, then half-hearted attempts are seen for what they are — a waste. Either make a decision to go for it or not. Dithering is destructive to body, mind, and spirit. Choose your battles to win.

Show Up

I’m low on the shrewd scale. I too often take what people say at face value. It wasn’t until we had the health coaching business that I realized how much people say that they will do but don’t actually do it. Many are highly regarded colleagues, thought leaders, coaches, leaders, and professionals. It has been eye-opening for me to come to terms that it is about 50/50 between the dos and don’ts on commitments.

A friend taught us an expression years ago that Judith and I still use today. Here it is: “Mr. Say am here. Mr. Do ain’t showed up.” There it is in a nutshell! We’re overworked, stressed, getting fatter, and whatever other pennies we earn, we pay in pounds packed on the waist. When we don’t show up, the weight gain shows up.

Personally: Are you making half-hearted attempts to get healthy?

  • If a health coach forwarded this message to you then ask him or her for their help. Learn how easy it is to get healthy when you have a professional health coach guiding you. And then make the commitment whole-heartedly.  
  • If you need a Health Coach, then email me and I’ll get you a free 30-minute consultation with one of our Certified Health Coaches.

At work: Are you frustrated with your half-hearted work? 

  • Do you dream of starting a business where you can give meaningful and profitable expression to who you are? 
  • Please email me to set up a time to visit so you can be more fully engaged in your life and work.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

 

One Love

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Thanks Anne McCarthy for this challenge to post the look of One Love:

Hamlet first love

Our dog Hamlet provided our family with deep and abiding unconditional love. Since dog is God spelled backwards and God is unconditional love, then I nominate Hamlet as God’s living stand-in for the years he graced our lives. Yes, I know that the challenge is to make this “about people” but dogs are family members too — often the nicest, most loyal and forgiving member of the family. And when he died on Oct. 5, 2015 his One Love has yet to be replaced in our home, but mostly in our hearts!

I learned yesterday that Maggie, one of his best doggie playmates, died last week. Her owner and I stood in the neighborhood consoling one another and counting our blessings for the One Love, respectively, we had in our homes each for over a decade.

Four-legged love aside, being On-Purpose is another way of expressing One Love: It is the ability to see and feel another person’s heart in such a way that our preconceived notions and impressions melt away as the shell relents to the soul of the person.

 

 

 

How Do You Get the Job of Your Life? Part 2

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Part 1 is found here.

A tough personal economy, job loss, or unemployment means you may find yourself stuck in a job that no longer suits you or worse you feel stuck and that you have no options to change because the risk to leave is too high. Unhealthy thoughts are creeping into your psyche.

Worse, do you find yourself in a repeating pattern of moving from job to job in a sort of trial-and-error attempt to find the right job? The only thing worse than moving from job-to-job is the potential loss of confidence that can often accompany this cycle where you feel like you have no place to belong and contribute.

The challenge isn’t necessarily the job but the applicant! My implication isn’t that there is something wrong with you as a person. Quite the contrary; you’re uniquely gifted and talented with a valuable contribution to make. You have an unmatched experience and background … and that’s just the start of what sets you apart! What you have is backward thinking about how to find the job of your life.

The Secret to Finding the Job of Your Life

So what is the secret to finding the job of your life? Your process is flawed, not you! Chances are you’re chasing money, not meaning. If you keep applying for misfitting jobs that meet your financial goals but rob your soul, then you’ll get rejection letters galore. You lack the common sense to see you’re an empty suit chasing a dollar. Or, worse yet, if you do get an ill-suited job, how soon will it be until you realize the mistake you’ve made … or your employer does? Welcome to the repeating pattern that invariably ends in frustration, lost momentum, and a career setback.

Try this very different approach to finding the job of your life. Admittedly, my approach places a substantial burden of work on you to think, craft, and find the job and company that best suits you to thrive. Too often, I’ve seen people settle for a close approximation of something meaningful or the decision is made purely for “more money” reasons. Being sold to the highest bidder offers some upfront ego-strokes and rewards, but long term you have to ask yourself if this is the place, the people, the product, and the purpose where you can thrive.

Kill Rates or A Healthier Place

A couple of decades ago, my wife was applying for a job with a defense contractor. Judith loved everything about the position. Wisely, an interviewer bluntly asked her, “Are you comfortable being in the business of killing people? Here we talk in terms of ‘kill rates’ to assess the effectiveness of our products.” Everything else about this job seemed like a great fit — superior pay and benefits working in a major corporation, nice people, interesting work, but … Judith decided to pass on that position because being in the “kill rate business” just wasn’t who she was.

Years later, after raising our children, Judith decided to re-enter the workforce to become a health coach. Today she is in the business of saving lives by helping her clients to gain health. She is thriving because her heart is in her work. She’s put it together 1-2-3. She’s defined who she is and found meaningful work supporting her in becoming who and how God made her. The 3-2-1 approach almost invariably becomes oppressive rather than expressive.  166

Judith tapped me to work with her in support of helping clients to be at a healthier place. How on-purpose can one be when you’re not very healthy? Plus she’s training others to become health coaches by sharing in her joy of saving lives and my calling of helping people lead lives of being on-purpose.

Invest Your Life

Don’t spend your years wasting away chasing meaningless endeavors. Instead, invest in your life in what matters most to you. Do it on-purpose!

If your life or career needs some renovation, then let’s connect and see how we can help you take a healthy step toward being true to yourself, prospering, and making a difference by giving back. Is it time for you to invest in the first job of your life — taking care of you? Here is how we can help:

Finding the job of your life is the job of your life. Until you’ve figured out who you are, why you’re here, where you want to go, and what’s important, then you’ve placed yourself at a strategic disadvantage to find the job of your life.

Give this different process and approach a try. It is as easy as 1-2-3!

Angry? Decide Not To(a simple anger management technique)

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Decide Not To

Anger management techniques are plentiful. Cut to the core with this simple, yet powerful method that is so on-purpose. This comes from the mind of my nine-decades-plus-old mentor Mel Kaufmann. This morning he wrote me with this gem and gave me permission to share it with you.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

 

Decide Not To

Do you become angry? Do you argue? It need not be. They are habits you have learned from birth. Anger and arguing are not in your DNA. If they were, you would be angry and arguing for the rest of eternity. I will prove to you that anger is a learned response. In high school my brother, Marvin, would kick the tires of our car, if it would not start. When Marvin was 92, I said to him, “You don’t seem to be angry anymore. What happened?” He said without equivocation, “I decided not to.” Mother Theresa was asked, “How can we have peace in the world?” Mother answered with great clarity and firmness, “Go home and start there.” If there is anger and arguing within the four walls of your home; take a lesson from my brother Marvin; decide not to. Stop your anger immediately. Stop it now!!! First of all, it is not Christian. Second of all, it causes separation in your family. If you don’t, your children will find love somewhere.

The thoughts of Mel Kaufmann

 

“A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.”

Proverbs 29:11

Is It Fair To Profit Off Of A Sick Person?

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Apart from the political implications, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare is rich in life, business, moral, and economic lessons. Since this Minute was recorded in November 2009, an erroneous and displaced argument continues to be frustratingly waged in a legal, economic, social, political, and medical firestorm. It seems, however, that there is a deeper moral question at work here.

On-Purpose Business Minutes aren’t political in nature. They’re intended to get you below the surface to strategic issues that touch our lives and inform our thinking. By design, my goal is often to disturb your thinking in a manner that gets you closer to the root of the matter — to the purpose. Until you know the purpose, you can’t align your life to be on-purpose. This Minute will likely deliver on disturbing thinking!

My jaw dropped in stunned amazement as I heard Florida Congresswoman, now Democratic National Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz make the following statement on the November 22, 2009, ABC News broadcast of This Week With George Stephanopoulos. The following quotation from Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz’s comments can be found in context at this link in the show transcript.

“I hope we can all agree that we have to get rid of the profit-driven, insurance company-driven health insurance system that we have, where it’s insurance company bureaucrats, Senator Coburn, that are getting in between patients and their doctors.

“To suggest that this (healthcare reform) bill will put government in between patients and their doctors is really disingenuous …”

What has changed since 2009? Her comments are important because they reflect the crux of so much of the misplaced debate in the U.S. over healthcare reform. The failure to address core principles is a classic case of arguing sentiment over underlying values and structure that make their way into policy. Read between the lines of what she is saying here about free enterprise, economics, and so forth when she calls for “get[ting] rid of the profit-driven, insurance company-driven health insurance system.” Ask yourself if her comments represent healthcare reform or a reflection of an underlying philosophy of socialism or ignorance of the free enterprise system that created the amazing medical standards of care in the United States?

Here’s where I fall out on the matter … Yes, it is not only fair to profit off of a sick person — it is essential to the health of the individual and greater society. When the business side of doctors’ practices, insurance companies, hospitals, and medical supply companies are healthy, then the people are healthy. Free enterprise tends to increase access to healthcare, raise the standard, and make it more affordable to all. Legislation by definition comes between people’s relationships and behaviors. This burdens the delivery system with additional costs of compliance and drives up costs.

The debate over access to health insurance is a straw man argument. The true question to ask is, Can a sick or injured person gain access to healthcare? Yes! That is not a problem thanks to the Hippocratic Oath and community-based hospital systems that allocate dollars from revenues generated to care for the indigent. Persons in need are not denied healthcare. “The Emergency Medical and Treatment Labor Act (EMTLA) passed by Congress in 1986 explicitly forbids the denial of care to indigent or uninsured patients based on a lack of ability to pay.”

Health insurance is simply a means to pay for services on a shared risk basis that opens up more options to policy holders who choose to participate with their dollars. When every person has access to healthcare, why must every person have health insurance? The moral argument is basically settled. The ill and informed are cared for whether theyHealthcare debate can afford it or not. Society has deemed that to be essential to the well-being of the nation.

Access to healthcare is a right. Health insurance, however, is a choice — not a right. Choice, however, is the essential element of a free market economy. 

Choices come with consequences. Many a time I can look back at my choices and wish I had chosen differently. But I live with my choices and learn from them.

To the original question, the profit motive fuels the engine of creativity and innovation across all sectors of the economy including bio-medicine and healthcare. Entrepreneurs and business people are like economic ants swarming to find a strategic, market, or price advantage crack to gain access to and serve customers. In some minds, this behavior is seen as being unsavory and “disingenuous” and greedy. On the other hand, the profit motive fuels cost reductions, stimulates product/service enhancements, and drives down costs to the consumer in total. Free enterprise creates freedoms in a free society. Within the free enterprise system the legal system catches and punishes those who violate the law. Profit, however, is not a criminal act.

Purpose, however, is an even greater force than profit. Purpose can lightly be thought of as the inherent desire to contribute to the well-being of another person, what is often called “Making a difference.”  Purpose is service. When service and profit are integrated then the heart and the head come together to produce high and noble outcomes that profit us all.

Profit with purpose is a reason the USA has the greatest medical delivery system in the world. It is also why the USA is the wealthiest nation in the world. This combination of moral clarity, technical excellence, and business acumen provides remarkable strategic advantages.

Reform is needed, but to radically alter the course of the socio-economic sanity is the greatest threat to the health of our citizens, country, and the world — especially the coming generations. 

 

How to reduce the costs of healthcare for yourself and the country?

Here’s the Kevin W. McCarthy Solution: 70% of Americans are overweight. Let’s encourage every American to get to a healthier place — to take personal responsibility for what they eat by making healthier choices. The rising cost of the healthcare crisis will end. Doctors will be able to practice acute care medicine instead of wasting their time and talent patching up and medicating our self-inflicted “wounds.”

The true culprit to our the healthcare crisis is a nation’s collective choices of unhealthy habits and lifestyles. Personal responsibility matters deeply in one’s health and well-being. Dumping the cost of one’s unhealthy decisions onto our neighbors isn’t loving them. It is asking our neighbors to underwrite the consequences of our poor choices.

The greatest “pork” in ObamaCare isn’t in the bill itself — although it is massive. The real “pork” is in the people who are weighting down the economy with the mindless self-selecting of diseases like Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, gout, cholesterol, and more. These obesity-related diseases lead to strokes, heart attacks, cancers, premature disability, and death — an ironic and discriminating form of Darwin’s natural selectionLove your country, but a waste of human life by any measure.

Do you love your country? Then, get to a healthier place! Stop the slow killing of yourself starting today. If you can’t do it on your own, then get help. There’s no sense giving away your hard earned “profits” when you can gain health and lower the full costs of your healthcare.

Your comments are appreciated.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

P.S. Need assistance? Ready to see “the waist” go away? Talk with the Health Coach who forwarded this message to you.

Need a health coach? Talk to my wife, Judith. She can help you get to a healthier place. Go to www.ahealthierplace.com or call her at 407.927.1642.

To-Do Lists and the 24-Hour Day

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This article called Why Creating A To-Do List is Derailing Your Success highlights the importance of time blocking as we do in the 24-Hour Day found on page 50 in The On-Purpose Person.

I found the article interesting reading because it says To-Do Lists actually create more stress. I admit that I use To-Do Lists irregularly within a day as a way to allow me to focus on the matter at hand. When a fleeting thought or action item comes across my brain — (shiny new object or squirrel), I find that if I capture the idea on a running list for the day, I tend to be able to get back to the matter at hand.

Writing books or client business plans, for example, are intense efforts demanding minimal interruption or distraction, yet my brain is always running with seemingly random thoughts popping in and out. If I give one an audience, then I’m an hour down the road on something else when what was really important gets put off.

Time blocking works when I work it. If I know I have 90 minutes to write something and then there’s a next time block coming for exercise, another project, a client video conference, etc. then I value that time and attention better. I’m less apt to interrupt myself because I know what the rest of my day looks like.

So what works for you? 

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin