Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

hope

Do You Feel Like a Failure?

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Do you feel like a failure? How are you choosing to frame “failure”?

Unemployment, slow business, foreclosures, and underemployment are just some of the struggles pressing into the hearts and minds of many today. As debt stares you in the face and the opportunities apparently diminish, the personal repercussions can cause us to lose hope and begin to see our lives as failing.

This situational depression can weigh on one’s spirit to the point of discouragement and negativity if we paint ourselves as failures.

What if your perspective, not your current circumstance, is the problem?

Today’s On-Purpose Minute invites us to stop looking outward and begin looking inward and upward for a fresh approach that holds the key to grasping the present situation and life beyond.

Thomas Alva Edison, the great inventor, saw “failure” as information. (See the video clip “I Haven’t Failed” by my actor friend, Frank Attwood, who portrays Edison.) How many times have you tried and “failed” only to discover you were one step closer to success?

Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, in the movie Apollo 13 is attributed with saying “Failure is not an option,” in the face of saving the crew in space. When failure isn’t an option, then what are the options?

  • Learning
  • Growth
  • Preparation
  • Creativity
  • Exploration
  • Work-arounds

Fresh and exciting options must open up!

When we play scared, we play not to win.

The best we can do is hold steady or lose ground. A shaky self-defeating cycle is set up that once it is in motion can gain momentum and overwhelm us.

Learning to play with reasoned abandon may sound like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. It means that we’re disconnected specifically to the end result, but we’re highly focused on the matters at hand. This frees us to play for the sheer joy and moment, yet aware that what we’re doing in the moment matters. Athletes call it being in “the zone.” It is preparation and hard work intersecting with opportunity.

Truthfully, you’re apt “to choke” the first few encounters, but in time you’ll grow through the experience and be on the way to success. That’s how failures become successes.

Am I Irritating The Living Hell Out of You?

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Typically when someone is irritating the living hell out of us, this bothersome behavior provokes the fight or flight impulse. While the expression is often used, what if there really is more than meets the idiom?

How many of us find ourselves or someone close to us caught in a living hell within our body, mind, spirit, and financial condition?

There’s nothing worse than this sense of hopelessness except resignation to the hopelessness and denial.

On-Purpose® is about awakening us to face our “living hell” by getting to the core of our being which by definition is good, pure, and whole—our purpose. Here is the keyhole to the escape hatch into being true to ourselves.

Choose hope!

Putting a name on our situation strengthens us to face it more directly, boldly, and successfully.

Why not experience the promise of “on earth as it is in heaven” on-purpose? Yes, I hope tshareasimage(5)his message irritates the living hell out of you … and you’ll thank me for it.

Escape Your Living Hell

On a highly selective basis, I’m looking to mentor and develop quality people who want to build a true business as a coach. This will mean learning, ongoing dialogue and development, determination, and a long-term commitment to stay the course. You’ll be helping your clients get to a healthier place in their lives in the most robust sense of well-being. For you this means work, learning to engage clients, and growing as a leader on-purpose.

Interested? Email me why you think this sounds like you. I’m conducting interviews to work with 3 people.

How Do You Manage Disappointment?

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Disappointment is inevitable but it need not be debilitating.

How you manage it, however, is a choice with profound implications to your well-being, relationships, and opportunities. The easy route is to react negatively and stay there, but what good is that? You have a better choice.

I got to thinking about the word: disappointment.

It led me to this chain of words: disappointment > disappoint > point > appoint > appointment. The common word is “point” as in a mark or dot or direction. When we’re disappointed, the mark has been missed. It does, however, provide an opportunity for redirection.

What if disappointment is really intended to direct us to a greater appointment?

So when we stay in a negative place, aren’t we the ones who increase the price of the initial disappointment and risk missing where we’ve been appointed to shine?

(To see another use of “the point” you can watch this 9-minute video about the punctuation of your life. Is your life a question mark, period, or exclamation point? It is an excerpt from a keynote speaking engagement I did a few years ago.)

The holiday season sets high expectations, which can lead to great disappointment.

How do you turn that around?

As one year rolls into the next, take some time to refocus on-purpose.

I would love to hear your words of advice for getting unstuck when you find yourself disappointed with something important.

What works for you in managing disappointment? Share your thoughts in the comment box below. What you have to say may be the very words that help transform another person’s perspective. Now don’t disappoint me!  : )

What is the Upside to a Down Economy?

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Financial challenges rip at a misplaced sense of security. These can be very challenging and humbling times. My business has been hurting this year because I allowed myself to be in a position where a client could stiff me for a large sum of money. The ripple effects touch every aspect of my life and business. 

Because we're working as a team and as a family, good is coming out of the hardship. How about you? Please share your comments or story of the upside of a down economy. Your thoughts may inspire, comfort, or encourage someone in a similar situation to see things in a more positive and productive light. Hope need never be lost.

Subscribe to The On-Purpose® Minute.

On-Purpose Profile: Michelle Aguilar

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Weight loss has a definite physical component, but there is so much more to being well.  Our heart and soul, however, are what's often eating at us and why we eat to fill the void.  This video
from the I Am Second series with Michelle Aguilar, a winner of The Biggest Loser TV show, provides great insight into the cause and cure.  (Click on the image below of Michelle to watch the video.)

After watching Michelle's story, continue to view many more stories of some famous and not so famous people and why they are second.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

Michelle Aguilar

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