Ken Fite

Yesterday morning, my three-year-old son Noah asked me to make him a paper airplane.

So I grabbed a sheet of paper from my office and expertly crafted the perfect airplane for him. I took my time. I folded the paper perfectly. I made sure the creases were solid. I did a test throw.

Then I handed it off to Noah who grabbed it by its wing and started running around the room.

A few seconds later, his older brother Kyle came downstairs and saw that Noah had a paper airplane and wanted me to make him one, too. Kyle was about to leave for school in a few minutes, so I grabbed another sheet of paper and I quickly made my seven-year-old an airplane.

It wasn’t perfect.

The creases weren’t even. It was a little crooked. But it was all I could do with the time that I had.

Kyle threw his airplane and it glided across the room with ease.

Noah watched and realized that he was supposed to actually throw his airplane, not just play with it, so he gave it a try. Noah threw his airplane as hard as he could and it crashed and got bent.

He picked it up and threw it again with all of his might, not understanding that throwing a paper airplane that hard won’t make it fly at all, and again it crashed, bending it even further.

I picked up the airplane, reshaped it, and showed Noah how to properly throw it like his brother.

It made me think about how many of us do the same thing with our creative projects.

Like the first paper airplane that I so carefully crafted, I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my follow-up novel. I’ve been working on the plot. On the characters. On the twists. On the turns.

I want the novel to take off when I launch it and fly just as far if not farther than the first book.

But working on the novel and writing the novel are two very different things.

I realized yesterday that my outline has the perfect creases. It’s been expertly crafted. I’ve written a draft for the first act. My characters have depth. My plot is solid. I’ve taken my time.

But like Noah who threw with all of his might, much harder than was necessary only to see his perfectly crafted paper airplane crash and get all bent out of shape, I’m trying too hard, too.

If this sounds like you, realize that there comes a time when you’ve done as much planning, as much preparation as is necessary. Whatever you’ve been working on isn’t going to be perfect, either. So stop trying so hard. Stop planning. Execute. Get it done and start the next project.

Because like Kyle found, things don’t have to be absolutely perfect for them to be able to fly.

Legacy is a word we like to use for those who have accomplished something big in their lives. Actors. Musicians. Athletes. Parents, family, and friends who have passed on before us…

“They left such a legacy,” we say, as if leaving a legacy is something few of us ever accomplish.

But leaving a legacy isn’t unattainable.

It’s actually unavoidable. Because we’re all leaving our own legacies. Every one of us.

Every interaction we have with other people. Every phone call. Every text. Every spoken word. Every decision we make. They collectively add up to the overall legacy that we will leave.

But I believe that legacy is more than how we treat others. I think that’s only half of it.

Because the other half of legacy includes what we leave behind in the world once we’re gone.

They say that the average person dies at 25 but is buried at 75. And in the graveyard, the richest place on earth, is buried some of the greatest books and inventions that the world will never see.

Dreams that never saw the light of day because they were too busy living life. Sound familiar?

It makes me think about the parable of the talents and how the third servant buried his talent instead of using it for good. I wonder if he represents literally being buried with unrealized talent.

I once heard author Seth Godin say that if you have a dream in your heart, you have a responsibility – an obligation – to share it with the world. Keeping it buried would be irresponsible.

My guess is that you already know what that dream is for your life.

And if you don’t, you owe it to yourself – and to the world – to figure out what your legacy will be.

Helen Keller was once asked, “What on earth would be worse than being born blind?”

She said, “It would be so much worse to be born with sight, but no vision.”

If that’s you, take some time to create your vision, to find your calling, to know why you’re here.

But don’t wonder how you’re going to leave a legacy because you’re already leaving one.

We all are.

The only question left is, what will the legacy that we leave behind in the world be?

On Monday morning, I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to outline my next thriller.

I was ready to plan another adventure for my new hero, Blake Jordan, so I could get started writing the next novel in the series. But first, I decided to check my Amazon reviews for the first book.

Why? Because I want what all writers want. To know if I’m any good.

That was a BIG MISTAKE.

While I had over thirty 5-star reviews, one 1-star reviewer told me that I was a hack. I had zero character development. And the book was a waste of time, “unless you’re stranded at an airport.”

That’ll wake you up faster than a steaming cup of coffee.

And nothing will throw you off your game more than someone being overly critical of something that you’ve spent time pouring your heart and soul into. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

That’s because we all have our own “1-star reviewers” in our lives. They take many forms, but they’re everywhere. They criticize us every chance they get. We’re just not good enough to them.

I tried to shrug it off and went back to continue outlining the follow-up book. But twenty minutes later, instead of making progress on the next book, I was back reading that 1-star review again.

What’s interesting to me is how although this morning the book has over forty 5-star reviews from fans who absolutely loved the book, couldn’t put it down, stayed up all night reading and want more Blake Jordan (and want it now!) it’s the 1-star review that’s hard to stop thinking about.

Life is like that, too.

We wonder what we can do to change. We think about how we can make the many 1-star reviewers in our lives, the people who love to be critical of us, like us and what we create.

The answer is simple.

We can’t.

What we have to remember is that our critics are loud. On Amazon, they rate every other book they read 1-star, too. In real life, they condemn, criticize, and complain about almost everything.

And people listen to them. Not because their critiques are valuable or helpful to us in any way. They listen because they can’t get away from them and don’t want to be criticized themselves.

How do you know if someone in your life is a 1-star reviewer or genuinely wants to help you improve? You’ll know based on the feedback that they give you. Because when I started reading the many positive reviews, I found nuggets of wisdom from my readers that was very helpful:

1. I need to brush up on my firearms knowledge and be more descriptive in my scenes.
2. The changing point of view was challenging for the reader and I need to be more careful.
3. Who was speaking at times was not always clear making it difficult for the reader to follow.
4. I need to work on my sentence construction, dialogue grammar, and more carefully edit.

This is feedback that can help me improve, feedback that can enhance the reader experience for my next book. But the 1-star reviewers in our lives don’t usually give us feedback that is helpful.

So my advice (which I’m telling myself as well) is simple. Stop wasting your time trying to win over your critics. You never will. They don’t get you and they don’t value your work. And that’s okay.

Instead, focus on those who like you and love what you do. Be open to feedback and use it to improve your work. But don’t let the 1-star reviewers in your life throw you off your game.

And know that there’s only one way to avoid criticism. Do nothing. Say nothing. Be nothing.

It’s been three weeks since my first novel, The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller was released. I’ve had a blast reading the reviews from fans who loved the story and can’t wait for the next book.

So I spent all week working on the outline for book two, which I plan to finish next week so I can start writing in the next few days with the goal of finishing the followup thriller before summer.

As I worked on plotting the outline and working on developing the characters and their story arcs, I thought I’d share with you the reason why once I start writing, I don’t do any rewrites when I find my characters painted into a corner that I don’t know how to get them out of at first.

When it comes to writers, we usually fall into one of two categories: plotters or pantsers.

Pantsers write by the seat of their pants. They crack open their laptop and just start writing, hoping a story somehow evolves and they make changes to fix their story down the road if they need to. That’s how Stephen King writes, so it should be a good enough strategy, many writers reason.

I fall into the plotter category.

Before I sit down and start writing, I outline the entire novel, chapter-by-chapter, with a detailed plot showing well-motivated characters overcoming obstacles in pursuit of a goal at all times.

Plotting a novel with a thorough outline before you ever write a single word is one of the most important things you can do to make sure you don’t waste time later when you’re actually writing the novel. But outlining doesn’t guarantee you won’t write your characters into a corner.

Although I had plotted The Senator, I still wound up with characters in situations where it seemed like there was no way out and all hope was lost. That’s because outlines are high-level. They don’t take into account subplots and actions that other characters take that reverberate throughout the story and how those decisions impact future events.

And here’s where I think I handle things a bit differently from other writers: I don’t rewrite scenes or make changes earlier in the story to get my characters out of bad situations.

That’s not typical.

Many writers waste a lot of time going back and trying to change prior events in their story in hopes to get their characters to end up with a different outcome than the one they’re currently stuck in, kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Then they wonder why it takes years to finish their first novel. What they don’t realize I think is that by fixing one story problem, it can cause a new problem to show up. The whole story gets so complicated that they give up or start over.

That’s one reason why I don’t change my story once I start writing. But the main reason why I don’t rewrite is because I believe that fiction should be reflective of real life, wherever possible.

It’s called playing the hand you’re dealt.

We can’t change the bad things that happen to us. We can’t change history or turn back time.

But what we can do is think up a creative way to get ourselves out of the corners of life that we paint ourselves into.

One thing to note for writing thrillers is that in order to write a good story, your main characters have to find themselves in terrible trouble, up against the wall, with seemingly no way out. It’s called “the dark moment” and it happens in every novel around the halfway mark of the book. It also happens before the hero gets a surprise break, a new lead, or makes a realization that completely turns their situation around. These things have to happen for the story to be “good.”

So the next time you find yourself in terrible trouble, painted into a corner of life with what seems like no way out, don’t try to rewrite history. Don’t waste your time worrying about what could have been. And don’t give up hope or believe that things will never get better for you.

Instead, think of a creative way to get out of the situation that you’ve found yourself in.

Because you’re really at the halfway mark in your adventure and without the struggle you’re facing, you wouldn’t have a good story to tell down the road when all of the dust settles.

On Sunday, I gave a testimony at my church about how waking up early changed my life which I wrote about in The 4-Minute Morning. One of the songs that we later sang as a congregation I’ve heard a million times called This Is Your Life by Switchfoot. I’m sure you’ve heard the song, too.

Although I know the lyrics by heart, it’s one of those songs I’ve gotten so used to that the words just don’t matter that much to me anymore. I can sing them (in the shower with the door locked) without giving them much regard. But sometimes you start to pay attention to things like song lyrics when you find yourself in a situation where the song starts to become meaningful to you again.

As I read the lyrics on the screen, I started paying attention to and thinking about the words…

This is your life
Are you who you want to be?
This is your life
Is it everything you’ve dreamed it would be
When the world was younger
And you had everything to lose?

I think a lot of us live with regret. We had dreams once, maybe when we were younger, but that was a long time ago and we start to tell ourselves that it’s too late and we should stop dreaming.

Please don’t do that.

Because we live in a world where we see the highlight reels on our friend’s Facebook pages.

We see people who are successful, who have “made it,” and we wonder why that can’t be us.

We believe we’ve missed our chance, that the only option left is to settle for a life of mediocrity.

But it’s a lie. And I’ll prove it to you.

At age 23, Oprah was fired from her first reporting job. Instead of giving up on television and going back home to Kosciusko, Mississippi, she used the experience to drive her career forward.

Also at 23, Walt Disney declared bankruptcy after his first business attempt failed. Eight years later, he created Mickey Mouse, a new company, and created a new life for himself in the process.

If anyone ever had an excuse to give up on their dreams, it was those two.

At 24, Stephen King was living in a trailer and working as a janitor.

At 28, JK Rowling was a broke single parent living on welfare.

At 30, Harrison Ford was working as a carpenter.

At 30, Martha Stewart was working as a stockbroker.

At 45, Samuel L. Jackson was trying to get his first breakout movie with Pulp Fiction.

At 51, Morgan Freeman was trying to land his first major movie role with Lean on Me.

Success probably looks a lot different for you. I know it does for me.

But understand that very few people see their “success” right away. And if you give up too soon, you might miss your chance at becoming who you want to be.

Stop believing the lie that everyone who’s successful has never failed or saw success right away.

Stop telling yourself you’re too old to become who you were meant to be.

And start doing something to see your dream become a reality, even if it means waking up earlier.

This is your life. Yesterday is dead and over. The world isn’t getting younger. And you still have everything to lose. But the one thing you don’t want to hold onto any longer is regret.

Last weekend, I published my 9th book and first novel, The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller. Since then, I’ve had more downloads, blog subscribers, and emails from fans than I’ve ever had before.

They love the book. And I loved writing it. Pushing myself to try something new and write fiction for the first time was a lot of work. But it was also a ton of fun – I had an absolute blast doing it.

It’s a strange thing going from writing a book and hoping readers want it to writing a book and having readers ask you when you’ll write the next in the series because they want it right now.

This is easily the best book launch I’ve ever had. But my launches haven’t always gone this well.

Four months into my writing career, I had a brilliant idea. It was October 2014 and America was losing their ever-loving mind over this thing called Ebola that somehow found its way to our shores.

I was with them. Partly because of the media. Mostly because I didn’t know much about the virus.

So I decided to do something about it. I read the best books on the topic. I watched documentaries. And I read countless news stories about what was happening in America.

Then I decided to write a book about the deadly virus, infusing absolutely everything that I had learned with a detailed breakdown on how it came to our shores and how unprepared we really were as a nation. There were no other books like it out there. So I was determined to write it.

But my enthusiasm wasn’t sparked by passion. I was motivated by profits. My brilliant idea was to write a book and ride the profit train as far as it could take me. Which didn’t end up being far at all.

The day that I finally published American Ebola: A Deadly Warning for an Unprepared Nation, the last person to contract the virus was released from the hospital. The virus was under control and the story completely dropped off the media’s radar, making my book obsolete. And irrelevant.

My intentions were good. I saw a gap in the marketplace and I intended to write the perfect book to fill that gap. That’s what they taught me in business school, after all. But nobody bought the book.

I just checked a few minutes ago, and in the last 90 days, I’ve sold 1 copy. That book was a failure.

The reason American Ebola failed wasn’t because it was a terrible book. It failed because I had the equation wrong. I was too focused on business and not on my passion. Here’s the right equation:

Enthusiasm + passion = success.

When I wrote American Ebola, I was enthusiastic (about writing something I thought people wanted) but I had no passion. I didn’t spring out of bed in the morning, eager to write that book.

Comparing the writing process to my new book, The Senator, there is no comparison. I couldn’t wait to wake up and write the next chapter of the thriller – I had enthusiasm. And I was passionate about learning how to write a good story from start to finish, even if nobody ever bought it.

I think the success equation is often forgotten in life. Chasing profits instead of passion hardly ever works out in the end. All it does is waste our time and take us further down the wrong path of life.

The easy thing to do would be to unpublish that book. To hide my mistake and make it look like all of my books have been bestsellers. And maybe I should unpublish it at some point down the road.

For now, I’ve decided to keep it out there as a reminder to myself to be enthusiastic and passionate with what I choose to write about and to motivate me to write a better book next time.

I don’t have it all figured out yet. I’m trying to find my purpose in life just like everyone else. But I think the next time I get a brilliant idea, I’ll take some time to test it against the success equation.

You may have never heard of a guy named Pat Flynn, but he’s been a mentor of mine for a very long time, even though I’ve never met Pat or had an actual one-on-one conversation with him.

I’ve been listening to his Smart Passive Income Podcast along with thousands of other listeners, watching his amazing journey, and learning how to become an entrepreneur for years.

He has such a huge following online because of the passive income businesses he’s created.

But Pat’s actually the first person that comes to mind when I think about failure.

He did all the right things in life, things we’re told we’re supposed to do in order to have “success.”

Pat graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in Architecture. After graduation, he landed a gig as a Job Captain at an architectural firm. Then Pat got engaged.

He was thriving in his career. Life was great. But right before his wedding day, everything changed.

Pat got called into his boss’s office and lost his job.

It was completely unexpected. That event could have been the start of a terrible time in his life and brought great stress to his marriage with a scramble for him to find another architecture job.

But instead of focusing on the job that he lost, Pat decided to focus instead on what he had.

And that was a Website.

While working at the firm, Pat had started to study for the LEED architectural exam and began blogging his notes as a way to organize his thoughts and maybe help others. After he lost his job, Pat started looking at his Website stats and noticed that his blog was generating traffic. A lot of traffic. Readers began emailing him asking if he would put his blog study notes into an eBook.

Six weeks later, the eBook was created and Pat was generating $8,000 a month for his new family.

That was in 2008. Over the last several years, Pat has continued to build his passive income empire and documenting the process with a monthly income report to inspire people like me of what is possible. Last month, he earned $150,616.15. Last year he earned just over $1.5 Million.

When he’s asked about the day he got let go, Pat says that while it seemed like a terrible situation at the time, looking back now, he sees it as the best thing that ever happened to him. It forced him to think creatively and find a Plan B that he never would have considered doing otherwise. He’s been able to spend time with his wife and kids that never would have been possible before.

Pat thought that his destiny was to be an architect. But in his failure, he discovered his true calling.

As Believers, the trials of life are where our faith gets tested to see what we’re made of. Good can come from failure if we believe and trust and focus on what we have instead of on what we’ve lost.

Remember that failure is not fatal.

It’s not the opposite of success, it’s often the spark that ignites something new.

May we all be humble enough to see our trials as the opportunities that they truly are.

Don’t bury your failures. Let them inspire you to find your Plan B.

Thanks, Pat.

When I was seven years old, my mom and dad signed me up for Cub Scouts. One of my first memories about scouting was my parents taking me camping with the rest of my Tiger Cub den.

Before dark, my dad pitched the tent and after he fell asleep, I stayed awake for a long time, laying on the hard ground and hearing him snore so loud I’m sure he kept the rest of the campers awake.

I don’t remember many other details from that camping trip. I don’t remember roasting marshmallows or snipe hunting or doing anything else that you’d expect a camp out to include.

I just remember my dad being there.

That’s one of the reasons why a year ago I went to the Dad and Me camp with my son, Kyle, which I wrote about here with my post on how to be a dad.

I almost didn’t go. Because when I think about canoes, I also think about my dad and that one time that I accidentally tipped us over once at his office picnic when I was ten years old. And I think about how I accidentally hooked my friend in the head the first time I tried going fishing. I’m about as indoorsy of a man as you can get. I have to protect my delicate writer hands, after all.

Putting me out in the wild is dangerous on many different levels. But I went anyway.

And today, I’ve got a double-whammy of a weekend planned. I’m headed back to Dad and Me camp tonight, then I’m camping overnight at our local zoo with the Cub Scouts tomorrow.

For the guy’s guy, it’s the perfect weekend. For a guy like me, not so much. But there’s a reason why I’m spending the weekend creating these memories with my boy.

I’ve learned that if I want to be in my son’s memories tomorrow, I need to be in his life today.

If I could sum up the advice for intentionally creating memories with our kids, it would be this…

Be there.

Our kids don’t care if we’re the best camper in the world. Or the best canoer. Or the best fisher. Or the best tent pitcher.

We’re already the best (unless they ask for dessert and we say no, then we’re the worst).

But being there isn’t easy.

It’s inconvenient. It’s messy. It takes us away from our routines that we like to hold onto so tightly.

And that’s okay.

Because twenty years from now, my son won’t remember the usual weekend routine, I don’t think. He probably won’t remember watching nonstop episodes of Octonauts on Saturday mornings.

I think he’ll probably remember the time that his dad planned a crazy weekend, just me and him.

I’m not going to be perfect this weekend. I’m sure I’ll get lost driving from one camp to the other. I’ll probably forget to pack something we need. And I’ll struggle pitching the tent with my writer hands.

But I’ll be there.

And I think that’s what matters.

We have a really bad habit at the Fite household where after dinner, the boys ask the same question. “Can we have dessert?” I thought once we ran out of Halloween candy, we’d be done.

But no. It took months to work through that stockpile of Sixlets, Twix, and Starburst. And just when we started to see the bottom of their candy bags, Easter hit us like a ton of sugar-filled bricks.

So every night, fifteen minutes into dinner, my three and seven-year-olds ask the, “Can we have dessert?” question. And my answer is always the same. “After you eat everything on your plate.”

That’s around the time that an all-out melee breaks out. There’s weeping (the boys) and gnashing of teeth (Missy and me) and I wonder why we even have candy in the house in the first place.

Here’s the thing. It’s not that I don’t want to give the boys dessert. I do. But the little hellions didn’t eat their dinner. They’re trying to skip a step. So I do not bequeath their beloved sugar unto them.

For whatever reason, this scene of my boys skipping a step is what I think about when my thoughts drift to some of the prayers that I’ve been sending up to heaven lately. Prayers that despite my best efforts, haven’t been answered. I don’t know why, but it seems like some prayers get a response while others travel to Never Never Land, never to be seen or heard from again.

At least it feels like never.

It can be frustrating to pray and not get the answer that you expected. Or not get an answer at all. But the more I think about it, the more I realize why some of my prayers aren’t being answered.

I think it’s because I’m not grateful.

Prayer is super important – but how we pray matters, too. And when I think about how I pray, I notice a trend. See if you can find it yourself:

Help ME do this and I’ll never ask you for anything again… give ME that thing that I want and I’ll be happy… do this for ME because I’ve worked really hard and I think I really deserve it.

They sound like the prayers of an eight-year-old. And in a way, they are. But the thing I hope you noticed is that my prayers are all “me” focused and center around what I want.

I can’t help but wonder if the real reason why some prayers go unanswered is because most of us aren’t grateful for the things that we already have. I don’t think God is up there power trippin’. He doesn’t make us jump through unnecessary hoops or sort through a bunch of red tape to bless us with good things. He wants to bless His children. But He wants us to follow a process, too.

And I believe that being grateful for what you have is a prerequisite for asking for something better.

Because the crappy house you live in now was the very thing you prayed for years ago that you no longer appreciate because you want a bigger place to live.

Because that stupid car that you can’t stand and want to trade in is the very thing you prayed to get years ago and drove away from the dealership feeling like a million bucks.

Because that job you hate is the very job you spent countless hours praying that you’d get an offer for not too long ago.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t outgrow our homes or we drive around in beaters our whole lives or we don’t look for different job opportunities.

But it does mean that while we pray for something better, we need to be grateful for what we have.

Because that house that’s too small protects your family and keeps them safe. That car with all of its dents and dings gets you safely to work every day. And that job provides for your family.

I’m not suggesting that if you pray a grateful prayer that it’s going to be answered. And I’m not saying that we should never pray for blessings or for things that will make life better for us.

But I’m starting to think that being grateful for the things that we already have is a step that most of us skip in the process of praying and believing for something better to happen to us.

We can’t let the things that we want make us forget about the things that we already have.

I don’t really know if being ungrateful is the real reason why prayers go unanswered. But I’m going to try to be more grateful. Because it’s a necessary step that we can’t afford to skip anymore.

Life isn’t perfect. Be grateful, anyway.

The summer before eighth grade, I decided to join band to become a trumpet player.

I don’t really remember what sparked my interest in wanting to play the trumpet. Maybe it was the cassettes of Miles Davis that my parents got me that I listened to nonstop. Maybe it was the swagger the trumpet players at my middle school had, always being able to attract the lady-folk.

Whatever the reason, I was determined to become a trumpet player.

I was thirteen when the new school year started. It’s the only time I ever remember being excited about my first day of school, unable to fall asleep the night before and up at the crack of dawn.

When class started, the band director gave a brief overview of what to expect in beginning band and asked us what we wanted to play. Then he had the students sit in their respective sections for trumpet, trombone, flute, etc. I sat with my new-found crew of compadres, ready to learn to play.

But my reign as a trumpet player didn’t last long.

When the bell rang, Mr. Bentley asked me to stay back so he could talk with me. I thought maybe he was going to compliment me on my instrument of choice. Or warn me that I had better not become one of those obnoxious trumpet players who would drown out the rest of the orchestra (which, let’s face it, is every trumpet player’s main goal in life and sole purpose for living).

That didn’t happen. Instead, Mr. Bentley told me I couldn’t play the trumpet.

When I asked why, he told me because I “had the lips of a trombone player” and walked away.

I sat there alone in the band room for a very long time. The words Mr. Bentley spoke to me completely changed how I viewed myself. I thought I was a trumpet player – but I was wrong.

So I stood, grabbed my overly large backpack, and left for my next class, not caring that I was late.

For the next two years, I played the trombone in eighth and ninth grades. And I was terrible.

I only describe myself as terrible because I can’t think of a better word to explain how awful I really was at the trombone. What kind of barbaric instrument doesn’t have keys and instead uses a weird slide that you have to position perfectly for every note? I was last chair in the bottom band. And if you don’t know what that means, I’ll bottom line it for you – you couldn’t get any worse than me.

But I wanted to be part of the band, so I stayed and I tried really hard to get better.

I was focused on succeeding at the wrong thing. And because it was wrong, I was set up for failure from the beginning. When you try to succeed at the wrong thing, all you do is waste your time.

By the summer before my sophomore year of high school, I had had enough. I had spent two years of my life trying to become someone that I wasn’t. Two years wasted on the wrong path.

I decided to go out and buy a trumpet and show up on the first day of class with it.

I was nervous, not knowing how Mr. Scott, my high school band director, would react to me declaring that I was now a trumpet player. But I practiced that summer, so he simply said Okay.

Within a year I was playing in the top band. Then I became section leader. Then I was given solos. I wasn’t the best, that’s for sure, but I was doing what I felt called to be doing at that time in my life.

And most importantly, I was having a blast.

One Friday night, after playing a solo with the marching band during halftime of the football game, Mr. Bentley, who I hadn’t seen in at least four years, found me standing in line at the water cooler.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. I was a little confused and then he clarified for me. “I told you that you had the lips of a trombone player. It wasn’t true. I just had too many trumpets already in the band.”

I told him it was fine and walked away. I’m sure he was in a tough position – you can’t have a roomful of trumpet players, after all – and I just as well might have done the same thing myself.

And that’s how life works. But you have to follow your heart when you feel called to do something. Twenty-five years later and it’s still easy for me to forget this.

Stand up for what you believe to be true.

Don’t let someone tell you who you are or what you’re not.

If you’re told that you have the lips of a trombone player – have the courage to show up with a trumpet anyway. And if they have too many trumpet players, go find a new band to play in.