Ken Fite

Should we take the camera to the Easter egg hunt? It’s the question my wife asks me every year, just minutes before we leave for our church’s annual Easter egg hunt. And I always answer Yes.

But this year when she asked me that same question, I said No. Then I hurried to the car before she could give me the look that she’s famous for and which I try my best to avoid at all costs.

I didn’t say No because it would be one more thing to keep track of, which would have been a good excuse. And not because I worried that my toddler would get a hold of it with his peanut-buttery slobber fingers that he touches expensive things with. That also would have been a great reason.

I said No because I’m tired of seeing life through a 4 inch screen.

Every year the same thing happens. My boys, along with hundreds of other candy-obsessed little children, line up on the sidewalk next to a field littered with plastic eggs, as we wait on our pastor to turn off the music, turn on the squeaky microphone, and yell On your mark, get set, go!

And every year at that moment I run after them, trying to take pictures on my DSLR camera with my right hand, take a video on my Flip cam with my left hand, and keep the boys inside the frame on both all the while dancing around plastic eggs on the ground that other kids haven’t picked up yet so I don’t step on them, break them, and make anyone cry. I’ve become quite good at it.

The problem is, by concentrating so hard to capture the moment, I miss the moment.

Sure I go back later to see the pictures and watch the videos, like a grandparent across the country might do on Facebook. But I don’t remember the event. I was there, but I wasn’t really there.

The paradox is that the best memories are rarely captured on a device.

I’ll never forget the moment I proposed to my wife and the look on her face when she said Yes as I knelt on bended knee under the Navy Pier fireworks in Chicago.

Or the moment my kids were born and we got to see these little ones we loved but hadn’t met yet.

Or my parent’s smile when I finally found them in the crowd after my college graduation.

I would never trade those memories for anything.

But that’s what we do when we focus on capturing the moment instead of living the moment.

Now, Missy did ask me again to take some pictures once we got there. I used my iPhone to get a few great shots of the boys at the beginning of the hunt.

Then I put the phone in my pocket and enjoyed seeing my boys have fun.

Not through a 4 inch screen, but in real life. I got to truly see the joy in finding a silly plastic egg and laugh every time they bent down to pick up another one while their already overflowing basket emptied out. I enjoyed it the way the kids’ grandparents would have rather experienced it, instead of through a video that they would only be able to like and comment on through Facebook.

I was there. And I was there.

And out of all of the Easter egg hunts we’ve gone to with the boys, this is the one I’ll remember.

How many opportunities are we going to miss to do something extraordinary with our lives?

A few weeks ago I was playing a game with my six-year-old son Kyle. This was a rare event – because he’s six, he’d much rather wrestle with me, color with his crayons, ride his bike, or play with his little brother. But for a little while, we played together. It was so much fun. At first.

I explained how the game worked. I explained that we would take turns and after I went, he’d go next. And like most six-year-olds, he soon got distracted. I had to keep reminding him It’s your turn.

This went on for a while. As I became a little frustrated with having to keep reminding him that it was his turn, I started to think about all of the games I’ve played were I also wasn’t paying attention. Then I realized that when it comes to playing games, there’s two kinds of people in this world:

1. Those who don’t realize it’s their turn and
2. Those who can’t wait for it to be their turn

And it’s not just the games we play with our friends and family. This applies to the game of life, too.

Those who don’t realize that it’s their turn.

Some will never realize that it’s their turn. They’d much rather complain about their life and blame others. The world is unfair. Their job is unfair. Their landlord is unfair. Life is unfair. They had a chance once, when they were younger maybe, but they missed it and they think they’ll never be given another shot. But they do have that second chance – right now – they just don’t realize it. Every day they choose to go to a job that they hate in a career that’s dead or dying or they stay in a relationship that’s not good for them instead of putting in the extra time and effort to find something better. If they only spent the same amount of energy on doing something different instead of complaining, they could actually change their life. But they don’t. It’s not their turn yet, they think.

Those who can’t wait for it to be their turn.

Some can’t wait for their turn. They’re competitive. They don’t just know the hand that they were dealt, but they know everyone else’s as well. While all of the other players are trying to figure out their next move, those waiting for their turn have already played out the next three moves in their head. In life, they’re ready for the next big thing to happen to them. What they don’t realize is that they need to happen to it. They no longer have to wait. News isn’t broken by Brian Williams anymore. It’s broken by anyone who has a Twitter account. There are no more gatekeepers. Those who can’t wait for their turn could change everything today if they tried. They could be game changers. But instead, they wait patiently for it to be their turn and don’t see that it already is.

I don’t know which one of these you are. I don’t know if you’re the super competitive type or if you’re still asleep. But I do know that every day that you choose to do something other than what you feel that you’re called to do, you’re not only stagnant, you’re going in the opposite direction.

It’s time to wake up. It’s your turn and all eyes are on you. Will you make your move?

I’m a Christian. That doesn’t mean I watch Leave It to Beaver marathons or go around saying things like “good golly” all the time, although I did use that phrase the other day. It does mean that I try to be aware of who I allow to influence me and where I spend my time. I’m learning that what I focus on matters if I want to stay on the right path. Motivational speaker Jim Rohn said it best:

You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.

A few years ago, I was laying in bed in a hotel room in Omaha, Nebraska. I was on a business trip and trying to get some shuteye before a day full of meetings. So I turned off the light and tried to catch some sleep. Then I remembered that I forgot to brush my teeth. So I got up and that’s when it happened. I broke my toe on the nightstand. Good golly was it painful. It hurt so bad. It was awful.

Later that night, after I laid down again, I could slowly start to see the outline of the nightstand. It was faint at first, but then it became more and more apparent until finally, it was very easy to see.

I thought about all of the walking I’d have to do the next day. How did I not see the nightstand?

I missed it because my eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness. It takes time to adjust. The amount of time that it takes is different for everybody, but eventually, we will all adjust to the dark.

What we don’t often realize is that other things in our lives can become a form of darkness as well and if we’re not careful, our eyes will adjust to them, too. It will be slow. We may not notice it at first. But we will adjust. It could be people who aren’t the best influence on us or TV shows that aren’t very uplifting (not Leave It to Beaver). It could even be “busyness” and always needing to have something to do rather than just enjoying the day with the people you love as if it may be your last.

We need to pay attention to what we surround ourselves with. They affect us more than we realize.

Are you on the right path to becoming the person that you want to be?

Last week I wrote about how feedback is a gift… that when our boss, our parents, our friends, or our spouse provide feedback, we tend to get defensive and discount what they say. I explained how if we want to improve, we need to listen to their words because perception is reality and there is a nugget of truth buried deep inside feedback. I explained that feedback is only a gift if we receive it.

But there’s another danger to be aware of – the danger of being good enough.

When we’re good enough, all we ever hear from others is good job. We get a pat on the back and a tip of the hat. We get the passing grade in class, or a decent annual review at work. We go through our day executing with excellence but we never break a sweat. We feel like we’ve finally made it, we know what we’re doing and we do it well. We’ve arrived and everybody loves us.

Here’s the thing – if all you ever hear from others is good job, you’re not growing. And if you haven’t done something in the last 60 days that puts you completely out of your comfort zone, you’re not on the path to becoming a better version of you.

There’s a song by the band Muse that has the following lyrics:

I’ve had recurring nightmares
That I was loved for who I am
And missed the opportunity
To be a better man

I’ve thought about those words a lot this week. They’ve haunted me. I’ve struggled to accept them. But they are true. As long as I focus on being loved and staying in my safe zone, I’m cheating myself out of being the person that I want to be. That’s a hard pill to swallow. Why put ourselves through discomfort if we don’t have to? Why not just sit back and enjoy the fruit of our labor?

Because there is no growth in the comfort zone and there is no comfort in the growth zone. Unless we do the things that we’re afraid to do, we’ll never reach our full potential. If you don’t have anyone in your life pushing you to get to the next level or to try something different, you’ll need to push yourself. It will be strange. Your family and friends may not understand it. That’s okay, they will.

If everybody loves you, if you’re not being challenged by others or by yourself, it may be time to decide if you’re on the path that you want to be on and if you’re in the danger zone of good enough.

Can I give you some feedback?

It’s not the phrase I like to hear. Ever. It gives me the heebeegeebeez. It takes me back to when I was eight years old and I took karate lessons – I feel like strapping on my white belt (don’t judge), getting into a crane stance like the Karate Kid, and make ridiculous Bruce Lee sounds.

I feel like this because the next few words that come out of the other person’s mouth are lies. I’ll know because their lips will be moving. Whatever the other person is about to say cannot be true. They’ve spun a web of false assumptions that they’re now ready to trap me in. These lying liars are the worst and really do make me want to carry my white belt around with me.

There’s a problem, though. The feedback is true – to them at least. Perception is reality. That’s probably my second least favorite phrase to hear. But what someone else experiences, whether true or not, is their reality. A reality that we’re a part of. One that we need to be more aware of.

What I keep reminding myself is that feedback is a gift.

It’s an opportunity to understand how someone else sees you. How your character is portrayed in the script of their life. You may be the protagonist in your world but the antagonist in theirs. And if they never tell you otherwise, you may never realize it or have the opportunity to change the story.

People may not come right out and say directly Can I give you some feedback? but they’re sure to give you feedback in other ways. They’ll make a passing comment. They may give you a look, or if you’re my wife, THE look. Or my personal favorite – the good ol’ stink eye.

We can’t make everyone happy. Bill Cosby taught us that when he said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” That’s the other side of the coin.

But there is a nugget of truth, however small, buried within feedback. Our job is to listen honestly, withholding judgment, and decide if it’s valid or not. Only then should we set the record straight.

And we must remember that the only way feedback is a gift is if we receive it.

I spoke with a friend this week who absolutely hates his job and asked me what he should do.

I’ve been in the same boat. Most of us have.

When I was in college, I worked on the radio part-time. I had a blast being on the air. It was my dream job, something I had wanted to do since I was eight years old. But it wasn’t paying the bills anymore and the whole industry was changing. Instead of having live DJs on the air, radio stations were starting to pipe in prerecorded voiceovers from around the country to save money. I knew that I needed to find a more stable, full-time job soon. I wanted to find a “good” job that I’d love to go to.

So as graduation neared, I decided to look for a “real” job in an office somewhere. I would have my college degree, so of course I expected to land a job making at least $100,000 a year with a corner office overlooking the downtown skyline and my own personal assistant that could make me coffee. They would follow me briskly as I’d walk to my office, calling me “Mr. Fite” and furiously writing on a notepad whatever I’d say I needed to be done that day, just like in the movies. Then I’d close my office door, take off my sports jacket, and practice my putting until 5. I couldn’t wait to land that job.

But that’s not the job that I got.

The job that I landed was answering phone calls in a call center. For $24,000 a year. That was the best job I could find. It was the only job I could find. It was 2002 and nobody was hiring. I didn’t take that job because I wanted to, I took it because I had to. I went from having a dream job to having a dead-end job. I remember hating it just like my friend. On Sunday nights, a dread over the upcoming workweek would come over me like when I was in high school and the weekend was almost over. One Monday morning, a coworker and I joked with each other that it could be worse, we could be cleaning toilets at BK. Yes, that would be worse. Tina always had a positive outlook and although she’d often make light of our situation, she believed things would get better.

Once on a Friday afternoon just before a three-day weekend, Tina told me how excited she was for a long weekend. I made the comment that it was just a temporary solution to a permanent problem. That’s when she stopped me and said, Ken, this is just a season, you won’t always have this job, but you need to learn to be excellent at it or you won’t be excellent at the next job that you have.

That conversation changed my life. The moment I started taking my job seriously, and doing it with excellence, things changed for me. I still didn’t love my job, but I did like being good at it. And a few months later, the hard work led to a better opportunity. She was right, it was only for a season.

So what should you do if you hate your job? My advice to my friend was the same – become excellent at your job. If you don’t like your line of work, if it’s a bad fit, or a hostile work environment, go find something else. But understand this: excellence won’t show up when the perfect job shows up. When you decide to do your job with excellence, you’ll enjoy it more.

It’s only for a season.

We know them. We work with them. We’re friends with them. We’re related to them.

Sometimes we live with them. Many times, we are them.

They’re the thermometers, quick to judge, quick to anger, and quick to jump on the negativity bandwagon. Someone gets frustrated and we jump aboard the complain train along with them.

It’s easy to be a thermometer. It takes little effort. Our attitudes rise and fall with the temperature of the people that we spend the most time with. And it can feel good to vent and blow off some steam.

But being a thermometer is toxic. It’s not good for us to be so quick to change our outlook on circumstances for the worst. It makes us unpredictable, unable to handle pressure. It changes us.

And it doesn’t make things better.

Compare that to a thermostat, which doesn’t change without thoughtful effort. It doesn’t change its setting because of the environment. It’s hell-bent on keeping itself set to the temperature that it was programmed to stick to. It remains constant, yet activates when it needs to change its surroundings.

So which are you – a thermometer or a thermostat? What could happen in your life if you refused to let negative comments and actions of others infect you and instead you decided to affect others?

We’re a divided nation. The media tells us so. Our leaders do as well. They lecture us and tell us who we are – a people who should be ashamed of ourselves and how we need to come together.

The only problem with this is that it’s a lie. It’s not true. And Audrey Mark would tell you otherwise.

Mark was shopping at a Target in Raleigh, North Carolina when she noticed something going on down the aisle from her. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but she knew it was special, so she walked a little bit closer. She snapped a blurry picture with her phone to capture the moment.

A young man named Yasir Moore had come into the Target store wearing a black suit and asked employee Cathy Scott where he could find a clip on tie for a job interview that he was having later that afternoon at Chick-fil-A. She told the teen that they didn’t sell clip on ties but she found the kid a real tie and asked another coworker, Dennis Roberts, if he could help. He showed the teen how to tie the real tie, he tied it on his neck then adjusted his collar buttons and had him tuck in his shirt.

Then he taught the kid how to giver a proper handshake.

Then Scott and Roberts starting giving interview advice. They explained how the nervous teen would need to look the interviewer in the eye and talked through some of the basic interview questions that might trip him up. The young man listened and thanked them for their help.

As the kid left the store, other Target team members who saw what was going on gathered around and began to cheer him on and wished him luck, asking him to report back. In an interview, Mark, who snapped the photo and posted it on Target’s Facebook page, said, “It was a very quiet simple moment, but it was very profound… kindness… from strangers… in a Super Target.”

We don’t hear these kinds of stories in the media very much. It also doesn’t fit politicians’ narratives. But we are a people who help others. Not because we have to, but because this is who we are.

By the way – he got the job.

I had a conversation this week with some friends and we started talking about helping others and how frustrating it can be when those we help don’t help themselves. At least that how we perceive it. But the reality is that some people we help do want to help themselves, they’re just not ready yet.

I’m sure you’ve been there. You’ve tried helping a family member, a friend, or a coworker. Maybe they needed some advice or they asked you for direction of some sort to improve in some way.

So you help them. You make them a priority. You invest your time and energy. You pour yourself into that person only to see them not take your advice and not make any kind of progress at all.

You start to feel like you’re wasting your time. Why help others if they won’t help themselves?

What else can you do to help this person see the light? What else can you say to help them get it?

Understand this: you may never see that person bloom and become everything they’re meant to be.

Not because they can’t or won’t get there. And not because you’re doing anything wrong. But because when it comes to helping others, we’re either the seed, the pot, or the water.

In the moment, you may not recognize which one you are. If you’ve been trying to help someone and they’re just not getting it, you may just be the seed. If you’re starting to see a change for the better but no major progress, you may just be the pot. Be okay with that. Realize that without you, that person wouldn’t have a chance to improve their life at some point in the future.

If you see results, recognize that there were others before you who helped you become the water.

It can be hard to protect your time to get important work done. Sometimes we get interrupted by other people who need us to drop everything we’re doing and work on their thing first. Or we get an unexpected phone call or some other kind of interruption that we didn’t plan for and need to take care of. But sometimes we are our own worst enemy when it comes to protecting our time. We sit down with every intention to get our work done but then a thought pops into our head about something else we should be doing and like a dog who sees a squirrel, we get distracted.

I write my books and work on the blog in the mornings. I do this so that it doesn’t interfere with anything else I’m committed to during the day. Also so I don’t get the stink eye from my wife.

Every morning since last June I’ve woken up at 5:00 AM. I should say almost every morning. On the Fourth of July we had friends over and stayed up until 3 so I woke up at 7. Then one day I woke up at 5 but fell asleep on the couch as I waited for my coffee to brew. I woke up at 6 to cold coffee.

But for the most part, for the last eight months, I’ve been on fire with waking up early and writing for two hours each morning. However, over the last month, I’ve really been struggling with focusing. Which I realize is ironic, having just published a book on how to improve your focus. The reality is, we are all human and can use a swift kick in the arse sometimes, even if it’s us kicking ourselves.

I’m almost done writing my next book which will be on memory. It’s an interesting enough topic, but I’ve gotten into the bad habit of procrastinating during the first hour of my day instead of writing. I’ll check my stats, or I work on email, or I get lost in Facebook. Then I’ll look at the clock and see that half of my time is up. Wasted. Gone forever. I feel tempted to throw in the towel and give up.

Today I got back on track. I let the last month go and started over. That’s all you can do sometimes.

If you’ve been beating yourself up for not sticking to your plans and protecting your time, let it go. It’s a new day. We have another chance. Recommit yourself to your goal and begin again.