Ken Fite

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.

This weekend, my six-year-old son Kyle and I decided to go on a bike ride around the block to get out of the house and get a little exercise. Mommy doesn’t have a bike so she walked.

But halfway through our ride we had a problem – one of Kyle’s training wheels came loose. He was stuck, unable to move. So we had two choices: either Kyle and I could walk the bike back home or I could go back and grab a wrench. (At least I think it was a wrench. I’m not handy so it could have been a hammer. I have no idea.) We decided that he’d stay with mommy and I’d go back home real quick to get the wrench (hammer?) and come back to fix the bike so he could keep on riding.

It wasn’t until I started tightening the loose training wheel that I realized how small the bike was. Or maybe Kyle is just so much bigger now. Either way, the bike wasn’t the right fit anymore.

We have a bigger bike that we bought a few months ago that fits him perfectly. It’s the right size for him. And it doesn’t have any training wheels. He should love it. But Kyle doesn’t want to ride the big bike. He likes his small one, even though it’s starting to look like a circus bike being ridden by a circus clown. The big bike is the next step up for Kyle, but the small one is familiar and safe to him.

I asked him if he wanted to try it and he said, “No”. I asked why and he said, “Because I’m scared.”

I thought about how so many of us go through life like this. We’ve outgrown the “bikes” in our lives. Instead of moving to the next level, the bigger bike, we stall out. We get comfortable where we are, even though where we are may not be where we’re supposed to be. We’re scared that we may fall and skin a knee. What we don’t realize is that in order to get to the next level in our lives, in any area, we have to remove the training wheels and we have to eventually move to the bigger bike. We have to take the risk if we want the reward. And yes, it is scary. We probably will skin a knee.

It’s good to take a long, hard look at the “bikes” in our lives from time to time to figure out if they still fit us. If they do, great – fill up those tires and keep on riding. If we have crutches that we’re leaning on and keeping us from growing, it may be time to take off the training wheels. And if our rides are starting to look a little like they belong to a circus clown, it may be time to move to a bigger bike.

We had family in town visiting from Iowa this week and after a few days of craziness, my father-in-law suggested taking my wife out on a date – the grandparents would watch the boys.

I started to think about all of the things I could get done with a few hours of kid-free time. I’m sure my wife, Missy, was doing the same. That’s usually what we do whenever someone watches the boys for us. Errands. It’s just so hard to get anything done with two maniacal boys tugging on you all of the time, constantly asking for snacks, never-ending chocolate milk refills, or piggyback rides.

But we decided to go out… dinner and a movie. Our first real date in a long time.

Marriages, like any relationship, are always growing or dying. They never stay in the exact same place that they were yesterday.

The thing is, you have to pay attention to your relationships. My kids need to see a strong bond between their parents. They need to see us in love and spending time together, intentionally.

Once we say our wedding vows, we tend to slowly stop the pursuit. We get distracted by life. We can finally sit back and focus on other things. Like salsa. But our wives need to be pursued.

We may not be able to go out on a date all of the time, but I can still date my wife and pursue her heart by doing things to show her that I love her.

I can:
-Call her during the day to see how she’s doing and if she needs anything from me.
-Change a disgusting poopy diaper without waiting for her to give me the look.
-Sit on the couch and watch The Bachelor with her and pretend that I like it.
-Take the kids to Chick-fil-A on Saturday mornings to give her a break with some kid-free time.
-Take previously mentioned poopy diaper to the trash outside because it’s still so disgusting inside.

The problem with waiting for a date night is that they come so infrequently. As much as we need to take care of and protect our kids, we also need to do the same for our marriages.

Never pass up an offer for someone to watch the kids.

Never stop dating your wife.

If you’re looking for a mentor and can’t find one, don’t lose hope. I was pretty lost when I first entered the business world. I had no mentor. I had no guidance. I was on my own.

Then a few years into my career, a manager took me under his wing. He taught me what I needed to do to get to the next level. Even when he left the company, he still made time to meet with me. I was lucky. For a while at least.

If you have a mentor, that’s great – take advantage of that opportunity. But you don’t need a mentor to go have coffee with. You don’t even need one that you can call and ask for advice on the phone.

Authors who write books can be your mentor. Podcasters can be your mentor.

When I struggled as a new employee in corporate America, I read The Go-Getter: A Story That Tells You How To Be One by Peter B. Kyne and Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin.

When I became a manager over ten years ago and I had no idea what I was doing, I discovered the Manager Tools podcast. I listened to over 500 episodes. More importantly, I applied what I learned.

When I wanted to run my own coffee roasting business, I read countless books on the subject. I taught myself how to make the best coffee I was capable of making. I went back to school and got my MBA so I could not only create my art, I could sell it and know how to run a business.

If you want to improve in any area of your life and you feel stuck because you don’t have a mentor, change your mindset.

The world’s best mentors, found in books and audio, are there waiting for you to discover them.

Taking the easy way out is so easy.

And I’m going to be honest with you… I feel like taking the easy way out.

Writing is hard work and I realize the irony in that statement seeing as how this is only my fourth post and my first post was just a YouTube video… but the truth is that it’s more fun to work on the blog, to design it, and to keep trying to make it better than it is to sit down and actually write.

That’s the theme that I think a lot of people deal with. We all want to make some kind of dent in the world, whether it’s becoming a writer, getting out of debt, or being a great parent. But, we don’t want to do the hard work that’s required. You have to sit down and write, even if you struggle with what to say. You have to create a budget and make sacrifices if you ever want to be debt-free. You have to put down the cell phone and spend quality time with your kids before it’s too late.

And that’s exactly why there’s only a few writers with a huge readership compared to most who give up soon after they start when they don’t see immediate results. That’s why a few families use gazelle intensity to clean up their finances and change their family tree forever while most spend money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people who don’t care. That’s why some parents will make memories with their kids and live in the moment while most others will continue viewing life through a four inch screen.

Being the best in the world – in your world – isn’t easy. But it’s worth it.