I'm Giving Up...the Reason for Achieving Goals

That's right! I'm giving up. The Achievement Expert is giving up! I'm giving up my focus on achieving as an end result. Here's why I'm giving up....

Last week my father-in-law passed away, and experiencing the loss through my wife and her family has impacted me more than losing both my parents within a span of 8 weeks exactly three years ago. That may be because many times its tough to watch those you love go through a painful experience, more so than it is to experience it yourself.

To be honest, my father-in-law and I weren't very close. We had little in common outside a love for baseball and our favorite team, the New York Mets. But I have lost much of my interest in baseball (and yes, even the Mets) since leaving the game in 2001 - so we really didn't even have that. He was an outdoorsman who loved hunting, fishing, bird watching and just the magic of nature. In my childhood development, none of that was on my radar screen, and most of them still aren't.

I realized while I was sitting and listening to the beautiful tributes given by his four daughters during the funeral service, that despite the man's shortcomings, some of which were unique to him and some of which we all have a piece of, he had impacted a great number of people during his lifetime. He impacted them not so much by what he accomplished, but by how he accomplished it and the lessons he taught everyone along the way.

Dennis Saylor left a legacy, but I don't think he ever sought to do so. His legacy was an end result of who he was, how he was and what he was. It was an end result of how he showed up everyday. And, if there was one attribute that he espoused, it was consistency.

Everyone knew who, what and how he was. Maybe that conflicted with some people along the way, and could be seen as inflexible and as one daughter's eulogy identified as 'fussy,' but at least you knew where he stood and how he would respond.

What legacy did he leave? He left four independent daughters who have found their own way in life and have become successful on their own terms, on their own timeframe. He left a loving wife, who, although was probably as dependent as any spouse would be after 40 years of marriage, is also extremely capable and independent and will thrive in the years to come.

I realized while listening to the eulogies, that Dennis Saylor spent his life living the values taught in The Achievement Gym. He made lemonade out of every lemon that was thrown at him, he focused only on what he could control and let everything else go because it was useless to waste energy on things you could do nothing about. He lived that way until his last breath. A lesson for all of us.

I'll leave you with one of his last gems of wisdom, which he commented to one his daughters shortly after coming home under the care of Hospice, and after a moment of feeling a sensation that he was going die- he said, "you don't get to deal the cards, you only get to play the hand you're dealt."

How are you playing the hand you've been dealt? If you'd like to be more effective playing your deck...The Achievement Gym may be able to help. Anyway...if you'd like to learn what I learned from this experience, which is the "True Meaning Of Achievement" click here.