04 February
In Business, Corporate/Motivational Speaking, Family, Miltary/Veterans, Mobility Awareness, Spinal Cord Injury, Sport, Think About This by Mike Savicki
Carpe the Day…
Aaahhh the dead of winter. The time between the holidays and the first signs of spring have always been a bit grounding for me. The days pass quickly but time moves slowly. My energy level varies like the temperature and when it’s cold, I seem to crave the bed a bit more than when the days are longer and I have the energy of a school kid on summer vacation. Mornings are spent deciding the correct combinations of base layers, fleeces and outer layers to keep me warm yet functional and evenings are spent recalculating the failures of my wardrobe selection in order to better prepare for the next day. Abby looks at me like I’m nuts and laughs as she dashes out the door no matter the temperature or wind chill. The life of a cat. The beauty of the winter coat.
Yet this time of year is one more suited to living in the moment. Carpe diem. It is a time to catch up on those projects that have been waiting for rainy, cold or snowy days. It is a time to plow through the piles that have grown throughout the year. And it is a time to attack all that has been put off, postponed, tabled or piled in a corner. The piles are shrinking and I’m slowly but surely making the progress I had hoped. Thanks Freeze Miser. Progress is a great thing.
On the athletic front, I have planned my calendar for 2009 (well, most of it) and begun to make things happen. My motto for the New Year is “nice guys finish fast.” And, on the same line, I have thought about what it means to be a success. As I begin another year of competition and look at sports through the eyes of a master, I define success a bit differently than I did several years ago. It is something attainable yet uncommon…Success, I believe, is an uncommon trait therefore only to be only realized by an uncommon man. As the wheels beneath me turn on the trainer day after day for hours and hours on end, and as those same weights clang up and down over and over and over in the gym, I have come to realize that I just might be that uncommon man. I am the fortunate one. Yes, there will be a time that I can no longer do those things I love but that time is not now. Here’s to being uncommonly successful in 2009.
And last but not least, I have learned in the first month of the New Year that great things happen only when they are supposed to happen. You can’t rush things, or force a decision that isn’t meant to happen, especially if that decision is in someone else’s hands. And when a decision doesn’t go your way, I was reminded that something better will surely come along. Helen Keller once said that when one door to happiness closes another opens but we look so long at the closed door we fail to see what has opened before us. I am again fortunate early in the year that a very unique professional opportunity has found its way to me when another did not materialize. It’s time to “earn my wings.”
So smile, friends. Find the sunshine in these cloudy and cold winter days. Stay warm by the fire. Cuddle with someone you love. Do those things that you typically don’t do. Dress warmly. Carpe diem!
And when it gets really, really cold, pause for a moment and think to yourself…when the soup is good, all is good!
Bye.
