For those of you new to this blog here is the reason why we started this: http://rockstarfamily6.blogspot.com/2013/05/why.html and this is what all the numbers are about to the right,
http://rockstarfamily6.blogspot.com/2013/05/one-two-skip-few-three-four-skip-some.html.
So this next week, actually Monday we have our first home study visit with our social worker as well as our first big payment to our agency. This will be the first of four visits. There will be one visit where she will need to talk to the kids about the a whole idea of bringing in another child to this family. If it is anything like our last one, the younger kids can say the darndest things. Last week we went to the police station to get finger printed so we can see if either one of us are criminals :) I remember the last time we did this we didn't hear anything for along time about Sarah's prints. She was really worried, about what, I'm not sure. It turned out that they were a bad sample the first time so she needed to redo them.
Earlier this year we had an auction for our school, and they brought in a world class jump roper. He was pretty entertaining. He could skip rope with his butt sitting down. After we saw this my family went home to try it and it didn't turn out so well. Anyway, he had a saying: "Be awesome at everything". I loved it, this was right up my ally. I'm kind of a perfectionist, which has rubbed off onto my oldest daughter and this kind of annoys my wife. My other kids, well we'll have to wait and see.
Here is Taylor's level of awesomeness.
The other night Taylor had a high fly and lost it in the sun at a bad angle and ended up with three stitches and glue. This was the only drop of athletic ability she received from Sarah.:) Taylor was a little upset about this, as she is with any mistake she makes, and sometimes beats herself up about it.
After hearing this guys philosophy and loving it, I left with one question. One that I hope many of you can enlighten me or give your opinions on. What do you do when you are on a team with others to accomplish a goal, and your level of "awesomeness" is different than others on the team? If yours is higher (in your opinion) do you try and push the others to be better, or do you lower your awesomeness to what you think theirs is? If you lower your level of awesomeness you're not being awesome at everything. Right? If your level of awesomeness is lower than someone else's (according to them) do you think, "Okay, maybe I can be better." Then you push yourself to their level of awesomeness. Or, do you just think "who do you think you are pushing that on me, I'm already awesome at what I do?"
I know I've handled it a couple different ways before. Both were opposite of each other, and I'm not sure if they were good or bad.
What are your thoughts on this?
I'll leave you with a song and a link from a favorite band of ours we first discovered three years ago at a festival our whole family went to. They just came out with their new album and you can download it for free if you go to http://www.votaband.com/ and follow the link. If you follow me on twitter @jsnipes477 you can find a link to go to so we might be able to win a concert at our house and a trip to Nepal. This means I might have to start tweeting more to stay interesting. :)
Rock on
J
Jeremy, I have to be honest that "Be Awesome at Everything" has been a DANGEROUS mantra for me personally. One of my favorite authors helped me to understand this. "Be" is actually a less threatening word than "Do", but still has a tone that feels like I need to re-wire or change something fundamental about how I'm made. "Awesome" is what this author describes as a seduction - it's so delicious to run after awesome. But it has turned into an ugly version of discontent at times in my life because it's such a subjective and relative term. And the word "everything" can be consuming - an addiction that ends up crushing me, saying yes, yes, yes to everything for the wrong reasons. Trying to "be awesome at everything" has led me personally to a place of mania, of being tired, angry, brittle, hollow and afraid instead of a better version of myself.
ReplyDeleteBut I get what you're saying. We all need a nudge, a reminder, a mantra that pushes us to want to discover and fulfill God's plan for our lives and to use what He's given us to further his kingdom. If Being Awesome at Everything is what drives you to do that, then, by all means, put it on a bumper sticker or tattoo it on your ! I'm just saying that for me personally Being Awesome at Everything can be a dangerous distraction that can become more about "me" than about the God who made me.
Marcy- thanks for being awesome at writing your thoughts:) I like how you broke down the phrase. I agree, awesome is a relative term. What I just realize out of this, is that, I thought my standard of awesome needed to be everyone else's standard, and that is wrong. Being awesome does drive me, but I think I need to look hard at how I define awesome from now on. I always defined it as how someone before me succeeded at what I'm am trying to do, and that will probably lead to discontent. Maybe I need to rephrase the saying to "Do your best at everything you do", after all that is what we have told our baseball and softball team all year "Just do your best".
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