February 10th, 2010. It was a very busy day for me at work. I am the Branch Manager for Copytronics Information Systems in Orlando, Florida. It was a very busy day for me...busier than most that I've had in the last 5 months since taking over in my new position with the office equipment company. Our office is really starting to come together....and the sales numbers with it. I took a late lunch that day and walked next door to Burger King for the number 5 steakhouse xt combo. It was just after 2 pm and I was starving....I ordered my food got my tray and then took a seat away from the few other diners that were there at the moment. As I sat there enjoying the pleasure of a hot juicy burger covered in steak sauce....I started to feel a little overwhelmed. The last 5 months for me had been very rocky....taking over a failing office and turning it around in a short period of time is very stressful. There are a lot of people that wanted to see me fail for their own personal motivations. I found out last week that my wife is pregnant so that added another element of excitement and stress about my future. I sat there at my table feeling alone for the moment. I was able to just decompress and gather my thoughts. Looking down at the napkins on my tray I stared to wonder what I could do to take the next step with my life. I was generally happy, excited about starting a family, happy with my marraige, and feeling like my job was finally coming together. My wife and I belong to a Church that we love and we attend services at weekly. I knew, deep down though, that something was incomplete. There was still more for me to do. That being said, I felt stuck...stuck at my job....losing my energy day by day...gaining weight, losing my youth, and becoming complacent with my life. Staring down at those napkins on my tray I started to have a crazy idea. What if I could take control of my life starting in this very moment....what would I do? The really sad and scary to me was that I had no idea... The idea of being an astronaut or a professional athlete have passed me by. Jack Bauer, James Bond, and Jason Bourne would all be great aspirations, but I told myself...David...you have a baby on the way....So I decided I couldn't be a super secret agent spy rockstar. Back to square one. Then it hit me...what if I just changed one thing? I could just pick one simple thing in my life to improve every day. Things at work, things at home, my personal habits, and goals that I would set. So, I grabbed the 4 napkins in front of me and developed a four step plan to become a better and more purpose driven me. They read:
Step One: Come Up With One Thing To Improve Every Day.
Step Two: Improve One Thing Every Day.
Step Three: Measure The Success Of The Improvement At 30 Days And 1 Year.
Step Four: Get More Napkins.
It takes a lot of napkins to clean up after a steakhouse XT burger. So, I grabbed more napkins, cleaned up, and bounced back over to my office with some measured purpose in my step.
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