the difference

Are you good enough to be replaced? Or are you valuable enough to be irreplaceable? Being good at something and valuable for something is not the same thing. Sometimes simply being good isn’t good enough. You can be good, even very good, yet not good for something or someone at some point in time… there is a difference. And real wisdom lies in knowing and acting on this difference.

©2008 Tom Leu

fantasy football

Fantasy Football is an extremely popular recreational activity for footbal buffs and sports junkies everywhere. The rules are simple: You select and assemble a “make believe” NFL team consisting of real players whose performance on your fantasy team is based on their real-life football statistics. The better your team’s players perform during their actual NFL games, the better your collective artificial team does. Kinda cool… Part reality; part fantasy. Sort of like real-life isn’t it?

Don’t we take real people and their real actions and behaviors, and then assemble them into our own new reality? We pick and choose who we want on our “team,” and then base the success of our team on our people’s performance (their actions and behaviors). If they do well (in our opinion), we are happy. If their performance is not up to our standards, or does not meet our expectations, we get upset. The irony of all this is that we have absolutely no control of the outcome though we try very hard to control our success by playing the odds based on other people’s past performances.

Of course yesterday does not always equal tomorrow, but history can and should be a consideration of future performance. The quality and content of our lives is certainly more important than football games, but living in reality rather than in fantasy can be far more challenging at times than we care to admit. If you consistently find yourself making excuses while pursuing “escape mode” with any number of vices, devices and distractions, it may be time to have a heart-to-heart with your “head” coach. Game on…

©2008 Tom Leu