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It takes a positive outlook… |
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I have learned that a positive attitude can carry you a long way in life. Just one year ago, I was feeling pretty low. Things were pretty crappy in my personal life and I can remember typing our final editorial for Volume 4. I had a pretty bad attitude at the time and found it easier to blame others than it was to look in the mirror and simply accept my shortcomings. No matter how bad I paint the picture of how rough things might have been…the finger of blame always pointed back to the man in the mirror. I produced an editorial on how fathers impacted their sons. During that time, I produced scientific notations to back up the facts that I had posted in that article. Sometimes we can be haunted by our past, and for me as I sat on the eve of my Dad undergoing exploratory surgery, memories of my wild teenage years floated through my mind. There was a little bit of everything – self-imposed anger and lots of regret. I had all of the time in the world to build a relationship – but missed out on it. However, at the time I wrote it, all damages had been repaired. Still the memories lingered.
The day after Christmas, we all found out that Dad had terminal cancer and had a year at the most to live. By my calculations, I would have barely two weeks left with him today had he have made it to the full term. Two weeks later, things would start to change in my life. Of course my friends, family and co-workers noticed my distraught nature. Here it was…things were crappy as heck and now I was faced with the prospect of losing my best friend. That's when a close friend of mine stepped up and suggested that I listen to one of Anthony Robbins' “Personal Power” lectures. He was quick to point out that my life would never be the same after listening to one. I decided to take the plunge, and for me, I never realized the importance of a positive attitude. In the past, I always felt that a positive attitude in the midst of a negative situation was nothing more than lying to yourself about the crappy situation you were involved with. I was so wrong. Now you're saying to yourself, what does this have to do with drag racing? A positive attitude in life spills over into your involvement within the sport. If you're happy in life, then odds say that will spill over into your racing or whatever your involvement is with the sport. I think the most important lesson that I learned over the course of the past year is to act from a position of personal power. In the early part of my transformation, I often neglected what I had…instead, choosing to look at what I didn't have. That was the toughest thing to change. It took me a while to come to grips with the notion that I was the controller of my destiny. In short, Robbins taught me there is no such thing as failure…only an outcome. Nearly five years ago we created CompetitionPlus.com with the vision of bringing a quality publication to drag racing fans on the Internet. Our dream was simple, but seemed so complex. We just wanted to make it. CompetitionPlus.com was not the result of a long-thought-out process. It was a whim. It was created with a dream and absolutely no idea how to survive. It was never a get-rich quick scheme, although we did see the end-result as hopefully being a prosperous one. We were the outcasts. We were the writers that the printed magazines shunned. They often looked down on us and tried to squash us. One, in particular, took potshots at us. They degraded us and constantly attacked our credibility. Yes, we made some mistakes. Some were stupid. He that has never made a mistake let him cast the first stone. The important part of it all, however, is that we learned from it. We grew through patience and hard work. We even outlasted our critics, who blamed mediums as ours for their fall. They couldn't get the news out as quickly as we could. This touches on one of the points that Robbins makes and that we are all responsible for our actions. A focused company or team does not seek others to blame for their shortcomings. Our goal is to provide the premiere site for drag racing fans to visit when surfing the Internet. To me, being the publisher of CompetitionPlus.com is the closest thing to living my childhood dream of being the editor of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated. I love CompetitionPlus.com and I love my staff just like my family. As for my readers, I cherish and value each and every one of you. As most of you know my Dad passed in July, he didn't make it to December. I'm not bitter. Maybe just a bit disappointed. Let me rephrase that…a lot disappointed. It all goes back to the point that I made earlier. We should be happy for what we have instead of being sad for what we don't have. I did get nearly seven months of “close” time with Dad and in that time, I learned a lot. I did ask Dad if he had any regrets and he uttered, “only that I couldn't teach you any more than I did.” Dad had spent much of his life looking at things from a “half-empty glass” point of view. In the last few months of his life, he turned positive even though he faced negativity all around him. Looking back on that day in June, I can only think to myself just how much I did learn from him. I probably learned the most in those last days from him than I learned in the first 36 years of my life. What are your thoughts? Drop us a line at feedback@competitionplus.com .
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