There’s really not too much to cover in today’s blog, it’s pretty straightforward.  Sometimes there’s just nothing like snuggling with my dog on the couch.

Thanks!!!

A few weeks ago I wrote about missing my car… Today I got it back and I was smiling from ear to ear as I peeled out of the body shop parking lot. It felt wonderful to be back in the saddle of my car again.

Here’s the funny thing. The luxury vehicle I’m referring to is a 2012 Chevy Cruze with over 175,000 miles on it. By most people’s standards it is far from a luxury car. That said, it felt magnificent driving it today as the car Ive been driving was definitely not a sweet ride.

I’m fascinated by how perspective really changes things. When I’ve gone to a movie with low expectations I’m often happily surprised by the movie. Just a month ago I was getting frustrated with my car and was wanting something different. After seeing what I could have on the other side of the equation I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. Same car, the only thing different is my perspective. I’m now in a position in which I appreciate my car (& its heated seats, USB port, and bluetooth).

It will be interesting to see how long I can go back to my memory of driving off the lot today to remember how much I appreciate this car when I want a change. At some point I know that I’ll need to, but I’m pretty sure that as long as I can remember to appreciate what I have in my car I’ll be smiling.

Thanks!!!

Over the past few days I’ve had time to reflect on a handful of thoughts from our Express International Leadership Conference. Throughout the event there were many moments in which I was able to learn from others, share knowledge with others, and celebrate with everyone. As I’ve spent time thinking about those many great conversations there’s a common theme that I’d kept coming back to, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

In preparation for our annual Suer Saturday I came across a reminder of a video of Inky Johnson we used last year. Long story short, Inky was a projected first round draft pick who was injured in one of the last games of his senior season. The injury almost killed him and left one of his arms paralyzed. The essence of the quick video I watched was that of Inky discussing how if he knew how things would work out he wouldn’t change anything.

The video helped me link up what I’d been trying to connect in my head for the past few days. All of the mistakes I’ve made helped get me to where I am. Sure, mistakes suck and in moment feel awful, but as long as I can remember to learn from them and not make them again they are a very positive thing. They help create me, adjust my direction, and and help lead me to success.

Many of the conversations this weekend included one version or another of the same phrase… “boy did I ever learn the hard way that doesn’t work, so then I tried this…”. I was on both the receiving and giving end of this phrase many times. In this phrase I found something that I’ll remember to be thankful for in the moment more often.

I will not fail because of my mistakes. I will be successful because I try new things and learn from my mistakes. In the face of each mistake I will remember to forgive myself, learn, and move forward stronger and armed with more knowledge of how to be successful.

When I pause and think of all of the mistakes that led to our successes this year I can’t help but smile. In several cases I felt ready to throw in the towel and quit, but I didn’t. I learned from the mistakes and found ways to improve. Behind the smiles on in our awards pictures are many mistakes that were made, learned from and that provided more strength and determination to lead to the success.

It’s frustrating when I make a mistake, but I’m thankful for each of them.

Thanks!!!

Special thanks to Travis, one of the Onalaska YMCA cycling coaches, for setting up a Monday cycling class! We took advantage of the opportunity and went to his class with Gavin while Dominic lifted weights.

Travis has quickly become one of our favorite instructors as he continues to find new ways to punish us in his class. 😉 Seriously, he makes it way more fun than it should be to burn over 850 calories in 45 minutes.

Today’s class was outside of the norm, he had us take a fitness test which involves biking at a certain power level for four minutes and then increase the power level for another four minutes and so on… until you’re unable to reach and continue the power level you’re at.

At first I was feeling great and thought I might set a new world record. Nothing could stop me and I felt invincible. After a while I started to breathe hard, and then for some reason the weight of my legs increased exponentially. Shortly thereafter my legs stopped working and I just wanted to fall over and take a nap.

It was incredibly exhausting and a way better workout than I was expecting! At the end I was pumped to see that I’ve already moved the dial since Becky and I first started cycling class. Can’t wait to get outside on a real bike and see how awesome it feels!

That said, I’m typing this while laying flat on my back in bed trying to find the motivation to get up and take a shower… hmm… maybe I’ll just stay here and close my eyes for a few… zzz… zzz…

Thanks!!!

When my alarm went off a few minutes before 3am this morning I was actually smiling. How crazy is that? I literally jumped out of bed with a smile and was up and moving as fast as I could be. To be clear, I didn’t go to bed early or anything, I finally hit the bed about 11:30 last night.

So why was I so excited to wake up with minimal sleep even though I function best on 7-9 hours? This…

Last year I was so pumped when I hopped online to book my flight and found an option that was perfect for me. Yup, I found a flight that got me back in my house at 10am – woo hoo!!!

Yeah, waking up that early wasn’t ideal, but fortunately I’ve been working on taking naps in small gaps of time. Using some of these tricks I was able to sleep in the gate in Dallas, on my flight from Dallas to Chicago, and again on my flight from Chicago to La Crosse. Sure, it wasn’t a full night of sleep or super peaceful, but the trade off was well worth it.

So why did I get so pumped to fly out so early? After being away for almost a week I was able to spend almost an entire day with Becky and the boys! I was able to catch up with them, hear about their scout camp, have a couple of family meals together, go to yoga, and now watch a movie as a family. I even really enjoyed grocery shopping with Becky. It’s crazy, but I throughly enjoyed doing a normal chore / errand that I was able to do specifically because I was able to catch an early flight home. Time with the family has been great today!

I’ll happily sacrifice some sleep and chill time to spend more time with my family and I’m thankful I found an early flight to make that happen.

Thanks!!

I’m the first handful of hours today there’s been a few moments when there must’ve been someone cutting some onions nearby. Weirdest thing, but that’s what obviously what was happening in our conference center as my eyes started watering a couple of times today. Crazy, but it only happened for a couple of moments and then we were never served food with onions… Strange, huh?

It started with the award for the Employee of the Year. The top five candidates of the 550,000 associates we employed this year were introduced and it was electric! One of the back stories involved an associate who was homeless and struggling to get a job so he could get custody of his son. When he came out on stage he had his young son with him and it was amazing! That was the first time someone started cutting onions.

After the winner was announced and given the $5,000 prize our founders announced that each of the five finalist would each receive $5,000 and just like that some onion ninja went to town.

Our speaker later was playing a video while he painted some street art. The video had the song “Coming Home” by Skylar Grey playing and showed videos of soldiers coming home and surprising their family members. Yup, you guessed it, someone started cutting onions again.

The last one got me right in the feels. I was sitting next to my friend Mark at the general session and as it wrapped up he gave me a compliment, actually two, that left me humbled, grateful, and full of joy. I’m not sure why, but someone decided to start cutting onions again at that point.

Each of those moments struck me profoundly and I’m so thankful for each of them. They are amongst the greatest moments of my ILC this year.

Thanks!!!

There were so many insightful nuggets of information I received from so many of my Express cohorts today.  Throughout the day I was able to spend much time listening and learning from some of the best franchisees within the Express family.  Some of these conversations came through specific training times and classes while others came in the moments of conversation in between training sessions. 

Our industry is a little different than many others.  In spending time with my cohorts like this it’s like time with close friends who’ve known you forever.  They understand what we do daily and understand the daily struggles and successes.  They are able to share stories of success and failure openly as we all attempt to get help each other improve.  In some situations we may have tried different solutions to the same issues and we can trade notes of how it worked out.  There were even times when someone pointed out potential challenges before they’ve ever occurred.

Spending this time together has been so helpful, just as it has been in the past.  I’m so thankful to have this framework to work within to help us all continually improve.

Thanks!!!

This morning I woke up early and hit the gym. While on the treadmill I decided to push myself to start training for our half marathon later this spring. As I was logging my miles I decided to really push myself hard and see how well I could do an interval workout and see just how high I could push my ticker. Even though it hurt like hell by the end I was able to log a new high which made me smile to myself. I’d just been competitive with myself and used it in a very positive way – to push myself further than I would have normally pushed myself.

Not more than four hours later I was sitting in a room with a few thousand of my Express cohorts. During the presentation there were several awards handed out and much recognition given and I caught myself letting my competitive tendencies start to pull me in the wrong direction. Instead of taking time to be happy for the winners and celebrate with them I started thinking of what I needed to change to win the awards in the future. I started coming up with all types of goals and strategies to help me win next year… and then I caught myself. I was letting myself get into a competition just for the sake of competition. Even though in some cases it would be very counter productive to what I want out of life. I was letting competition bring out my worst and pull me away from what I want most.

Throughout the day I kept coming back to these two experiences and several others. It’s interesting to start to see where being competitive has served me so well. So many things I’ve accomplished that I would not have. On the flip side, so many times when I’ve failed at something it’s because I was competitive in a direction or manner that was so counter productive to my long term goals and dreams.

In analyzing those situations, good and bad, it was interesting to see what the big difference is between positive and negative experiences related to competition. If I take the time to pause when I feel the competitive juices start flowing I can measure out the potential task and win against what I want for the long term. If it is a match (like a crazy hard run) I can run with it. If it isn’t on my radar or pulls me away from my dreams and goals (changing strategy merely to win an award that in of itself has no bearing on the accomplishment of my dreams) I need to smile at myself and bow out. In some ways I could even say that I was just competing against myself and winning is sometimes in saying no 😉 Hmmm….

By taking the time to really think more deeply about this today I’m hopeful to save myself from future mistakes and failures while pushing myself harder in the right directions. I know I won’t be perfect at it, but after today I know I’m learning and will do better than I have in the past… and that’s something I’m very grateful for.

Thanks!!!

So I thought I would blog about something besides vacation today, but then I was caught totally off guard while running early this morning. On the treadmill I was able to select which trail I would see on the screen and one of the options jumped off and I had to choose it… The North Island of New Zealand!

While putting in my miles I was able to re-run some of my favorite views from our trip to NZ including Cathedral Cove. Seeing it on the screen brought back a rush of emotions and I had a flood of memories come roaring back. It’s funny, but I remember seeing the rock formations from inside the cave the first time so clearly… Just as I can remember the smiles on Becky, Dominic, & Gavin as we played in the ocean and enjoyed the beauty of the area.

Once that trail was completed I went through the process a few times and was reminded of so many other hikes in New Zealand as well as other places. It’s funny, I didn’t quite realize some of the similarities my favorite places on Earth all have until I had to stop and remember that I was seeing a trail in New Zealand and not in Olympic, Yoho, Glacier, Sawtell, or Seward. So many glorious places and incredible natural beauty!

Throughout the day several plans all started to come together in my brain. Some personal, some business, and some a mix of the two. While there’s a legitimate chance that none of them will pan out it feels great to see the plans slowly forming. Even if they don’t work out I know I’ll be better from the experiences and will be able to either move closer to each of those dreams or come up with a slightly different and improved dream in the process.

Maybe it’s something nagging in my brain from a week ago today, but it almost feels like I’m taking more time to enjoy the journey and the moment. When I am putting thought into these ideas I’m enjoying the process of thought ideation and creation. We’ll see where they end up, but for now it’s feeling pretty awesome and I’m thankful for the slow but steady progress.

Thanks!!!

Earlier today while waiting in line I struck up a conversation with someone.  We’d both had the shared experience of having to “donate” a Leatherman to the TSA as we’d forgotten them in our backpacks while travelling.  Before I knew it about 10 minutes had passed and we were still talking vacations.  As we talked there were several times when he was asking me about places that we’d gone, how old kids should be before he takes them, how much time they should take, and things along those lines.  Amongst those questions I was also learning about their upcoming trip to Glacier this summer and gave him some ideas of places to see along the way if they decide to drive instead of taking the train.  It was a blast!  Nothing like talking vacations to get me all fired up and my heart all full of joy.

Last week I was talking with a couple of teammates and we got on the topic of vacations…  I know, that topic seems to follow me often!  At one point my teammate asked how I take so many cool vacations.  It led to a great conversation on two parts.  First off, it reminded me of the biggest reason we go on them…  they are amongst the most important things in life to Becky and I.  As such we prioritize them and put them ahead of many other types of expenses.  Secondly, it was a great way to share some financial thoughts and dream / life focus with my teammate.  As I drove back that comment from her kept rolling in my head and I just kept smiling.  It was a moment for me to remember why we put the focus where we do, we love the experience of heading out into nature to see and experience new things and to enjoy the peace.

My blog post from a couple of years ago yesterday popped back up and left me smiling as I went to bed last night.  In my hotel room in San Francisco I saw this quote on a magazine for the hotel chain… “Travel lets us see ourselves in a new way.  With our minds free to dream, goals become clearer, moments grow richer, and we return home fuller than when we left.”  That quote has stuck with me and reminds me that while I love travel, there’s a secret takeaway that I need to remember in my daily life.  Any moment of any given day can have that same magical travel feeling…  if I take the time and mindfulness to be fully immersed in the present.

Today all three of these thoughts popped in and out of my head and I’m so thankful for all of them.

Thanks!!!