VDI Insights: Life Smacked Me In the face again!

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-Tim Murphy

Wow, life in 2022 came in and smack me in the mouth. 

And it's unbelievable how that works. You think you have everything planned, you think you have everything figured out and life throws you a left hook you didn’t see coming. 

Oftentimes in our quest to become our best selves, life has a way of just knocking you to your knees, letting you know that you don't have everything figured out, letting you know that at any point in time, something could change, whether it's in your business, whether it's in your personal life, whether it's in your health, and everything else is affected. 

And for me, that's exactly what happened. At the start of 2022, two friends that are involved in key parts of my business went through life changes. 

I’ll spare the details. 

It's more about how I've had to handle this adversity, and how it's impacted my business, my life, and the decisions that I'm making. 

And you know what? It's hard. It's really hard. 

Because when you lose key people in your life or key people in your business that you rely on, that are pillar posts and foundations to what you do every single day, it's hard to just keep moving forward.

It's hard to forget, it's hard not to get emotional, and it's hard not to get scared. 

And that, my friends, is exactly the time when you have to run the opposite way. 

What do I mean?

When you're in the survival phase, or you're in any phase of life, and something fundamentally changes.
When brick or even a wall in your foundation crumbles, that doesn't mean the world's going to end. 

But what it does mean is that everything else has to take a backseat. 

You have to go down and fix your foundation. You have to rebuild that wall. 

And that's exactly what I'm doing. 

It reminds me of a story that I've told many different times about when I played baseball. 

Baseball is probably one of the most humbling sports there is out there because the whole goal is to hit this round ball to get on base.

But the most frustrating thing about it is that you'll never hit the ball every single time. 

Hell, you're lucky if you hit the ball 50% of the time. And in the major leagues, if you hit the ball over 30% of the time, you might end up in the Hall of Fame. 

Now think about that. Baseball is one of the greatest analogies for dealing with failure, failure to hit a white ball. 

And so that's why when I get kicked in the face like this, I get knocked down. I think about this lesson I learned when I was playing ball back in high school, super frustrated about not being able to hit the homeruns that I used to. Not getting on base as much. 

I think they call it a slump. 

And my coach came up to me said, “Hey, kid, what's going on?” I said, “I suck. I can't hit this ball. I don't know what it is. I'm trying this. I'm trying to, you know, rotate my hips. I'm trying to bring my wrists through. I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that.” I mean, that's the thing with baseball, right? You're always trying to tweak something. And that's exactly what I was trying to do. I was trying to tweak everything. I was overthinking everything. And he looked at me and he said, “Hey, stop overthinking everything.”

“Go back to the fundamentals. Just make contact. Just get the barrel of the bat in front of the ball. Don’t think about anything else, who cares what you're doing with your legs or your feet or your wrists, or your elbows or your head, all you have to do is watch that damn little white ball and just hit it, put a bunt down, slap it, don't worry about anything but making contact with that ball. And I don't even care if you get out.”

 And I was like, “what?” 

He said, “You gotta start with the fundamentals when everything else isn't working.”

And that's just what I did. I laid a bunt, and I got on base. I put my bat in front of that ball, and I slapped it. And I got on base. 

And then I hit a line drive, and I got on base. And then I hit a home run. And I scored a run. And I was back out of the slump. 

The reason I think about that, so often as an entrepreneur, or a Value Driven Investor, is you're taking chances, you're taking risks, and you feel like, Man, I'm in a slump, just like I feel like right now. 

Man, somebody left me, why would you leave me? 

What did I do wrong? 

How do I screw that up? 

When in reality, it's called life. And life happens. And you got to go back to the fundamentals. 

And that's where I'm at. 

If you are a loyal follower of the podcast, and our content, you'll know that there was a little bit of a lull there for 30 days. We had to catch your breath. 

For 30 days, we had to go and focus on the foundation of everything in my business, and my investment of the people that I work with. 

And the podcast had to take a back seat for a little bit. 

I know all of you understand how that works. Because if you're out there trying to live your dreams and create a life on your terms, well, then, you know, everybody gets smacked in the face. Everybody gets knocked down. 

It doesn't mean that I'm quitting. It just means that I have to build that wall. I have to strengthen that foundation. 

The moral of that story is this. Yeah, I feel like I went five steps backwards. But I also have realized over 17 years of being an entrepreneur and over 44 years of life, that just because you take three steps backward, does not mean you can't leap forward. 

I think that whatever needs to be mended, whatever needs to be fixed, whatever fundamentals I have to address in order to build a stronger foundation, is what I'm going to do.

And I have that much more experience to build a wall that's even stronger than it was before. 

2022  is the year of change. 

For me, I am rethinking so many different things than I was in 2021. 

And if that's you, if you're rethinking your job, moving from one company to another, if you're rethinking your opportunity, moving from a company to starting your own business, those are big changes. Those are scary. 

Go back to your fundamentals. What do you believe in? What do you want? What does life on your terms look like? Because that's exactly what I'm doing. 

Adversity is growth. 

Failure is a learning lesson. 

Embrace it. 

Learn more about becoming a Value Driven Investor: www.ValueDrivenInvestor.com