With Eli - and all of my sons - I wanted to impress that as they grow older, they are going to have important decisions to make and at decision time, you can't be 100% perfect, but try to evaluate things and do what's right.
You can't be 100% perfect, but try to evaluate things and do what's right. If you just make every effort to do the right thing, you'll come out ok. It comes down to priorities and making good decisions.
Every decision you make in life, not just on the sporting field - a lot of time and energy goes into it. You think things through before you make decisions and you always think the decision you make at the time is going to be the right one.
Sometimes we make decisions about our life and they feel like the right decision at the time. No, they are the right decision at the time. But that doesn't mean they'll be the right decision forever.
My attitude going into training camp as a rookie was to impress. I wanted to impress my teammates, my coaches, the owners, everybody. I wanted them to say, ?This kid is special. This kid has the right mind, the right skills, the right motivation?.
Any time you do something, you make decisions about time and space. I wanted those decisions to be out of my hands. I could be dragged, carried along by another person, I could be a receiver. I could be the agent of the overall scheme, but I didn't want to be the agent of the particular action. I could make the ultimate decision that my space is going to change now, but I don't know where it's going to go.
A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, 'If you don't know how to make the right decision, you're not a director.'
I asked myself, 'What are you going to do with your life? Are you going to be like everyone else or are you going to do what's right?' I just made a decision. I said, 'It's time to grow up. It's time to start living for the Lord, do things the right way.' I accepted the Lord, and it changed my life.
You have to accept the fact that not all your decisions are going to be right - and when they are wrong, you have to own it right away. I try not to have an emotional connection or investment in the decisions I make so that when they need to change, I can quickly move on to: 'How do we fix this?'
Actually, I can't take credit for any of my decisions. I noticed one day that all my decisions were making themselves, and always at the right time. I haven't had to make one decision since then. They are always made for me, and they come from the wisdom that is in us all. I trust that wisdom completely. That trust itself was a decision made for me as inquiry cleared my mind. No decision, no fear.
The interesting thing is that there are so few important decisions. You don't have to go in the "right" direction. You don't have to enter the "right" business. What you have to do is have made a decision as to what you're going to do and then you just have to figure out how to succeed at it.
My motivation has to do with what happened to my family. I want to help young people make important decisions at the most important time in their life. If I didn't do this, it would be like my kids died in vain. I want to help them make the right decisions.
Women are racing all the time to try to have a perfect house and perfect kids and be a perfect cook. Men, somehow, for whatever reason, seem to be better able to pick and choose, to focus on things they like and that are important to them, and let the other things go.
How many times have you wanted to make a chocolate cake from scratch or prove you can make a flakey crust as good as your grandmother's....but you just don't have the time! A snow day is the perfect day to enlist the kids with no time pressure, or worse, dinner guests to impress.
Suze, your whole life," my dad went on, not without sympathy, "you've always made the right decisions. Not necessarily the easiest ones. The right ones. Don't mess that up now, when you're facing what's probably the most important decision you'll ever have to make.
I'm really close to my family, and we talk through things. My parents are so amazing, they're brilliant. We try to take one step at a time and be wise about the decisions we make and keep our values and the things that are important.
My parents are so amazing; they're brilliant. We try to take one step at a time and be wise about the decisions we make and keep our values and the things that are important.