11/12/2020
To means to measure success based on the effort shown, regardless of the results that follow. As you know, we were a group of party entertainers who felt like the results of the dance floor, at times, didn’t truly reflect the amount of work we put in to get it packed. So why were we measuring our success based on this factor when it was largely out of our control? We can’t force people to dance! Talk about undue pressure to perform in order to feel like we did our job well. The second we made this realization, we only measured our success based on the one variable we had control over - our effort. Winning was now up to us! This made an insane impact on our team and how we reviewed our performance at the end of an event, but it was off the dance floor where this idea was literally life changing.
My twin brother became a huge fan of this “new performance measure” since he always felt like he faced uphill battles and hardships, starting with being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a child. This story isn’t actually about him though! In his first job after college, while catching up with a coworker and talking about family, he shared what “MAXED OUT” was all about. It turns out, his coworkers’ mother had cancer. It’s a gut wrenching diagnosis because it’s a fact that there are two outcomes - life or death, and it’s unfortunately not up to you to decide, even with the best treatment. In order to alleviate the pressure of the possibility of the latter result, he asked his mother to focus on her effort and let that define her success, and it made all the difference. At that point, it didn’t matter what happened next - his mom had already beat the cancer.
The thing is, effort transcends illness. It transcends circumstances. It transcends the seemingly disadvantaged. You can let the results of those things define you or you can level the playing proverbial field and .
