Celebrate What You Have, with Ed Molitor

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A podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molotor Group, Ed Molitore. And I hope this podcast episode finds you and yours safe and healthy. It has been one Wild ride in 2020, and on episode number 97, I talked about how adversity is something that happens for us. And amazingly enough, after that episode dropped, I received a bunch of phone calls, a good number of emails inquiring about presenting, speaking to organizations, athletic departments on that topic. Like, how do you make that mind shift, right? Like how do you create that thought process? That adversity is something that happens for us and not to us, and then as a result that we grow through that adversity. And I have a program, how champions Grow through Adversity. And I love it. I mean, it's.

The response has been amazing, the feedback has been amazing, and it's been a whole lot of fun to do. And we talk about being real with yourself and allowing yourself to be human and having grace and to experience the emotions and then to label them and let them go, right? And making yourself vulnerable and having the ability to open up and talk to your team, talk to your peers, talk to your family, talk to your people, I guess would be the easiest way to say it. And we really jump into perspective and putting things in a proper perspective, right? And perspective isn't just what is important, it's also what isn't important.

And then we talk about control, the controllable, your attitude, your self, talk where you direct your focus and having the ability and the mindset and the commitment to not be a victim, refuse to accept the victim's mentality. And we talk about how to lift yourself up by lifting others up. And as the program evolves, cause it's like anything, right? It's going to get better with time. I mean, time is a great thing because if you really commit to the consistent work on the fundamentals and getting 1% better every day, it's just like compound interest, right? It's just you all of a sudden you'll become this incredibly intelligent person overnight that has this great program put together. But we all know it doesn't happen overnight. So my point being this program is really still evolving and it's been phenomenal.

And one of the things that I've noticed that I talk a lot about with the stories I share, is that the ones that do the best job of growing through adversity, and I want you to stay with me here and think about how this pertains to you right now. The ones that do the best job of growing through adversity operate from a place of gratitude. So what do I mean by that? They struggle. They've got a boatload of challenges and adversity, like we all do right now. Okay, Some much worse than others. I do not take that for granted. But regardless of their circumstances, they refuse to let their circumstances define them and they recognize what they have. Now, why is that so significant right now?

Well, as I'm recording this podcast, we're approaching this podcast will drop on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving of 2021, which I'm sure none of us will ever forget, even though some may be sitting out there and saying, I couldn't forget it fast enough, which kind of tired of this whole, oh, that's so 2020. You know what? Get into the game, run to the fight, and realize you still got a lot of time on the clock and try and squeeze something out of 2020. That's good. Anyhow, let me get back to what I was talking about. But it's exactly that, right? So we're in this unbelievable time in our life where it's a very fluid situation. There's so many unknowns, we experience a whole set of different emotions, anxiety being a huge one.

And if we can develop the ability to operate from a place of gratitude, and obviously Thanksgiving is a great benchmark for that to do that. And if we can come from a place of gratitude, it is physiological impossible for the human body to experience both gratitude and anxiety at the same time. So if we direct our focus to the things that we are grateful for. And I'll never forget when I first learned this lesson, I didn't even know I was in the middle of a lesson, right? It was 1988, and I was a freshman at Creighton University. Now let me back up a little bit. Thanksgiving has always been a really cool holiday for me. My family's from the south side of Chicago. Thanksgiving was just a blast with the older cousins.

And I would sit with them and my uncles, I would play poker. I mean, everybody was together and you would just laugh and celebrate, right? You'd celebrate things. And I just remember Thanksgivings as a child growing up being a really happy time. And my freshman year at Creighton, were not able to go home from Thanksgiving because of our game schedule. And now, mind you, I spent the entire summer, we spent the entire summer leading up to that school year in Omaha together, working. Some guys went to school, working out, got jobs. So we didn't, weren't home a lot in Thanksgiving. I was going to miss it and I didn't realize how much I was going to miss it. But Coach Peroni, and I believe I told this story on the podcast episode where I honored Coach B after he passed away.

But Coach loved to make a difference and he loved to make an impact in the community that he was in. And at the time in Omaha, we had a really bad situation with the homeless. I mean, it was pretty significant. And he decided that we are going to feed the homeless and we're going to feed the homeless on Thanksgiving morning. Now, somehow that made the rounds on the news and it got to the Today show. So the Today show was going to be there and they're going to meet us at 5:30, let's say 5:30 or 6:00am I just remember it being way too early for my 18 year old, but to be anywhere on Thanksgiving morning. So we're going to feed the homeless, then we're going to go practice, and then we're going to Coach B's house for dinner.

And we show up to the homeless shelter and it's early and it's cold and it's dark. The TV trucks are out there. Now, we have all told our families. Obviously, it's been in the news, it's been in the press. So you got to picture this. We've got guys from LA on the team from Tulsa, from Odessa, Texas, from Fort Wayne, Indiana, from Gary, from Colorado, from Crawfords, Chicago, guys from all over the country. Right? Miami. So all their families are glued to the TV waiting to see their boys on TV on Thanksgiving morning, doing great work. They miss them so much. So we get up there and there's all these homeless people and our poor homeless people are sitting outside. The whole idea of a shelter is for them to be inside. Call me crazy, right?

So Coach B is in one of his moods and he walks in a homeless shelter and he asked the director what's going on? I don't understand it. And he said, well, the TV crew said in order for them to set up, the folks that we serve have to wait outside. And then that was it. There was going to be no Today show. There's going to be no appearance. So here's all our poor families all over the country waiting to see us. They never saw us because were not in Today's show because Coach B kicked the TV crew out of the homeless shelter. And went in and we fed the homeless, and it was awesome.

We put the food together, we cooked the food, we organized it, we put it on their plates for them, and then we sat and we ate with them and we talked with them and we got to know them, they got to know us. We played cards with them, played some different games, and then went to practice. And now, I mean, we are Dragon. And we thought we kind of go through the motions and Coach would have some compassion, maybe a little bit of empathy with us. And that was our immature mindset at that stage of the game. And it was a regular practice where we just got after it and kind of a little bit, felt like we got crushed a little bit.

And then we had a few minutes to go back to either our dorms and apartments, shower, change, and then get out to his house. And Mrs. B, I mean, Ms. B, I hope you have an opportunity to listen to his pie. She. When went out to Coach's house, we didn't go out to see Coach. We went out to see Mrs. B, Brian, Tony Jr. And Amy and to eat Mrs. B's cooking and just to have fun time. I mean, we play ping pong, play video games. I mean, it was a blast. So at this stage of the game, I mean, it's Thanksgiving, but the last thing we really want to do is stuff, as I shouldn't say the last thing we want to do. But it was just a long day. Let's put it that way. It was a long day.

So we get out there and we're dead tired and there's guys that are kind of napping on the couch and we're watching football and TV and we're doing our thing. And Mrs. B's got this incredible setup in their living room. Never forget the table. And she might even had a table on the deck if I remember, warmed up a little bit. But anyways, she has this unbelievable Thanksgiving table. She was our second mom and she would make us feel so at home. And we sit down at the table. I mean, we're starving, we just want to eat. And Coach B gets up and says a few really nice words. And then he says, here's what we're going to do. Now, you know, this is new to me. I'm 18 years old.

I just want food and I want to go back to my dorm and sleep. And I miss my family. I miss my friends. I miss my grandma's angel food cake with Chocolate frosting. He says, fellas, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go around one by one. Now, we spent the whole summer together, right? So you get to know each other when there's really nothing to do at that stage of the game in Omaha back then, and, I mean, in the middle of summer, really not a lot of students on campus, and your days are pretty much occupied anyways. He says, fellas, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go around the table one by one, and we are going to take turns saying something that we are thankful for.

Now, we think we know each other from the summer, and we think we've been through some things together. And I'm going to tell you what we are, again, happy to be there for Mrs. B and the family and her cooking. But it was hard to be away. We were probably feeling sorry for ourselves, most of us. So we go around one by one, saying what we're thankful for and what we miss about home and how thankful we are for that and how thankful we are for all the things that we have as a Creighton basketball player and how thankful we are for the opportunities that we have. And so here we leave, and we're like, on cloud nine. And, you know, it took a while for this to dawn on me when I got into coaching what Coach B did.

And it was absolutely amazing because here's a bunch of guys that really may not have wanted to be there, really feeling sorry for themselves, think life is tough for them. I mean, how naive was that? Think life is tough for him? But we sat there and went around person to person. I think there were 16 of us on the team or 15 of us on the team, and we said what were grateful for, and everything else at that point went away. And it was really powerful. It was really cool. To this day, every single night, when we sit down to dinner in the Molotour house, we do gratitude. Okay? Now, it can get a little bit funny at times because the kids will say the same thing for, like, 17 straight days.

But I find it very important, and I find that the ones that grow through adversity the most are the ones that come from a place of gratitude, because it really allows them to see the opportunities inside of adversity. It really allows them to see how good they have it and what they do have as opposed to what they don't have and what is out of their control. And, you know, sometimes people look at me funny when I Talk. And when I. When I work with them and I talk about, hey, be grateful for this challenge. Be grateful for this adversity. And as time goes on and you really start to think about it makes a lot of sense, you know, and something that I found that.

That exercise at Coach Bernie, I hate to call it an exercise, but that thing we did where we all said what were grateful for when we kind of just hung out after we ate and were in food comas and meat comas, we still had meaningful conversations. We learned a lot about each other when we learned what other people are grateful for. Now think about how that could show up in your world right now. Think about how that could show up in your world if you do listen to it drops on Wednesday and tomorrow's Thanksgiving. How can that change when.

If you're on a zoom with your family because we can't be together right now because of the COVID but you take the time to say something that you are grateful for, and you stir up some old memories of Thanksgivings before, when life was a little bit more simple and a little bit more agreeable with us and we could be together. And you start talking about that, and you have the ability to not just go through the emotions of wishing everybody a Thanksgiving, a happy Thanksgiving, but telling them why you're thankful and telling them what you're thankful for and what they mean to you. And I think something that's really important when you come from a place of gratitude is not just to state what you have gratitude for.

Not just to say thanks and give thanks, but I think being committed, being all in on showing your gratitude. I think you know what I'm talking about. Like you could right now, someone probably popped in your head, always says, like, hey, I appreciate you. And you look at them like they got 10 holes in their head because you know that they don't mean it, but really meaning what you say. Okay. And it's funny. I remember growing up and I had a teacher in sixth grade, Ms. Christensen. She always had, like, the coolest bulletin boards in the school at St. James. She just always had really cool stuff up there. And she had something up there that took me a minute to figure out. I think that was part of the trick when she put those things up there.

Like, the worst thing she ever put up there was, you'll never get yourself into something that you can't get yourself out of. And that became a game for us. Like, we want to see how much trouble we could actually get in. And it was Like a feather in our cap if we could get out of it. But she had something up there once, and it was, life isn't about having everything you want. It's wanting everything you have. And I think right now, it is so critical and it is so true to embrace what it is we do have in a positive light. If my wife were sitting here next to me, she's an extremely positive person. But Nancy would say, I'll tell you what, we've got. We've got bills, we've got a mess to clean up. We've got laundry to do.

It's our sense of humor. But I mean it sincerely right now. What do we have? I mean, I have these kids. I have our health. I have my incredible wife. I have my family, my parents. I have a lot. I have this podcast, which is just. It's allowed me to lean into so many incredible new relationships and learn and share so much all at the same time. And I'll tell you what I have that's helped me grow tremendously over the course of the last eight months through this pandemic is I have opportunities. Something I'm a ton of gratitude for. And if you know me really well and you know my story and you listen to the podcast, this will put a smile on your face. I'm very grateful for second chances. Hell, I'm grateful for third chances.

But I'm really grateful right now for the opportunities that I have to figure this out. Just figure it out. Run to the fight and figure it out. And that's what it's about. And it is not an easy time. It isn't. But when you start operating from a place of gratitude and you keep things in perspective, right? And you make that intentional decision every day, the first decision you get to make with having a positive attitude, and you refuse. You refuse to have the victim mentality. Instead, you're going to lift yourself up by lifting others up. You're going to come out a winner. Okay? And this past week, bizarre to say, on the week leading up to Thanksgiving, this past week, watching the Masters was. It was a little bittersweet. Great for dj, Great for Dustin Johnson. He won.

Amazing how he composed himself after he got off on a bad foot on Sunday. But to me, the coolest thing is what Tiger woods did. I mean, Tiger is in the hunt for a top 10 finish. And he puts not one, not two, but he puts three balls in the infamous race creek right on the 12th hole and puts up his biggest single hole score in his entire career. A 10 now, six years ago, seven years ago, heck, maybe five years ago, Tiger would. He had imploded. Maybe. Maybe he imploded. The odds were. I mean, if they were taking money on the implosion in Vegas, it been pretty close to an even line. Okay. But anyways, he doesn't implode. He regroups. He reestablishes what his focus is for the remaining holes. And it wasn't that he lowered his expectations. He changed his expectations.

He set another goal. Okay. He realized that he wasn't going to hit. Think of this from a business world. And here we are at the end of November. Realized he wasn't going to hit the metrics that he originally had planned when he set out for this Masters tournament. But he also knew there were still metrics to be hit. And he went out and he closed. It was his best close on a Sunday. And any Masters, including the five times that he's put on a green jacket, to me, that's really cool. And to me, that's a lesson for us right here as we close out 2020. And that's why I say there's still time left in the clock. There's still time left in the game.

And then I hear this and I see it on social media, and it bugs the snot out of me when people are saying, oh, it's so 2020, or what else can happen? A lot's happened. I've lost friends. I mean, I don't want to get into all the things that have happened because a lot of bad things have happened. But that's not where the focus is. The focus is, what can I do? What can my organization do? What can my clients do? What can my family do? My inner circle? What can we all do from now until the end of 2020 and close out strong, okay? And what do we have to hang on to and be grateful for and to really live in that moment? And here's the beauty of it. We're going to get to the other side of this at some point.

I firmly believe that something good is about to happen. I don't know when. I don't have an expiration date on this pandemic. You can't do that. But you can believe if you lock into the process and commit to the fundamentals and you continue to work on your mental toughness, that something good is about to happen. Usually it happens when we least expect it. And that's why I think it's so fitting and so perfect. I go back to that Thanksgiving Day in 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska, at Coach B's house. I walked out of there feeling 35 times better. Don't ask me why I came up with the number 35, but I did. But so much better than I did walking in.

And all because not only did I say what I was grateful for and what I was giving thanks for, I listened to my teammates whose stories I thought I knew, whose struggles I thought I knew, whose families I thought I knew, and listened to each one of them, and the coolest thing would come out of the mouth of the guy you least expected it to. And that's why it's so important when you look at this from a business perspective right now. That's why it's so important to continue to have meaningful relationships wrapped around what you have and not what you don't have. This isn't a touchy feely podcast episode. This is really tap into the power of what moment you are in. And what are you going to get from this? Don't go through it.

We talk about growing through it, but what are you going to get from this adversity? What are you going to take away? Now, remember this. And if you're in sales, you'll appreciate this. You can't sell what you don't own, and you can't sell give what you don't have. So you can't pay lip service to gratitude. So take some time. I mean, really take some time. And it doesn't have to be a Thanksgiving thing at all. It's not in my world. I mean, it's not. I'm very committed to operating from a place of gratitude for the smallest things. I mean, for the smallest things. And I just thought it was a very apropos time to talk about it. Being that it is, this podcast episode will be dropping the day before Thanksgiving.

You know, with that being said, I can't say thank you enough for listening to my podcast. It's blown me away. I believe this will be a podcast episode 103. But the relationships I developed, not just with podcast guests, but with folks that listen and, you know, they'll reach out to me via email. And once we connect via email and they get all my contact information, we'll. We'll jump on a phone call and we'll shoot texts to each other and it's really, it's so cool. And don't be shy about reaching out to me. As a matter of fact, if you know, and something else I would love for you to do because I want to reach as many people as I possibly can.

Because the more people I reach, the more people we, our podcast guests, to myself, can impact and inspire to do things that they might not believe that they're capable of doing. And I've talked about this often. I've talked about this before. And I guess this will speak to something that I'm very grateful for. I'm very grateful for. And I love the fact that I am in a transformational business and not a transactional business. And I think regardless of what field of endeavor you're in, you can make it a transformational business. So in order to reach more people, I need more ratings and reviews on itunes. If you could go to itunes and just take a few minutes and rate and review the podcast, I would love that.

And if you have any suggestions for guests that you would like to see, topics you would like to see covered, please do not hesitate to email me at ed@themolator group.com and let me know. I would love to connect with you. I love connecting with folks that listen. And the following that we have developed and we have grown has been nothing short of amazing to me, because, to be honest with you, when I first jumped into this journey of podcasting, I didn't know where it was going to take me, but I knew I was going to learn a lot more than I knew when I started. And I knew I was going to meet some phenomenal leaders and some phenomenal people, and it has not disappointed me whatsoever. And I truly believe this.

I truly believe that this podcast is really just getting started with where we're going to take it. And for that, I am also grateful. Listen, have a great Thanksgiving. Keep fighting, keep grinding, all right? Be compassionate with yourself. Have grace. Be human, but don't be soft, all right? Don't back down. Allow yourself to be vulnerable in terms of not feeling like you have to have all the answers. But you can reach out to the people on your team and come up with a solution. And really take this time to dig deeper. And I'll say it again. Celebrate life. Appreciate it. Okay? Have meaningful conversations with the people you work alongside. All right? With the people under your roof. And that's something we have to be really careful with. Like, don't take for granted what you have under your roof.

Don't take for granted your extended family. And do not take for granted your friends or your health. We are not guaranteeing anything. And as I close here, the way I like to do things when we talk about what we're thankful for, okay? And this is an exercise that you could do in your journal, which I do in mine. First of all, what are you thankful for? Identify what it is you are thankful for. Easy, right? Okay, Ed, way to be the master of the obvious. It's kind of what you do next. Why are you grateful for that? Why are you thankful for that? Where does that gratitude come from? Why? And what opportunities does that. And I call it a blessing. Right? What opportunities does that blessing present? And what are you going to do with that?

You're not just going to let it sit there and think it's really cool that you are fortunate enough to have been blessed with that. What are you going to do with it? And I'm telling you, embrace the heck out of adversity. Like you're getting a gift right now with adversity. And you may be sitting there thinking, listen, I almost died from COVID or I lost a family member to Covid. I understand that things do not make sense sometimes. And I'm not trying to make light. I'm not trying to slight anything. If something were to happen to one of my family members right now with. With COVID or with anything, I'm not saying that I'd sit there and embrace that opportunity. Somewhere along the line, an opportunity will show up for the adversity that you are going through and that you are growing through.

It's funny. A few weeks ago, a picture popped up on social media and it was Brian Delaney. And Brian I considered more like a big brother than a great friend. But he was both. And he was two years older than me in high school. And his senior year, the night before our homecoming football game, it was announced that he had been diagnosed with leukemia. And Brian put up one unbelievable fight. And it made zero sense why Brian got leukemia. It made zero sense why Brian passed two years later. But as I stay in touch with this family and over the course of the years at the bdi, the Brian Delaney Invitational golf outing, and you look at the lives that were touched at Camp One Step. That was a camp for kids with terminal cancer, advanced cancer.

You look at the lives that were touched and the family's lives that were touched. Brian's illness did serve a purpose. Doesn't make it right in terms of being acceptable or being easier on anybody. But embrace where you're at right now and do something with it. I wish you all the best for a phenomenal Thanksgiving. And one more thing. I talked earlier about our program, how champions grow through adversity. If that's something that interests you in a virtual presentation. Again, the feedback has been phenomenal. A ton of fun. Yes, it is. Via zoom. Yes, people have zoom fatigue, which is exactly why people are enjoying it, because I get them engaged. We go through a whole rollercoaster of emotions and there's participation. And I leave you with something. We don't do it just to do it. We do it with the purpose.

We do it together, and it's a whole lot of fun. Reach out to me, ed@themolotorgroup.com and until next time, keep doing great things.

Thank you for listening to the Athletics of Business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathleticsofbusiness.com now get out there. Think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.