to live anymore. I contemplated suicide because it was just so hard for me to pick up the pieces of my life and move forward. When I got the call to speak at a leadership event when I was injured, that was the last thing that was on my mind. Aſter nearly talking myself out of it, speaking at that one event was the biggest blessing ever. It completely changed my life, and I am so thankful that I ended up geting hurt, because who knows where my life would be right now if I didn’t. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. Even if we don’t always know right away what that reason is, I truly believe that every adversity, hardship, heartbreak, and failure is purposefully placed in our lives to help up grow and become the very best version of ourselves. Over the years, I have learned to love adversity and hardship because I know what’s beyond that: an opportunity for me to grow as a human being.
You also spoke about how failure drives us to change. You spoke about how most small businesses fail within the first five years and how success grows from our failures.
As many business owners are part of our organization, how can we learn and grow from failures along the way?
I think the first important step is to change your perspective. To me, perspective is a very intriguing thing. How we see the world determines the way we live our lives. If you view failure and adversity as some terrible event that is meant to ruin your entire world, then I truly believe that you will start to find the reasons as to why that’s true. On the flip side, if you view failure and adversity as a defining moment to level up your game and become a better version of yourself,
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you will start to do just that. That doesn’t mean that it will hurt any less, because that’s far from the truth. It just means that eventually you will be able to be in a space to discover what the learning opportunity is and grow from that. Something I force myself to continually ask is, “What’s the learning opportunity in this particular moment?” When you replace “Why is this happening to me?” with “What is this trying to teach me?” everything completely shifts in your world.
What do you mean by Events + Response = Outcome?
It’s a formula that I have used for well over 10 years. All throughout the course of our lives, we are going to have positive and negative events. A lot of the time, we can’t control the events in our lives but that’s what a huge percentage of the population spends their time complaining about. Events that they can never control. However, the one thing that all of us has the power to do is to control how we respond to the events in our lives. When things are going good, never get too high, always be humble and continually refine your craft to get better. When things are going bad, better days are ahead. Use that moment as an opportunity to strengthen your courage and move forward despite the fear that may be present in your life. How we respond to the events in our lives will bring us our outcome, either the outcome we want or the one that we don’t want. It all comes down to taking full and complete responsibility for your life and choosing how you respond to all of the events throughout the course of your life.
Finally, you spoke about three qualities: 1) Love more, 2) Care more, and 3) serve more.
As business owners and entrepreneurs, how can we apply these principles to our lives in general and in work?
Every single day, search for ways you can love more, care more, and serve more. Not only the people you lead, but your customers, your family, and your friends. Te very best leaders that I have ever encountered displayed on a daily basis all three of these qualities. It didn’t mater who they were interacting with, or what their title was, they looked to love more, care more, and serve more each and every day. When you let these three qualities become apart of your daily life, it will start to become your DNA. Te best leaders love more, care more, and serve more every single day of their lives. To me, it all comes down to searching the night before on how you can wake up the next day and focus on just one of those key areas for that particular day. When you approach it with that level of practicality, over time that really starts to build up. ❚
Matt Mayberry is a former NFL linebacker for the Chi- cago Bears and now serves as an internationally ac- claimed keynote speaker and performance expert. Matt is a
columnist for Entrepreneur and Fortune Maga- zine where his articles on peak performance, overcoming adversity, leadership, and motiva- tion are read by 4 million people worldwide. He is Indiana University’s record holder for most sacks in a game and won the prestigious Howard Brown Award his senior season which is awarded to the player who exemplifies lead- ership, courage, and work ethic. Matt is the author of the book WINNING PLAYS: Tackling Adversity and Achieving Success in Business and in Life. Matt’s work has been featured on and in NBC, ABC, ESPN, Business Insider, Forbes Magazine, Fox News, Fox Business, MSN Lifestyle, and CNBC. Matt has served as the 2019 keynote speaker at DATIA’s 2019 Annual Conference held in Chicago, IL.
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