Do Hard Things - Part 1
As I said in previous blog posts, I was challenged to “Do Hard Things” by Jeremy Voss and these crazy teenagers from Portland (Alex and Brett Harris). My first hard thing was reading a book. What better book to read than Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris.
The basic concept of the book is pretty simple “Do Hard Things”. The book is directly focused on teenagers as evidenced by the subtitle “A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations”. Because of this, I thought I was reading it so that I could teach others how to do hard things. I am a university minister, but also work quite a bit with youth so it was pretty clear I would be reading this book so that the teens could benefit.
I could not have been more wrong! (Did everyone see that? I said I was WRONG!) I read the book while on the plane from Abilene to San Francisco. I was headed to a conference for my “Real Job” at Milsoft Utility Solutions, and decided to try and read this book all in one day (another hard thing). I completed it that night at the hotel and I have been different since that point.
I realized that in my personal and professional life both, I have been doing “just enough” to make everyone happy. I get the work done at Milsoft that needs to get done, but not what I could get done. I spent several hours a week on church stuff, again definitely not what I could get done. I spent time with my family, and again, definitely not what I could do.
This was a wake up call, I didn’t know how to react.
I will give you a little history so you can see what I am talking about. Throughout my entire school life, I did just enough to get by. In eighth grade I was chosen as one of 20 to get to take Algebra because I had scored high enough on the TAAS test (The test we used to take before TAKS came around). I did not turn in homework. I refused. I knew before the semester started that if I made 95% or above on all the tests I would pass the class and I knew I could do that, so homework was just a waste of time. I made 100% on every test but the teacher didn’t feel that was good enough and kicked me out at semester.
I did this in every single class all the way into college. My junior year in college I had a preofessor named Dr. David Hendricks, and he learned my game. He took me under his wing and tried to help, but I was still lazy. So, in his sylabus, he created the “Robert Clause” (it was literally called that, I felt so special). This clause said that homework was worth 50% of your grade. You could not pass the class unless you did homework. This was very unwelcomed, but I had to do it. I wasn’t going to not get a degree because of homework.
As you can see, reading this book that says, “Do Hard Things”, Don’t settle for mediocrity, and had a biblical basis, rocked my world. I am still in the proccess of finding out what it means.
Part Two tomorrow…
