Perhaps Your Most Important Job: Laying These Bricks

NOTE:?Welcome to 1st Wednesday Wisdom. Each first Wednesday of the month, we bring short reads--usually 3-5 minutes--to inform, stretch and prod readers to embrace our increasingly racially diverse world.

From 1994 to 2003, I roamed right field for the Astros in Atlanta’s Men’s Senior Baseball League. For a good chunk of those years, Rick Houcek played second base. Right fielders and second basemen have a unique relationship. If a soft fly ball drifts our way, we have to decide who shouts,”Mine,” signaling the other to back off to avoid a collision. Rick and I developed great chemistry over the years figuring out who had the better shot at the ball.?

Right fielders and second basemen also talk on the bench. It was during those conversations that I discovered Rick was a highly respected executive leadership coach with his own company, Soaring With Eagles. When he told me about his free, weekly e-newsletter called “2-Minute Monday Motivator” I signed up for it and continue to read it regularly.

Recently, he sent out this gem. For our readers, I felt like this was gold. All of us have the capability to lift up others but we undersell ourselves. We each hold more bricks than we think. We each can extend the road for those coming after us.

Perhaps Your Most Important Job By Rick Houcek, President, Soaring With Eagles

My wife is a brilliant energy therapist, working exclusively to empower women — both one-to-one and in groups — and she gets rave reviews from her clients, I’m proud to say.

She recently completed a series of life-building empowerment workshops for a group of junior and senior women at the University of Georgia.

What she told me afterward was jarringly profound — and has application for us all — women, men, young, old.

In the workshop, she told the women a story of a vision that came to her in a meditation. (Interestingly, she had not even told me this beforehand.)

In the meditation, she saw herself walking on a long, flowing, winding path of bricks — that seemingly went on forever…

…until suddenly the bricks came to an end — beyond which there was no road at all. Only muddy slop.

What? Where do I go next?, she wondered.

It struck her in that moment — that the bricks were symbolic.

They had been laid by women before her whose job it was to create a path and lead the way for the generations of women behind them.

The end of the road meant it was now my wife’s turn to lay new bricks ahead, to pave the way for the women who would follow her.

That, she intuited, is one of the most important meanings of life.

That we are all here…

…to extend the road…

…to be grateful for the bricklayers before us, and pay it forward, by building an ever-longer, ever-wider road…

…to broaden the possibilities for those behind us.

This is not elective, she thought. It’s obligatory. We all have a duty to be bricklayers and road builders.

She went on to tell the young women that, no matter what mistakes they’ve made up to now, no matter what failures they’ve experienced, or harm they’ve caused…

…they are fully capable, fully empowered, and possess all the brilliance, and know all they need to know…

…to lay the bricks up ahead anyway.

Past disappointments do not signal the end of the road.

Quite the opposite. They make us wiser to build it better, sturdier, and more robust, with experience as our teacher.

Concluding her remarks, she noticed the women were frozen in tears. Unable to speak. Stunned. Trembling.

Three of them jumped out of their seats, ran up and hugged her tightly, thanked her, and said no one had ever talked to them like that before.

No one had ever shown them the magnificence of their own personal power in such lofty, visionary words.

No one had ever made them feel so validated, so strengthened, so capable, so emboldened.

Several others remarked they never saw themselves as worth much, and felt their possibilities were limited.

Still others said they walked in to the session feeling powerless and lost… but now had hope, inspiration, and a clearer path forward.

Actions For You:

There was, of course, much more empowerment content to the workshop that played a role in the women’s emotional reaction — I’ve only scratched the surface here of all my wife told them that day.

But this one ‘brick’ story rang my bell. Loudly.

I tell it to you for several reasons.

Helping Other Adults:

If you’re in a leader role (CEO, department head, supervisor, community leader, statesman, coach), never assume the people on your team are getting encouragement elsewhere. Assume the opposite. Assume they’re not.

YOU be the encourager. YOU be the fire lighter. YOU be the spirit lifter. YOU be the empowerment agent. And play those roles every day. Your people are hungry for reassurance and praise.

Helping Kids:

Start the day a child is born and never let up. Believe even a baby in arms is listening and will be influenced — but just can’t respond.

Adolescents and teenagers, in particular, desperately need to be exhilarated and emboldened — by parents, teachers, coaches, scout leaders. They are at an age where they face unbearable peer pressures and will feed off the guidance and ‘you-can-do-it’ encouragement of authority figures. Be one. Don’t abdicate. Believe in them even when they don’t believe in themselves.

I must admit, my wife had me in tears, telling me their reaction. Those college-age women feeling empty and disempowered broke my heart, and my first thought was: Where are their parents? Their teachers? Their role models?

Sure, it’s natural to feel somewhat adrift going out into the world on your own for the first time — even if you have a loving support system. That’s part of the growing-up process.

But?unworthy? Powerless? No one should feel those. Some adult abdicated their responsibility to be an encourager.

Helping Yourself:

Don’t expect the world to beat a path to your door and light your fire.

If you have people in your life who do, you’re lucky. Be grateful. Thank them. Most people do not have such a treasured support system.

Either way, assume you’re on your own and be your own fire lighter and spirit lifter.

You can count on you to give yourself a shot of adrenaline at any needed moment — but you cannot depend on other people to encourage you when that instant arises.

So put on your overalls, grab a wheelbarrow, and fill it with bricks. We’ve got work to do.

There are roads that need building.

It’s part of our everyday life mission — yours and mine.

Turn around. See those people on the path behind us?

They’re catching up.

They need us to extend the road.

Power Thought:??"You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”?John Wooden, national championship college basketball coach, builder of boys into men.

MELD’s Take the Next Step Challenge: Helping People of Color

Who are the people of color on the path behind you or next to you? What work do you need to do to extend the road for them? Which bricks can you lay down? And then, how can you help them lay bricks for those behind them? Not because they need more help than others. Not at all. But because they are often invisible, because they often operate under our radar, because they do things “differently” than most, they are often under-utilized and under-appreciated.?

Every organization becomes better when their employees of color are given opportunities to uniquely shine and when senior leaders lay bricks to extend the road for them.

Paul Tokunaga

Founder/President

MELD,LLC