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Inspiration – Page 2 – Instant Sean

Instant Sean

Tag: Inspiration

  • Regrets, Ethics or Anything There is a College Course In

    Regrets, Ethics or Anything There is a College Course In

    Forward:

    “I can’t afford regrets, ethics or anything there is a college course in,” I thought to myself as I took my first real job in radio, throwing away a career in sales at the Radio Shack. Looking back on that day, I wonder if I could do it over again, come to think of it I would.

    I had worked part-time at the college radio station and part-time at the South Plains Mall at the ‘shack trying to get through the educational boredom at Texas Tech in the early 90’s. Boy, looking back on my life in radio, I’ve accomplished plenty.

    But the stories that few have heard are the ones I need to tell. Like the time I connected Richie McDonald and his mom on an early conference call, walking down 4th on Broadway parade in an eagle costume and passing out at the Texas Tech fountain, and I won’t forget the stories of the people who my team and I have helped on the way.

    Sure, I will change the names of the guilty, but those jackasses will know who they are. Cause this story, like most stories told by one of my college professor Johnny Hughes is 90% truth with a hint of bull.

    So Josh McCormack, thank for the kick in the ass. I sure as hell needed it.

    To my children Shelby & Ryan, everything I do, I truly do for you. To my wonderful wife Joanna, yes, you were asleep as this seed started its growth, but I know as I start on this journey, I expect you will aid me with plenty of fertilizing and weeding of my ideas. To my family, I blame you for my warped sense of humor and allowing me hamming opportunities that I have always thought was moderately funny. Okay, kind of funny. Maybe funny ut oh?

    To “Regrets, Ethics or Anything There is a College Course In.”

    Let’s ride!

  • Moving the line through a $1.50 soda

    Moving the line through a $1.50 soda

    A friend of mine I met through a startup, asked some questions on social media about creating startups companies in India.

    What would you do to create a business if you had 100 INR in your pocket was the question Mitesh posed? I watched the conversation begin over several posts with ideas, thoughts and concepts being thrown out. Intrigued, watching intelligent people throw out ideas.

    Why didn’t I think about that? We spend our lives wanted better things, but people who succeed go and get them.
    When I started in radio, I wanted the job of a program director, running a station. I set a goal, a high one but once I accomplished it I let the goal define me instead of me redefine the goal. So once circumstances changed I redefined my goal being the best director of digital media my company has. So far so good. My goals achieved have created future goals. Instead of being happy with the goal line I had jogged in place at for years, I moved the line. It forced me to run in uncomfortable circumstances and get out of running on the circle track of life that always ended at the same goal line I had for 15 years.

    We all need to move our goal lines daily. We should work to get closer to our goals each day, then move the goal further away. We will meet the short-term goals, but without a long-term goal to motivate us, we will be jogging in place at a finish line which has lost complete meaning due to time. We need to escape the circle track of life that constrains us to arbitrary boundaries forcing us to stay within the lines. We all know the limitations we have. But you will never make any goal if you do not believe you will do it.

    Another friend of mine is an Ironman triathlete. Randy has achieved what many try but few carry out. He trained for a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and a marathon 26.2-mile run all finishing in a 17 hour time period. I once asked him how he could do it.

    “One stroke, one pedal and one step at a time.”

    He didn’t try to do it all in one day, but started with a swim, a ride and a run until he could do it all at the same time .

    I WANT YOU TO BE A MENTAL CROSS COUNTRY RUNNER! Keep moving forward like you always have someone chasing after you and you will succeed more than if you jog in place while reading the latest novel on your phone.

    English: Snack Machine
    English: Snack Machine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    About the $1.50 soda… my wife couldn’t get out of her work during the recent snow storm and used her debit card to pay for a 20 ounce soda in a vending machine. With the .25 cent convenience charge tacked on, it was $1.50. She needed a drink and was willing to pay a charge that to this day drove me crazy.

    It’s just a soda you cry, what’s the big deal?

    Because that simple $1.50 soda, we take for granted, is the same amount of money that my friend Mitesh was using to motivate people in India to create a business from.

    Perspective my friends is everything.

    So my friends in India, I wish you well with your businesses and look forward to seeing success now and in the future from you. I will continue to cheer you on and cannot wait to see the victories you will make.

    Every goal starts with taking one step forward. Lace up your shoes, and let’s go!

  • Why I love her…

    Why I love her…

    Today, my wife went home. Not because I wanted her, but because her parents needed her to. She went home because that’s what daughters do when they are only children. They go home to help their parents around the holidays.

    This is why I love her.

    Joanna allows me to be neurotic and obsessive over little things because she knows that if I take care of the little things, the big things are automatic for me. She allows me to play my video games, have long conversations with Social Media GIANTS from around the world and take her when she isn’t feeling well for a ride around the loop because she doesn’t feel like being in the house anymore.

    She allows me to be the best version of me possible, even with my flaws.

    This is why I love her.

    I try my best not to get involved with drama, because I dislike drama. I want everyone to be cooperative, friendly and encouraging to others. Not that many people do that in this world.

    She supports my vision.

    This is why I love her.

    Joanna lives in a town far away from her parents because I have a career here. She has sacrificed so I might flourish. She encourages me to be better every day and is the first one to tell me when I have failed & hug me afterwards.

    This is why I love her.

    She is a private person and I will probably get yelled at for telling you so much about her, but I have to.

    She fights for those who have no voice and lends her voice to others. She is the one whose ethics are amazing and rather than others who have asked for me to bend what I believe, making me even more ethical. She is proud of me and loves me unconditionally.

    This is why I love her.

    She says that dislikes small dogs, but will do whatever it takes when our dog has an epileptic seizure. Her compassion for animals is never-ending and

    This is why I love her.

    I hope that my friends get an advocate that has such love, compassion, honor, ethics and is 1 /10 of the woman who my wife Joanna Watson Donahue is.

    Our anniversary is on the 19th. We’ve survived 5 years together.  Her late grandmother, who I love like my own, used to say to me when we walked in, “Have you beat Jo yet?” and when I told her no, she’d reply, “well you should!” She’d turn to Joanna and smile.

    We’ve survived five years of death, heartache, hospitals, bills, drama, hatred, failures and misery…

    .

    .

    because of love, honor, dedication, compassion, friendship, peanut butter sandwiches, pushing to get my degree & the love of two puppies in a WAY too small house.

    I will be somewhere where I can not write this all down where you can see it on our anniversary, but I think doing it a bit early will be fine.

    I am the successful man I am today, because of the love you have shared with me.

    God Bless you Joanna and Happy Early Anniversary!

  • Forgotten…

    Forgotten…

    Cascade's Baseball Field at Sunset
    Cascade’s Baseball Field at Sunset (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Recently a local high school football team finally beat a rival for the first time in a long time.

    Words were said, shoving happened and stupid things followed.

    But in the end, it was just a game.

    In our lives we hold sporting events and competitions to such a lofty level that judges have been known to play favorites, officials “cheat” and parents drive their kids where they do not want to play anymore.

    WHY?

    Why is winning so important in the grand scheme of things?

    I’ll be honest with you my friends, I’m not a rich man. I’ve lived hand to mouth my entire life. I have not gotten everything that I wanted, but I grew up with 2 brothers and 3 sisters. My parents worked multiple jobs sometimes to help me in my life. I was in a lower middle class family that handed down clothes to my brothers and did not get the coolest things first. But while my friends always had the hottest clothes, or the best lunches, I had family.

    Yes, because of situations beyond my control, I once brought a macaroni and cheese sandwich to school. I was not cool and moved around too many times to make any life long friends until I settled down in Lubbock for college.

    But I have worked my butt off and one day, the wonderful 2 bedroom, 1 bath house that I have paid every single cent I could earn and more into… will be mine. No one can take away accomplishments that you achieve.

    Only you can take accomplishments and make them meaningless.

    As a kid, I was terrible in sports, I wouldn’t shut up and I did not have anything that I could call a significant sports success. I could tell you about leading the pony league of baseball in walks, strikeouts and being hit by pitch but that delays my point.

    I don’t remember any of the strikeouts today. None of them. I don’t remember the disappointments of my father, if he had any, that I wasn’t going to be a superstar. Because that wasn’t important to me or to my family.

    What was important was making an effort.

    I do remember my brief baseball career the one playoff game where I got hit by a pitch, stole 2nd, stole 3rd and got hit in by one of my friends to win the one and only playoff game in my life.

    If you think that was funny, have you ever heard about a team carry a player off the field after grounding out to short? I have.

    I was the player. My teammates knew I was the worst player, but because I MADE the effort, they recognized how important it was to me to be recognized for my effort.

    As adults we know that a kick to win a game should be celebrated today, remembered in the future but ONLY is a memory.

    Kids are full of emotions and hormones.

    Holding anger in our heart / acting out in frustration has no meaningful consequences. Anger does nothing but keep us from success.

    Teach your kids… it’s just a game and they will move on with their lives win or lose. I’ve lost more times than I have won in my life, but my wins I remember each of them with vivid details.

     

    The losses… have been forgotten.

     

  • Choosing a destination

    Choosing a destination

     

     

     

     

    Railway

    After years of unhappiness and desperation I finally had to do it.  I wouldn’t have told her this years before, not even when we were dating, but it came to the time in my life where I couldn’t deny it anymore.

    Sometimes I would just go round and round, waiting for the right time to distract her from the story that she had been telling me about her work or the trip to New York that she was taking when it would happen. She would realize where we were and immediately tell me what I knew all along.

    “Do you know where the hell you are?”

    My normal response was, “I was just enjoying talking to you, and we really didn’t have a set plan so I thought we’d take a drive.”

    Most days, she would nod her head and immediately went back to her story and I would go back to just driving.

    But today she wasn’t having it.

    “Pull over,” and as I did the interrogation began, “What’s wrong?”

    “I’ve been all over this map and I think I’ve seen everything I want to see on this map.”

    Her response was enlightening, “Get a new map.”

    So I did.

    I went out searching for new challenges, goals and expectations.

    But the more I tried to find them, the more I realized that those challenges, goals and expectations were on the same damn map I had just been circling around before.

    I’m the king of telling people to change their perspective but I was the worst physician of all. I had to do something rash, drastic.

    But I hate change.

    So I started by 2 years ago by starting a twitter account for a hobby of mine. I dedicated time to this hobby and today I have MANY times the amount of followers that my real account had.  But this new account was focused on one topic, something I enjoyed but could never discuss without fights breaking out with friends from around the country.  I was anonymous and recently let everyone in that I was running it.

    They didn’t care. They just wanted me to continue my content so I did.

    But it just was a slight scratch of an itch I was having.

    So I joined two groups for Social Media Professionals. I was the guppy in the deep end and some days I have been successful in helping others. Some, not so much.

    I was trying, I had gotten to the edge of my map and took the first step to a new map.

    Now choosing a new destination was difficult for me, because this map looked like gobbilty gook. Nothing was labelled and I could just as easy get lost in this new map as the old one.

    But I , with the encouragement of my wife, forged ahead. I’m looking for the next challenge, goal and expectation.

    I finally realized that I have a destination in mind.

    Something I should have done long before. But that fear of change got to me.

    But I have no fear now.  I talk to people who have written major books on Social Media weekly and have yet to be uninvited to their playground. I just move around exploring the world that I have now stepped my foot in.

    I’m 43 , and I’m a man, but sometimes asking someone for a map and directions, would have been good for me 10 years ago. But I wouldn’t have known what to do with a map, let alone a new map.

    I’ve chosen a destination and a path to get there. The road won’t be paved and I have high goals and expectations.

    But once I reach my destination, I’ll turn to my companion and love of my life and say, “I think I’m going to take this road.”

    She’ll be by my side, kicking my backside as we wind down the road.

    As you reach the end of your map, path, destination, you may find yourself lost, like I was. You might need an encouraging word, someone to help you along your way to your next destination.

    If you need a kick in the ass… call me.

    If you need an encouraging word… call me.

    If you need my phone number… e-mail me.

    I believe that without the encouragement of people that I truly love, I would still be driving on the road, filling up with gas when I need it, never arriving at my destination.

    How can I help you arrive at your destination?