The Wheel of Excellence Part 2:

"Focused Connection"

This also can be looked at as being "in the moment."

Have you ever heard a sportscaster talk about an athlete as "being in the zone?"

This is being fully focused or completely connected. It is a mind-place where nothing else in your world exists apart from being totally connected with what you are engaged in or experiencing at that moment. This is critical in being able to achieve personal excellence.

A best performance focus is both absorbing and natural, free-flowing and intense, simple and magical. By training your mind to conect fully, trusting your connection and freeing yourself to let outside worried go, you can live and perform closer to your capacity in situations that count. The key to accomplishing this lies in absorbing yourself in the present--the here and now, and gradually increasing the consistency, quality and duration of your focus. Your focus in the leader. Where your focus goes, everything else follows, whether it's positive or negative.

Let it lead wisely.

--Coach Jen

I spent all day and night yesterday in a very large banquet room in a conference center in Randolph, NJ. I pulled in my driveway at 1:50am this morning after a long, ugly drive home in the ice and wind.

My parents retired... finally... it was my Dad's last hurrah. A HUGE farewell and thank you for everything he has done and given. My father is retiring as the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, NJ and has spent most of his life serving others. Actually, they both did... in fact, that's all they have ever done... it's all they've known. And while I sat there yesterday and listened to the speakers and the awards and accolades, I was proud. Proud to know such people, proud to be of their blood and share their last name.

I realized it was more than just the fact that they were my parents...  it was the character that they lived by and continue to live by that makes them so special.

They never told me I couldn't do it. They encouraged me to stumble and fall and get up again. They watched as I took my first steps, both as a small child, and later as an adult in all the new endeavors I would embrace.

I thank them now for all the patience, the teaching, the strong will they instilled in me...

The work ethic, the desire to be something more, and most importantly, the yearning to give all I have to make those around me shine just a little brigther.

I have often received very humbling emails and thank you's from parents, and students alike and I know that it's not me who is doing the hard work. It's you. I take no credit for your successes. I am just glad I can be along on the journey.

So, here's to say that the apple never really does fall far from the tree. While I have yet to touch that many lives, or live with such passion and vigor as my parents, to truly love other people for who they are... I will continue to carry on the work they had started. It inspires me, it moves me, and it becomes me.

And my favorite part of the night? My father had a softball field named after him... I couldn't be more proud. To me, that means he really has arrived!

WAY TO GO MOM AND DAD!!!