Another NBA Gem: Music to My Ears

Rui Hachimura is a Japanese professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers. He was drafted into the NBA in 2019 and plays the position of power forward. He came into the Lakers’ organization just this past January, when there were a lot of trades happening.

Rui was a bit starstruck as he met his superstar teammates, Lebron James and Anthony Davis (AD). But he had the desire and drive to be a valuable asset, to find his sweet spot on the team and contribute to the Lakers’ post-season success.

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“You could see when he first arrived, he was trying to sort of tiptoe around LeBron and AD,” Laker Head Coach Darvin Ham said. "I told him, just go out there and be free, be aggressive. The only mistake you could make on this team is to just not compete...”

The feedback Rui got from his two star teammates was an echo of what the coach was telling him. Hachimura said the way Lebron James and Anthony Davis talk to him has changed how he views himself.

“They tell me, ‘Take more shots'...When James tells you to shoot more,” Hachimura said with a hearty laugh, “You have to shoot!”

And when he started showing up aggressively, shooting freely, coach Ham reassured Rui that that is what they are looking for from him. Then coach Ham had the best line:

“The only thing I want you to turn down is your collar.”

My immediate thought: Now, that would be music to my ears! The idea of having someone in a position of authority tell me my unique strengths are needed and desired, and then empower me to let it fly, unencumbered by worries about being too much (or not enough) in some way...that feels like total freedom, like flying!

Then I realized: My whole body and soul was responding to that statement not because it would be encouraging and freeing to hear that, but because that is what I did hear from God when I was seeking Him about how to offer my strengths in this season of my life, and the idea of this blog ‘plopped inside my brain’ and went directly into my heart!

That’s who God desires to be for each of us – our Coach, our Star Teammate, telling us to let it fly!

When He created us in His image (Genesis 1:26-27), He imbued a unique part of His character into each one of our hard wirings. It is His desire and purpose that we discover our God-given specialness, and His delight when we then connect with where we can offer or contribute that gift in our spheres of influence in the various seasons of life.

When I was in my first training course for becoming a Life Coach (eighteen years ago now!), the instructor asked each of us why we wanted to be a Life Coach. My answer has stuck with me throughout my coaching career:

It’s the thing I can’t not do!

I pose this question to every potential client, to get a feel for where they are in their journey: What’s the thing you can’t not do?

Each of us has something we would do for free, we do in our leisure time, others come to us for...it comes out of our pores!

And when we are freely offering that specialty to someone or some place, the joy feels like flying, and those around us are the benefactors of our freedom to offer our gifts and strengths.

For me, the thing I can’t not do is encouraging others – specifically, encouraging others to discover their passion - their thing they can’t not do; then to embrace their God-given wiring, and find somewhere to offer it.

Discover. Embrace. Offer. = DEO, which in Latin = (for) God

Each part of that journey – the discovering, embracing, and then the offering – can encompass years or decades. But the process brings purpose, and purpose brings focus, and focus-acted-on brings fulfilling joy!

Where are you inside those three progressive action words: Are you Discovering? Embracing? Offering?

In previous posts, I have shared on the Enneagram as a powerful tool for transformation. It can be useful in all three of these stages. For those of you who are curious about the discovery process for finding your unique gifts and strengths, let me offer you a summary chart to whet your appetite for jumping into the adventure of discovering your God-given wiring using the Enneagram.

If you think you might benefit from a professional partner in this process, contact me; and we can discuss the possibility of me facilitating an Enneagram Typing Interview with you – a much more comprehensive and personal way to learn about the Types and discover which ones resonate most with you.

Type	Strengths	Gifts (at High Level)
One	The principled, idealistic type. Ones are ethical and conscientious, with a strong sense of right and wrong. They are teachers and crusaders, always striving to improve things.	Integrity, Mission-oriented, Discerning
Two	The caring, interpersonal type. Twos are empathetic, sincere, and warm-hearted. They are friendly, generous, and self-sacrificing.	Open-hearted, Generous, Nurturing
Three	The adaptable, success-oriented type. Threes are self-assured, attractive, and charming. They are ambitious, competent, and energetic.	Authentic, Motivating, Confident
Four	The romantic, introspective type. Fours are self-aware, sensitive, reserved, and quiet. They are self-revealing, emotionally honest, and personal.	Sensitive, Empathetic, Creative
Five	The intense, cerebral type. Fives are alert, insightful, and curious. They are able to concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills.	Perceptive, Innovative, Visionary
Six	The committed, security-oriented type. Sixes are reliable, hard-working, and responsible. They are internally stable and cautious.	Trustworthy, Courageous, Self-reliant
Seven	The busy, productive type. Sevens are versatile, optimistic, and spontaneous. They are playful, high-spirited, and practical.	Joyful, Playful, Accomplished
Eight	The powerful, dominating type. Eights are self-confident, strong, and assertive. They are protective, resourceful, and decisive.	Heroic, Magnanimous, Passionate
Nine	The easy-going, self-effacing type. Nines are accepting, trusting, and stable. They are good-natured, kindhearted, easy-going, and supportive.	Peaceful, All-embracing, Healing

In closing, if you and I were having coffee or tea together, and you felt safe and seen, I would want to ask you:

What is the thing you can’t not do (= your sweet spot)?

What do you experience when you are operating out of your sweet spot?

Do you have an outlet for contributing your strengths and gifts?

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! Let me cut through the tech hassles re: POSTING COMMENTS: When you click to add a comment, you will get a choice of leaving a comment "AS A MEMBER" OR "AS A GUEST." CLICK THE CHOICE "AS A GUEST" (-even if you are a SUBSCRIBER) & your life will be simpler- ha! And as many have done, feel free to send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the https://www.perilsandpearls.com Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together!

Blessed to play a part ~

g

Gems from the NBA Playoffs. What?

Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Failure Speech. The YouTube video: https://youtu.be/uZwlAzr44ys

Even my husband has been stunned by how much basketball I’ve been watching with him. I made it through all of the March Madness of NCAA basketball, and then went into the NBA playoffs with fervor! I guess sports has provided a default choice when about everything else on a zillion channels and streaming services is unentertaining at best, and largely offensive at worst.

My blog, Perils & Pearls, is about finding jewels in the journey. But I was not expecting to find any gems inside of the NBA playoffs! But lo and behold, when the #1 seeded team, the Milwaukee Bucks, was eliminated by the Miami Heat, a set-up for a character lesson quickly emerged...

When the star of the Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo, was asked during the post-game interview about whether he viewed the season as a failure, his spontaneous reply was a demo of integrity, having no prep time to hone his wording or mask his emotions.

If you watch the Youtube video, you can see the emotions as Giannis responses to the reporter’s question about this year being a failure. But, even if you just read the transcript of the interview, I believe you will see what I saw: Integrity. Values revealed. Self-awareness in play even in a moment of great distress.

Let me share some bullets re: what stood out to me in Giannis’ response to the reporter asking him if his season was a failure because his team got beat in the first play-off round:

· Is it failure every year you don’t get a promotion? He tried to relate to the inquiring reporter by asking him about what is failure, as it relates to his job as a reporter.

· You are working towards a goal. He named a few of his high values here: to be able to take care of your family, provide a home for them, or take care of your parents.

· Michael Jordan won six championships. Were the other nine years of his career failures? Again, Giannis was trying to put the reporter’s question in a context he could relate to.

· Success has many steps: He talked about each year you don’t win a championship is a step towards success.

· It’s the wrong question! Yes, that is the point: there are no failures in sports. You won’t always be the trophy-winner, but you can always build on what you learned for the next season, the next opportunity.

· I’m sorry, I don’t want to make this personal. Even in his state of distress after a devastating loss, he was self-aware enough to notice his emotions about this question of failure were making it difficult for him to not take it personal and make it personal.

May I bring this display of integrity into the world of personal growth? The term integration (& disintegration) is used in several settings within the transformational growth process. Several years back, it was my WFTY (Word For the Year), so I did some digging re: the definition(s) of the word. For my purpose of using it as a focus word, I distilled all of the denotations and connotations of integration and landed with this:

Integration is the state of being the same in all places & cases.

You can see how then, we get to the virtue of integrity (my paraphrase):

Living in the state of demonstrating consistent values throughout the domains and seasons of one’s life.

Interestingly, during my training for becoming an Enneagram Practitioner, the words integration and disintegration were applied to the two opposite states possible re: personal growth inside your Enneagram Type structure.

In other words, integration is where you are not a slave to your structure; you don’t stop at your natural tendencies when considering how to approach or think about a situation or decision. You operate freely to explore if a different perspective (of one of the other eight Types) might be the best view for a given situation, while still able to bring the strengths of your Type structure to bear.

This being opposed to the state of disintegration, where you are unaware of what your Type tendencies and blind spots are; and therefore, unknowingly, you default to that perspective in situations and decisions. You are not operating in the freedom to bring in a different perspective that may be better suited for the situation; bound to your Type structure. Inevitably, this singular view will interfere with your ability to bring your Type's superpower into your relationships and situations.

Our gifts and strengths, or assets, can be represented as one side of a coin. On the other side, are our challenges (or the shadow side). Every Type has both sides – the asset side and the challenge side - in operation.

For those who are committed to personal growth, the goal is to spend more time on the asset side where we are enjoying the freedom of offering our gifts in our fields of influence; and less on the challenge side, where we are held back by a lack of awareness of the over-dos of our strengths and our blind spots, denying the world around us of our potential contribution.

One way of getting in touch with the two sides of your wiring is to experience an Enneagram Typing Interview, which provides a foundational framework for a person’s self-discovery process. Growth means change; and as Sheryl Sandberg said:

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

If you would like a professional partner in your personal journey, feel free to reach out to me. I am a Certified Enneagram Coach, as well as Christian Life Coach. I would be happy to facilitate an Enneagram Typing Interview for you to support your exploration of this powerful typology tool.

Meanwhile...I invite you to ponder these questions with me:

Where in my life am I not consistently demonstrating my values? Why not?

How would my behavior look on a video of my response in a moment of significant distress or disappointment?

Could I navigate through my real-time processing and display integration with all eyes on me?

Or would you see me disintegrating in the difficult moment? If so, where do I need to bring my awareness within the structure of my Type? How do I get back from the challenge side to the asset side of my wiring?

(Lord, I lift up my weaknesses and blind spots to You. Only with You and through Your Spirit can I experience real transformational change. Anything else is just short-term self-improvement.)

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! Let me cut through the tech hassles re: POSTING COMMENTS: When you click to add a comment, you will get a choice of leaving a comment "AS A MEMBER" OR "AS A GUEST." CLICK THE CHOICE "AS A GUEST" (-even if you are a SUBSCRIBER) & your life will be simpler- ha! And as many have done, feel free to send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the https://www.perilsandpearls.com Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together!

Blessed to play a part ~

g

Recovery While Climbing

How to Rest Without Stopping Your Race

For fifty-two years now, in the historic Western town of Durango, Colorado, thousands of cyclists celebrate the first run of the train in the spring by accepting the challenge that was originally between two brothers, one a cyclist & the other a brakeman on the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. The contest was answering the question of who could arrive in Silverton first – the train or the cyclist. And so it began…In the 1970’s The Iron Horse Classic became a yearly event each May that continues to grow in popularity across the States and beyond.

It being mid-April now, the roads are littered with cyclists who are in the final weeks of training for this epic challenge that includes two mountain pass climbs, each over 10,000 feet, in the total fifty miles of pedaling.

It is in these grueling mountain climbs that anyone who desires to be successful at finishing this race, must master this key survival technique: recovery while climbing.

The year I turned fifty – and the first year we lived in Durango (our house at 7400 feet) – I set my sights on completing the Iron Horse Classic. Exciting…and daunting! What I didn’t figure on when I signed up was how much of the training would be indoors in spin classes. Ugh…But it was in one of those spin classes that the instructor introduced me to the concept of recovery while climbing.

Who would have thought, it is not only possible but necessary to learn how to take breaks – without actually stopping - while still ascending, still moving upward towards a daunting goal?

This insight served me well in my quest to make it to Silverton; and it continues to infuse me with energy for the long-term goal of living out of my God-given strengths and finishing my particular course of this life race well.

What I found to be true is the ‘how’ to recovery while climbing is about perspective and pace.

If I were to mentally look at the fifty-mile bike route from Durango to Silverton and all I saw were the two mountain pass climbs – each of them at six miles long – I would have been beaten before I left the starting line. And if I would have set a pace that was too fast at the beginning, where there are miles through a flat valley before hitting any climbing, I would have found out too late that I’d burnt all my matches by the time I got to the extensive stretches of needing a sustainable pedal pace for long periods of ascending.

But during my training for the Iron Horse, our spin-class leader taught us how to set a steady pace to save energy for the long-haul, how to down-shift our rpm’s, or pedal cadence, as we approach a climb; and then how to get short reprieves by sitting up higher to get more air in, take longer breaths, and maybe even change up our pedal stroke briefly...All resulting in a sensation of taking a break without stopping our up-mountain progress.

...let us run with patient endurance and steady active persistence the race that is set before us, [looking away from all that will distract us and] focusing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith... Heb.12:1-2

I did make it to Silverton! What a feeling of accomplishment, and a foreshadowing of the many outdoor adventures to come in our new life in the San Juan Mountains of SW Colorado. But the greatest takeaway from the experience – both in the training and the actual ride – was this phenomenon of recovery while climbing.

I have found focusing on perspective and pace to be key concepts for running my life race – the course He has designed and set before me – sustainably, as it unfolds with different terrain each day. Left to my own unchecked wiring, I have been known to set too fast a pace and burn all my matches before the finish of the day, then paying the cost of that lack of wisdom in my body. And what usually precedes such foolishness is starting my day’s course without submitting myself to God’s perspective on my to-do list! If I just stop and ask Him, He is always faithful to help me weed through my objectives and release the day’s schedule to His wisdom; and somehow everything that needed to get done is accomplished without me sacrificing my peace or physical well-being.

You chart the path ahead of me and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment You know where I am. Ps.139:3

May I bring the message down to a practical application? My daughter, Heidi, is in that very busy stage of raising their two school-age children (thirteen and ten), running the household, supporting her husband, extensive volunteering and in all, taking on about two dozen roles to keep all the plates spinning and the family unit cohesive. Many of you reading this have previously been in this season I speak of or are currently paddling in these same waters.

Recently in a conversation with Heidi, she mentioned how this concept of recovery while climbing (that I’d shared with her back when I was in training for the big race) is a very conscious mantra for her on a daily/weekly basis. So I asked her what that looks like in her current daily fury of activity.

How does she maneuver amidst her time-boxed day to actually feel like she’s had a breather that gives her enough of a second wind to keep on going?

Here are some of the notes I took as she hurriedly ran me through her thought process (while doing three other things, of course) as she shared her personal application of recovery while climbing:

1) She taps into a different mindset, different expectations during periods of schedule chaos – an example: when the exhaustion or not being able to turn the brain off actually keeps her from sound sleep, she tells herself “It’s ok, I won’t die from a lack of sleep.” Then, at least, she doesn’t take on anxiety about the lack of sleep, which would further disrupt her sleep!

2) Another powerful reminder she turns to when tempted to get overwhelmed by all the nonstop roles:

Because this season of life can be hard and exhausting, doesn’t mean I’ve made bad decisions or am doing anything wrong.

3) She looks for precious pockets – for example: use drive time, waiting time (in pick-up lines) ...for self-care. That could be listening to a podcast or book while driving, doing paperwork, calling a friend, or just closing your eyes for a few minutes while parked for pick-ups...

4) She revisits ‘familiar wells’- an example: she intentionally draws upon past times when God has come through for her, been faithful in providing what she needs to play all these roles. She may also reread a book that had proven to be a source of encouragement in another time.

5) She cuts out anything not vital during crazy schedule days – like cooking. She picks up dinner along the way with no guilt - ha!

Maybe some of that is helpful for you...Maybe you have your own proven recipe for how to get a breather while still pedaling upward and onward...Or maybe you are not currently in a frenetic season of life. In that case, may your heart overflow with gratitude! In any case, I hope you have found encouragement and had your creativity stirred regarding the necessary survival skill of recovery while climbing.

This race we are in is a marathon, not a sprint; and there is only One who knows what each day will hold. God knows what you and I will need for tomorrow’s terrain. I want to find rest for my soul in that comforting truth; and continue growing in my dependence on Him to supply whatever I need to live a fulfilling life, joining Him in His purposes each day.

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matt.6:8

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. Phil 4:19

I'd love to hear from you readers about this topic of carving out regroup times in the middle of busy or challenging days and seasons. How do you recover while climbing?

What techniques have you found helpful for catching your breath when all you can see ahead is more climbing?

What is one of your 'familiar wells' where you have gone in the past to get refreshed in the midst of hectic times?

What mindset sets you up for success - or failure - in times of challenge or busyness?

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! Let me cut through the tech hassles re: POSTING COMMENTS: When you click to add a comment, you will get a choice of leaving a comment "AS A MEMBER" OR "AS A GUEST." CLICK THE CHOICE "AS A GUEST" (-even if you are a SUBSCRIBER) & your life will be simpler- ha! And as many have done, feel free to send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the https://www.perilsandpearls.com Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together!

Blessed to play a part ~

g