Please welcome back to the Floricane blog: Rick Jarvis, co-founder of One South Realty! Rick blogs constantly about Richmond here, here, and here. Rick has been a big Insights® fan from the beginning, so we thought we'd ask him what he learned at our fourth Insights® Explorations workshop.
I almost didn't make it to Floricane's latest Insights® Explorations session.
I took the youngest child to camp in Williamsburg and several of my biggest clients needed my time. The inbox was full and the number of ‘un-responded’ to texts approached double digits.
Oh, and it was a Friday morning.
But, I did make it (albeit a bit late) and I am glad I did. Had I let the pull of unanswered inquires dominate my day, I would have violated one of my personal values — commitment. How ironic, given that this latest Insights® Explorations installment was about (yes, you guessed it) personal values.
And, as you would expect (if you have been a regular at Insights® workshops), what you thought you were thinking at the start of the session may not actually be exactly what you end up thinking once the Floricane folks are done asking you questions and provoking far deeper analysis.
You see, throughout my formative years I spent a large part of my time sweating through a shirt that had a number on the back (and no, I was not in prison). I like to tell people who ask where I am from that I was born in Richmond and raised in a locker room. From the earliest age imaginable, I remember hitting, kicking, throwing, or otherwise interacting with an inflatable leather wrapped ball of various shapes, sizes, or colors on about every sun-baked field from Ashland to Petersburg and beyond while wearing the most hideously colored polyester uniforms of the 70’s and 80’s imaginable (Monacan High School color palate anyone?).
Having spent so much of my life being yelled... errrr... ‘encouraged’ by coaches and watching others experience the same, I began to hone my predictive skills about who would become successful and who would not. I have played with and against players who found great athletic success in all of the major sports and without a doubt, the ones who made it furthest were the ones who worked the hardest. For that reason, values like commitment, perseverance, effort, consistency, and work ethic will always resonate greatly with me.
This year’s Major League Baseball Hall of Fame (HoF) class is a great example. Ken Griffey, Jr. was the number one overall pick in the 1987 draft and he became the highest pick to ever be inducted into the HoF whereas Mike Piazza, drafted in the 62nd round (#1,390 overall) in 1988, was the lowest pick ever to make the HoF.
I think that both statistics are incredible because when you think of all of the number one overall picks in the history of baseball, Ken Griffey, Jr. is the only one out of them in the Hall of Fame?? Really?!? And, when Ken Griffey, Jr. is enshrined along side what was certainly an afterthought draft pick (1,389 players were picked in front of Mike Piazza!) the value of commitment could not be illustrated better. Both of their values to commitment distinguished them and landed them in the HoF.
As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, I am a multiple time attendee of Floricane sessions. I’ve had my profile done (twice) and sat through some form of Insights® roughly 10 times. I am kind of a junkie, I guess,. I have found this series of mini-sessions especially useful because we have not just been painting each other in shades of red, blue, green, and yellow. More importantly, we have been touching on topics that are similar to personal coaching.
As I walk away from the latest two-hour investment in self, courtesy of Floricane, I have a new understanding of why commitment is so important to me. It's why I have the friends and colleagues around me that I do and why some people have stayed in my life as long as they have.
See everyone on August 16!