Throughout my years of youth, I was always a good basketball player. Never great or amazing, just good. I could hit a layup, grab rebounds, play defense, and pass the ball, but I was not great at any of these. Just good. Bang average perhaps. It wasn’t until my final season of organized basketball, my Senior year of High school, that I realized one of the most important lessons I carry with me. I was great at taking charges, stealing passes, and setting off ball screens. I realized that by sticking to the skills I was great at, I could see time on the court. In my senior year, I started every single game of the season, just doing those three actions every game.
Unfortunately, not everyone plays basketball, and after High school, this knowledge becomes useless. I am not setting any off-ball screens in the office. The larger concept then comes into play. How can I take, taking charges and setting off-ball screens, and bring it into my everyday life? This, folks, is knowing your role.
In my sophomore year of college, I discovered I was quite skilled at speaking with people and holding a conversation. On top of that, I never shut up. Within weeks of joining a bunch of organizations, I became everyone’s friend. Never thought that could come in handy. On top of that, I had this strange way of retaining information about people, as if it were nothing. If you open up my high school yearbook and show me just their picture, I could get just about every person’s name in my graduating class. I am, by nature, a people person. Why? Could not tell you.
Either way, I took this new skill of mine and honed it in on a new venture, the Lawyers in the Making Podcast. My role was to present and convey the stories of hundreds of attorneys around the world. As a plus, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I know I could never be great at everything in life, but I knew if I took those couple of skills and pushed them all into one, magic could be made. Magic is still being made to this day.
Finally, this concept brings me to my current job at Preferred Process Servers.
Long ago, in the days of playing Xbox in my pajamas every day during the summer, my Minecraft inventory was always pristine. Everything was organized to a T, and if it wasn’t, my head would begin to hurt. I bring this to my real job today. Organized baskets, Post-it notes, reminders, the whole 9 yards. From a young age, I had such an attraction for order and organization anywhere I went.
Not everyone is going to be the star player and score 40 points a night, both literally and figuratively. Those people are few and far between. But those who stick to what they are great at, either on the court or in their everyday life, stick around forever, and never run out of there utlity. Because at the end of the day, we all want to be useful. Why not be useful in the best way possible?
We need to hoop together one of these days