News
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Random Acts of Kindness Day Is February 17th
Here at The Make Life Good Company, we try to “remind, encourage and inspire” people to make life good for others every day. With this in mind, my wife and I visit a tavern in Scituate, RI for occasional food and libations. We occasionally commit a random act of kindness by buying a drink for someone we don’t know. We rely on the wait staff to identify someone who might appreciate the gesture. We expect nothing in return, and we expect, in fact we ask, that the transaction will be anonymous.
But as we have written in our earlier blogs, once again it seems impossible for such gestures to be accomplished anonymously. The wait staff person is pressured to identify who offered to pay for the drink, she relents, and a very happy and appreciative patron visits our table to thank us. The result? We have made a new friend at the tavern! Committing random acts of kindness can be good for everyone involved.
Like the tavern patron, sometimes one can be the recipient of a random act of kindness at the most surprising of times. Pastor Joel Osteen of the Lakewood Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, tells a story to illustrate this point. He will occasionally visit members of his Congregation when they are hospitalized. However, he privately dreads driving to the hospital because of the difficulty of finding parking.
On one such visit, he drove to the hospital to gladly find a parking space right in front! It was so unusual, he suspected that there had to be a Godly reason for it. As he walked toward the front door, a woman was walking in the opposite direction. She stopped him and asked if he was Joel Osteen? He replied that he was, and she proceeded to tell him how much his ministry had meant to her and her life. Pastor Osteen joyfully accepted the complement! He knew that this must have been the reason why the parking space was available on that day. An unexpected, but appreciated, random act of kindness by an unknown passerby.
The Make Life Good Team is pleased to see the efforts of others who are trying to commit and encourage random acts of kindness. A good place to start for examples of this is Random Acts of Kindness, the website (www.randomactsofkindness.org), with stories of ways in which we all can make the world better through kindness in our schools, homes and communities. This site is one of our faves.
Also, let’s note that even the major television networks have gotten in on a very good act. Lester Holt of NBC News features weekly stories that describe the ways that people are making life good for other people. Please check out these motivational stories called “Inspiring America” at www.nbcnews.com.
If you’re not in the habit of committing random acts of kindness, please give it a try! You may be surprised at what you find while making the world a better place.
Remember, the official Random Acts of Kindness Day this year is Friday, February 17th. That’s a great day for all of us to commit a random acts of kindness and continue the practice throughout the year.
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Adam Bradley's Story About a Life with No Direction to a Life with Meaning That Helps Others
Adam Bradley, of Hardwood Hustle, and Mike, a co-founder of The Make Life Good Company, met through a mutual friend Mike went to college with at James Madison University and with whom Adam grew up. Though Mike and Adam had met while they were in college together, it wasn't until Adam and Mike were in New Orleans for the same friend's bachelor party that they had the chance to have a meaningful conversation and get to know one another.
Adam, it turns out, had some major life challenges since we were at college together. Much of Adam's personal transformation, which you will read about in his blog below, had come to fruition once he began working in the community with people of various backgrounds and disadvantages.
Adam and Mike really connected when they spoke about the meaning behind the work. Most importantly, through, Adam realized that if you help others and do good for people in your life and communities, life is bound to pay forward your good deeds and produce more meaning in everyone's lives.
After experiencing many bumps and curves on the road to his new attitude, Adam came through with a tremendous outlook on life. He now makes life good for many people all across the country.
Adam is a founder of Hardwood Hustle, a podcast platform designed to educate, empower and encourage basketball coaches, players and parents, and recently launched the nationally recognized leadership program “Lead ‘Em Up,” which provides coaches an engaging and cutting edge curriculum they can use with their players.
Here’s his story that we would like to share.
One of my favorite themes in our leadership program, Lead 'Em Up, comes in our "Rebounding from Adversity" session. It’s a theme that discusses "making your story greater."
I Iove that theme for a couple reasons. First, it's easy to understand and secondly it’s applicable for everyone no matter how good or challenging your life may be.
Today, I’m still in the process of trying to make my story greater because it was far from pretty at one point. I often say I'm not where I want to be, but I'm happy not to be where I could be.
Fifteen years ago I went on a 12-month streak that consisted of the following series of events:
- crashed my car drinking and driving
- got a DUI
- lost my license for 6-months
- had to take alcohol-awareness classes
- assigned to probation
- dropped out of college
- incurred more than $3K in legal fees
- required to perform 300 hours of community service
During this time period, I not only sold drugs, but I took advantage of whatever drug I could get my hands on.
And I violated my probation not once but twice. After the second violation, my probation officer looked at me and sternly said, “One more violation of any kind, you're doing 90 days in jail. Period. No questions asked."
That was the eye opener this stubborn young man needed to hear.
Bold changes needed to be made. At no fault of my mom, I decided a change of scenery was needed so I moved in with my Dad. My Dad was a strong man of faith and had spent years doing prison ministry. I knew the change in my home culture and the change in the proximity to my current influences were going to create a change in me.
As quickly as things spiraled down in my life, they reversed course just as fast. Within the next year I enrolled back in college, getting straight A's for the first time in my life, got promoted at my job, started coaching a high school basketball team, began mentoring a group of young people, met my future wife, and committed to my faith.
My story was slowly becoming greater.
The largest accelerator in my professional journey came through the creation and launch of my online sports network: Ball Hogs Radio Network. Everything changes when you get tasked with an opportunity of creating something out of nothing. My partners and I took a small internet radio show that consisted of five guys in a basement and turned it into a network with nine shows, more than fifty contributors, corporate sponsors and an affiliate deal signed with Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals.
That doesn’t just happen without a willingness to learn… and a lot of help from others.
My efforts taught me how to engage a community, lead a group of people, work through interpersonal conflict and build a business. I recently spoke to a military captain about how they create such strong leaders in the Marines and he pointed to a concept called “situational training.” He added, “We put our leaders in situations where they are forced to perform and through those situations, we evaluate, teach and get better.” Building my podcast network and business forced me to perform through various situations. The process generated a maturity and confidence in me that changed my life.
The network began to open doors all around me. It connected me to Alan Stein and together we launched a dynamic podcast platform for coaches and players called the Hardwood Hustle. The Hustle is a platform that allowed us to educate, empower and encourage the basketball community. Stepping into that community inspired me to want to do more.
Both the Ball Hogs network and the Hardwood Hustle opened doors to various speaking engagements around the country, which helped continue my journey and make a shift in my heart to serve young people and pushed the launch another podcast called Lead ‘Em Up leadership curriculum for basketball coaches.
As I sit here today, I look around and feel my biggest social impact is through the Lead ‘Em Up program. This leadership curriculum we created in 2014 is now being used by high schools all across the United States and in five countries around the world.
Coaches are using the program, but so am I.
For me, I have the opportunity to work with two different schools in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area every season. I try my best to share my experiences with all the players and coaches I work with. I get to know these young men and women and I do my best to influence them. As I often tell my players, my goal is very simple - to make you shine.
What I enjoy most, though is that Lead ‘Em Up is a double-bottom line business for me, which is the best kind because the program generates revenue and at the same time positively impacts the lives of the coaches and players I reach every day.
When you live life the right way, it naturally produces a wave of momentum that you can continue to ride. And I’m going to continue riding this wave that’s built on serving others, which also just so happens to “make life good” for so many others.Cheers! Adam Bradley
We at The Make Life Good Company applaud Adam’s journey from a life with no direction to a life that changed course and is now moving forward to teach and help others. -
Recognizing the Season
Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.
A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable, not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid.
“Oh my," she exclaims her breath smoking the windowpane, “it’s fruitcake weather!”
“I knew it before I got out of bed,” she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. “The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they’ve gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh, Buddy (as she called the Author) stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We’ve thirty cakes to bake.”
And so begins one of the few books that Truman Capote ever wrote called “A Christmas Memory” that describes his early years being raised by an elderly distant cousin, Ms. Sook Faulk. Each year she recognized the arrival of “fruitcake season” and commenced baking fruit cakes that she distributed to people about whom she cared. She recognized the characteristics of “the Season”: the courthouse bell sounding cold and clear, the leafless trees and the absence of birds singing. She knew that it was time.
There’s something to be said about the importance of “recognizing the Seasons” in one’s life, especially when that Season is so important, not only for you, but for so many others. We are in one such Season now. “Late November” will be too late to recognize the Season that we, as Americans, are in. November 9th will be too late. This November, even more importantly than the seasons of four, eight, twelve or more years ago, we must recognize the importance of this Season, for it will dramatically affect the future of our Country. We must choose the ingredients now, and let them rise in our collective consciousness before November 9th. Make that day a day of celebration. The Season will be over.
Therefore, just as the Baker must recognize the difference between “baking powder and baking soda,” we must recognize the difference between “love and hate,” and especially the difference between “democrats*" and "demagogues.”
Your choice can Make Life Good for so many people.
Recognize the Season.
* Democrat, noun, an advocate or supporter of democracy.
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Human Suffering
August 14th is the holiday known as “Armistice Day,” a “celebration” of the surrender of the Japanese in WWII. I guess we could agree that the end of any war is worthy of celebration, but the act of war itself is filled with unfathomable human suffering.
Yet, human suffering itself is not limited to war. Today, around the world, we see human suffering caused by economic instability, ineffectual governments, Man’s inhumanity to Man, and the lack of earthly resources, such as food and water, the very basic needs of human existence. We thought that these issues would be passe´ by now in an advancing world, but, despite some progress, these conditions seem to be realities of life, not aberrations.
In her new book, “Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment,” Marianne Williamson addresses the topic of human suffering from a spiritual perspective. Her messages are important for our world today. We would be wise to incorporate them in our collective human behavior.
Rather than viewing human suffering as a condition that often prompts people to seek medication to mask the pain and to help them “recover,” Ms. Williamson reminds us that suffering is a condition from which we can not only emerge, but emerge from in a more enlightened state than before. She reminds us that we seek happiness in the external world, a world that is bound to disappoint us, thus leading to our own levels of suffering. As Buddha said, “the external world will provide only temporary happiness, at best.”
We have heard this more positive approach to dealing with suffering in many famous expressions intended to strengthen our attitudes, motivation and resolve: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” “Learn from your mistakes,” “In order to recover, one must “bottom out,” “Don’t make the same mistake twice,” “You were the victim of circumstance,” and others. In other words, strength should follow suffering. Some people simply choose another path of pain.
Joel Osteen, Pastor of the Lakewood Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, has some great advice for people who are suffering. Perhaps they feel that their lives have not been what they had hoped for, whether due to their own actions, or because they have just “drawn the wrong card” in life. Echoing the advice commonly credited to Charles Dederich, founder of Synanon, Pastor Osteen recommends making today “the first day of the rest of your life.” He suggests that “one can be anyone that one wants to be” going forward in life. Drug abuser? Start today to end your addiction. Hurt someone? Make amends, say you’re sorry, and end your hurtful ways. Living a crime-filled life? Change your ways and start living a crime-free life today. It’s great advice.
But it starts with self-awareness and recognition. Sometimes this is the “bottom” of our lives. When we finally achieve the daylight of self-recognition, the goal should not be to deny our suffering and our past, but to move beyond it. It is a daily choice to be something more today than we were the previous day, each day of our lives. If this resonates with you in your own life, relish the joy of seeing the faces of those around you who recognize that you are somehow different today!
So start today to overcome and grow from your suffering. Move beyond it and “make life good” for others. As the Beatles wrote, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
It can happen.
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With Resolve, We Can Do Better
As we recently celebrated our Independence Day on July 4th, it is important to remember how the United States came to be. It was a group of men and women, living under the rule of a foreign country, in a place that was now their home, yet they didn’t have the freedom to run their new land in a way they saw fit. The result was a rebellion, one of course we all know led to a free and independent United States of America. But it was a long, arduous, and taxing war, one that required a great deal of guile, tactic, and above all, resolve.
Fast forward to 2016. The U.S. has grown to over 300 million people and the world, to over 7 billion people. With so many people, there is great diversity in terms of race, religion, social and economic status, creed, and more. As a result, there are naturally conflicts of various kinds and innocent people are affected. Recently, 49 people were murdered in a gay nightclub in Orlando where they were simply enjoying an evening on the town. Not more than a week later, suicide bombers detonated bombs in Istanbul, Turkey, killing dozens. Most recently, in Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up a truck full of explosives killing hundreds in a popular gathering area.
These heartbreaking and senseless acts to tear humanity apart, pin us against each other to divide us. But we must continue to have resolve. We must believe in each other. We should not let differences in beliefs and a way of life deter us from being better to one another. We can do better. We must do better.
The Make Life Good Company will donate $5.00 to the victims of these tragedies for each t-shirt sold that features our “Resolve” and “We Can Do Better” designs.
