Monday Wake Up Call

Monday Wake Up Call: Your Motivation, Inspiration, & Direction for the Week Ahead

Father’s Day Good morning! Did you do something special yesterday to celebrate Father’s Day? Father’s Day honors fathers and celebrates fatherhood, paternal bonds and the influence fathers have on society. Dads play such an important role – not just in society, but in the lives of those around them. Even as adults, the influence of a father is ever present.   My father was tough and demanded the best in everything we did. He always said, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” At the time, I thought he was too tough. Today I realize that my desire to “get it right the first time” stems from my upbringing, and it has served me well in business. If I was facing discouraging odds, he would say, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” If I was afraid, he would quote Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous words from his inaugural speech during the Great Depression of the 1930s: “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.”   He instilled in me the value of working hard. Success, he would tell me, is 10 percent talent and 90 percent hard work. Above all, he loved me unconditionally, and his influence on my childhood has reached far into adulthood.   Something to Think About Our fathers help shape us into the people we become. As a parent, you help shape your own children. Being a father is an awesome responsibility and one that brings great joy!   Weekly Activity  Spend quality one-on-one time with someone special this week – someone who has helped you become the person you are. It can be anyone, even a child.   Words of Wisdom “My father gave me the greatest gift he could ever give another person: he believed in me.” – Jim Valvano “My father always told me, find a job that you love, and you will never work a day in your life.” – Jim Fox “When I was a boy of 14, my dad was so ignorant that I could barely stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in 7 years!” – Mark Twain “You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they will turn out to be heroes, even if just in your own eyes.” – Walter Schirra Sr. “A working definition of fathering might be this: Fathering is the act of guiding a child to behave in ways that lead to the child's becoming a secure child in full, thus increasing his or her chances of being happy and fruitful as a young adult.” – Clyde Edgerton