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Teams are only as good as their individual parts allow them to be. I am not necessarily talking about the individual people, but the individual internal parts each member holds. These are things like belief, dedication, effort, trust, support, and accountability just to name a few. Without these things in place, the best rated leaders and team members in the world will fail.

Teams can make projects easier to complete, but only if the team shares the same vision. A few examples of good Teams with a shared vision are the ’85 Chicago Bears, the 2013 Seattle Seahawks or the 2016 Chicago Cubs. In the aforementioned cases, the Teams were united in their presentation of their goals, the work they needed to put in to get it done, and they believed in their vision. When they had those things in place some natural leaders stepped up and led the vision. They each held each other accountable, but the leader made sure the path ahead was clear.

A leader will tell their followers where to go, but a good leader will show their team the way to get there. A team with a singular vision will find it easier to follow a good leader because those leaders will offer encouragement that builds up both the top and the low performers. A Good Leader will inspire their team members on to better performance. This is true with all types of teams; whether sports, business, or whatever.

We all have had bad team experiences in our lives. Either the team wasn’t unified in their vision, or the leader didn’t promote a healthy competitive environment. If the leader is bad, the team will lose focus and stop believing in their vision. If the team stops believing in the vision, the leader will lose respect and control of the team. If you want a Team to be successful, you need to have a unified vision, accountability, trust, and leadership. If a single piece of that is missing, the team will eventually fail. If you are part of a bad team, find a way to bring in a shared vision. That will start the ball rolling in the right direction.

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There are several things that come to mind when I think of “Average Person.” Average people do not plan for the future, do not have assets, have lots of liabilities, spend more time in front of the television, and don’t read books. Investing in oneself is not something an Average Person does. So why do people live Average lives?

Many people don’t even realize that they are just “Average.” This is because we always think of ourselves as above average. We are more likely to look at someone else and judge them by their actions while we judge ourselves by our intentions. Maybe it is because we just can’t see that those people may have had good intentions as well. It could be that we don’t trust that everyone has as good of intentions as we have. This leads us to use excuses for why we aren’t successful. “I’m not that bad,” or “At least I don’t have his/her bad habits.”

Changing your life in drastic ways really doesn’t take huge life altering decisions. It can be something as simple as having a glass of water. For me, my go to drink used to be soda. I would drink half a 12 pack a day. I switched it to juices at first to get the sugar but cut back on the caffeine. Then I started drinking water at my desk at work throughout the day rather than juices. Now I am having water at work, at home, and whenever I go out to eat with my family. Simple small steps end with you on a totally different path than you began on. I have also done something similar with my eating habits. I started with switching up breakfast to include a salad instead of fast food. Now I am cooking more at home and cooking healthier foods. Instead of potato chips for snacks I am grabbing a bottle of water or an apple.

I may not see immediate changes in my size or health, but over time, if I look back, I am amazed at where I was vs. where I am now.

The Average person looks for excuses where the above average person accepts that it is no one else’s fault for where they are in life. It is easier to sit back ad blame circumstances and blame someone else for where you are in life. It means you don’t have to deal with the embarrassment of knowing you screwed up your own life. You don’t have to take ownership because you can just blame the government, your co-workers, your family, or insert your boogey man here.

If you don’t want to be average, it is simple. Don’t be average. Take ownership of your life. Don’t complain about something if you are not taking actions to change it. Don’t point fingers and say you are better than someone else. Focus on making good decisions and learning from the bad ones and you will not be an Average Person. You will not end up being a Basic Bitch.

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Our team is always talking about the benefits of personal development. However, there are some very real risks involved. Not that the steps you take to improve yourself involves risk to your physical health or anything like that. It is more the risk of having the wrong mindset and the problems that arise from that.

One of the biggest issues many of us may face when involved with personal development is going through depression. In personal development we are supposed to focus on growing into the best version of us that we can be. However, many of personal development ‘followers’ start comparing their lives to those of the people they want to be. The problem with this is we will always see the ‘ideal’ person as being better than us and we will never be good enough. Mainly, we are looking at the other person and saying the only reason we aren’t them is because we lack something. Then we end up giving up because we don’t have what that person has so why even try.

The point of personal development is not to make us into someone else or to become another person. It is to simply become the best ‘you’ that you can be. We can’t do that if we are looking at someone else saying we want to be them. It creates a false goal that doesn’t get us to where we need to go and makes it harder to reach our potential.

Personal Development is a lifelong process full of little successes and many failures. In many cases, you won’t be able to recognize the changes right away. However, if you look back after a long while you will see where your small changes in healthy decisions have completely changed the direction your life is going. It may not be recognizable at first glance, but as you improve and look back over your life, you will clearly see how you got to where you are. You will also find it much easier to see what changes you need to make to get where you want to go. The trick is to improve your life, not compare it to someone else’s. It is ok to have someone to look up to for inspiration or for advice, but don’t fall into the trap of comparing your life to theirs and giving up.

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As a team, we decided to go through one of Rohit’s worksheets to help him test out a piece of his upcoming 30-day Life Reset. After completing the worksheet, we decided that it would be a powerful episode to discuss on air.

In this exercise we used a graph to chart our lives from our earliest memory to our current day. We marked off our high points and our low points where either great things happened, or bad experiences brought us down. What we noticed is that we had a pattern. Anytime we were in a bad place we worked hard and we saw improvement. However, once we reached a place that we were comfortable we almost always had a steep decline where we sort of crashed.

When we experience these deep dips in our positives and negatives, it is usually because we got complacent or comfortable. We let off the gas for our goals and we ended up failing. Failing hurts and can put you into either a fight or flight situation. You will either fight to get out of a failure or continue to run from facing it making it worse in the progress.

Life is a series of ups and downs, but the only reason we have steep crashes in our personal lives is because we let it happen. We are ultimately in control of where we go with our lives. There is no one to blame for where we end up. When we realize that it is our own decisions that led us to where we are, we can begin to take the right steps to get back on a path of growth and success. Analyzing our lives’ highs and lows can help us recognize the patterns we create for ourselves and set new habits that counteract our bad habits.

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Summer comes around every year and many of us are caught off guard. We look forward to the sun, and claim we are looking forward to the fun. However, most of us end up just killing time. Students take a break from learning to just hang out and have fun. People take vacations that feel thrown together and have very little value. How do we take control of our summer?

First, don’t just fill your time. Use it wisely. Filling time with meaningless activities does you and your growth no good. Conversely, killing or wasting time does you no good either. Take your summer time and try to make memories. Do something you don’t normally do. We all have something we have said we wanted to try. You know those things that your friends posted about on their social media that made you instantly say “now that looks fun.” Make the effort to make some memories. It enriches your life just being able to say you have tried something different rather than looking back wishing you had.

Kyle makes a great point in this episode. Don’t let your summers be planned for you. Be proactive and take control. Giving up control to outside forces makes it easier to make excuses. “Oh I had a meeting,” “I had to work,” “My significant other wanted to ’x’ this summer.” Remove the excuses and plan something different that you haven’t done before. Then make sure to take some pictures. You don’t have to go overboard with the pictures. Just take some so that as you refer back to them over the years, you have an object that calls forth specific details about that particular moment and what it meant to you.

We are all looking to do different things for our summer here at GYST. Kyle is looking to go camping. Glen is taking a train half way across the country rather than the usual plane ride. Finally, Rohit is planning on holding an actual Barbeque and Game Night rather than ruin his burgers with a George Foreman. Whatever you do, make sure it will enrich and not waste your time this summer.