The Importance of Having a Road Map.
Anyone who follows professional football will have heard by now of controversy Brett Favre recently generated with his “un-retirement.” After the team has gone ahead, training a new QB to take the field when the season starts , he declares that he no longer wants to be retired and demands to be reinstated in his former position.
The previous season he kept the Green Bay fans on tenterhooks with the “Will he? Won’t he?” drama. As a result the team was unsure how to proceed and the season performance reflected that. At the end of the season he declared that he was retiring from the game. The Packer’s management moved on, training a new Quarterback to run the plays.
Shortly before the team was due to report for Training Camp this year, Bret Favre decided that he wanted to come back. He expected the team to set aside all the off-season prep work they had done and that Aaron Rodgers should be happy to step aside and resign himself to playing second string for an unknown number of years.
It appears to me that Brett Favre’s biggest problem is that he never bothered to give any thought to what he would do with himself after he left the game of football. It has been his main focus for many years now. This spring when he realized that without football he had nothing to do, he decided to “un-retire” just to have something to fill his days again.
This can happen to any of us – it certainly happened to me. We become focused on our job, our family, or some hobby to the extent that we can no longer “see the forest for the trees” right in front of us. A couple of years ago, I began to realize that I was in that position. I was living from day to day and paycheck to paycheck with no thought to where I wanted to be.
As I realized what was happening, I began to ask myself a number of questions about what I truly wanted to have in my life. The result has been an ongoing process of self-discovery; of things I had maybe dreamed about when I was child. Working my way through the questions and sharing what I was discovering with my mentor led to the creation of the Uniquely Me LifeBook – a tool to guide individuals and couples along the path to living the life they truly love to live.
Now that I’m realizing what I want and don’t want in my life, it is much easier to say “no” when necessary. “No” to demands on my time, “no” to the temptation of impulse buying, and “no” to being pushed or pulled by the media advertising that bombards us every single day. I am once again discovering who I am and I am happy with that.
Perhaps I should send a copy of the Uniquely Me LifeBook to Brett Favre. It may help him to move beyond the gridiron.