Skill and Coordination: Bringing it All Together

Did you know that I played the French horn when I was in seventh and eighth grade? Did you know that I didn’t realize that it was such a musical talent. And the reality is that I’m not a musical talent. And I probably could not play the French horn. If you gave it to me today, maybe? Well, of course, I couldn’t, because I couldn’t play the French horn back then either. How that came to be is my grandmother. My grandma actually played French horn when she was younger, and still had her French horn. And so as the prerequisite was that when my school you had to be in band, seventh, and eighth grade, didn’t have an instrument, my grandma had the instrument, I was a French horn player. So I’ve got a French horn joke that I will let you know or tell you someday, it’s not germane to our conversation, or is it appropriate to our conversation today. But anyway, it was quite an experience. If you have ever gone and viewed or listened to a musical performance by 1314 12 1314 year olds, then you understand that it’s not necessarily Well, sure that there’s a lot of amazing 13 year olds who are playing the French horn and who are in a symphony or band, and lots of really bad ones. So just because that just because a group of people come together and have different instruments, does not mean that good music is going to be created. So I guess what I wanted to talk about today was the importance of a couple of things. That simply just different, coming together. Not good. Not necessarily bad. But a couple of things which are required for different to be good, are both skill and coordination. So each individual contributor must be skilled must possess ability, we must have know how, in order to execute on the thing that we are trying to execute on. And then if we are to make wonderful music, we were to make sweet, sweet music, we must be coordinated. You know, a symphony orchestra is an absolutely amazing thing that legitimately amazing classical music. I mean, it’s incredible the power of it, the beauty of it, or it could be absolutely terrible. Kind of going back to my my story about being in seventh and eighth grade, you’ve got all these different all these different instruments, from, you know, woodwinds to string instruments, to the brass and percussion and everything. Absolutely coming together at the perfect moment with extraordinary skill to produce amazing music. So wonderful metaphor or analogy, of skill and coordination coming together. This is also true, really, across every other domain, across every other aspect of life, skill and coordination is necessary in order to get the optimal result. Think about fighting if you are a fan of fighting, if you’re a fan specifically of mixed martial arts. It’s an awesome example of this. That the whole thing before mixed martial arts was I wonder what would happen if a boxer fought a wrestler or karate champion fought a whatever? All mixed martial arts endeavored? And did answer those answer those questions. So you have two different combatants, one boxer, one, a wrestler who’s going to win? Well, there’s a couple of things that are essential here, because you can go on the internet and watch dummies fight each other. But it’s not an sometimes it’s entertaining. But when I say dummies, I mean people that don’t have any skill at all. And maybe they’re mad at each other. Whatever. You’ve you understand what I’m trying to say. In this context, what makes it worthwhile is that you have a highly skilled boxer, a green to fight a highly skilled wrestler. And the coordination piece is even though they come at it from really different ways. They come at fighting from different ways, different approaches and everything else. They are a green on what the rules are. Since we’re not having a wrestling match. We’re not having a boxing match. We’re having a mixed martial arts fight, match. And so you are coordinated You are highly skilled, the result is an entertaining, fight competition. And this is also true of you know, if you think about football, football is such a great team sport, and there’s an offense, there’s defense, there’s special teams, there’s obviously a huge coaching staff, you think about what’s going on with the offense, you have a quarterback, you’ve got your offensive line, you’ve got receivers, you’ve got running backs. And each one of those contributors must be highly skilled for the team to be effective. Perhaps more importantly, as they must be really coordinated, they must be on the same page, they must understand what the play is, what the desired outcome is, and what your job is, during this play. It’s also true in the world of personal finance, for your personal finances, there’s so much going on, you’ve got to be condescend or cognizant and thoughtful of your taxes, you’ve got to be thinking about investing need to be thinking about insurance and estate planning and real estate, and you own a business, your business and all these different things. So you go and you do it yourself, or you have professional advisors, and you need to look at different instruments or tools or products, and all these things must be high quality. So but even if you had a lot of high quality stuff, doesn’t mean it’s going to work doesn’t mean it’s going to get you the result that you desire, unless it is coordinated. So everything needs to be, you need to be paying attention to what’s going on over here how my decision with my investments is going to impact my taxes and insurance, so on and so forth. So must be skilled must be high quality, but also must be coordinated, because it’s much more common than it is not to collect things along the way. When it comes to personal finance, you’ve got an old 401k from a company, you got a life insurance policy about when you had the kids and you got a will at some point. And it all sort of just becomes a mishmash and it goes into the junk drawer. And then you have yourself financial junk drawer needs to be coordinated. So even if stuff is of high quality, it must be coordinated. Same is true of our wellness of being healthy. Think about what it takes to be healthy these days. We need to pay attention to what we put on our mouth. So from a nutritional standpoint, am I getting enough of what I need enough protein? Am I getting enough vitamins and minerals and fats and carbs? And oh my goodness, so much. Am I moving my body the proper way? Should I be doing cardio? Should I be lifting weights? How much stretching? Should I do is yoga good? Should I be running? Should I do CrossFit? Oh, my goodness. So I need to have an understanding, or be literate, be skilled in each one of these areas. And then make sure that everything is working together. So I have an actual plan for my wellness, otherwise, might not work out quite as well as I want it to better to be doing high quality things than to not best to be doing high quality things be highly skilled and to be doing it all together. Same is true of you just as an individual, you and me, each of us as an individual need to know what it is that we want. What what do I want for my life? What do I want my life to look like? Who am I? To answer these questions that we have and lead an examined life? Who am I? What do I think what’s important to me? What do I believe? What do I value? It’s a big important questions we need to be asking. need to think about how it is that we do things? What habits do I have? What am I routines? And most importantly, then, are they sustainable? Can I keep doing this because I plan to lose 100 pounds in a month, it’s probably not going to be a sustainable one. I’m running a marathon or I’m going to the gym twice a day I’m running and I’m eating perfectly well. Probably not going to keep doing that. So it’s not sustainable. So it’s not. It’s just incomplete. It is not a complete plan. So what I must do is have a good understanding of what I want and each one of these areas of my life, what’s most important and most importantly, what’s most important, and most importantly, that I have a plan or it’s it’s it’s coordinated and coordinated that everything’s moving in the same direction or a similar direction.

So skill and coordination, I really believe are prerequisites for success in whatever aspect of your life or whatever it is that you’re doing. And I think that the orchestra symphony is such a wonderful example of that. Because the wrong just missing your timing by a second or missing or hitting the wrong note, it’s going to ruin everything, totally change how everything sounds, versus when you’re listening to a beautifully performed and beautifully organized. And when everybody’s on the same page, it is beautiful music, quite literally. So finding the right rhythm, having the right skill, all of these things are so so important. And again, it’s across every aspect of life. So something I’ve been spending a lot of time on thinking about. And I think the world, the All of us are interested in being as good as we can at what we do, and having the life that we want. These are obvious things. But simply knowing that we’re supposed to be doing something or working to just do it. It’s not super helpful. So having the steps to do it. That’s what I’ve been really thinking a lot about over the past several months. And the result of that has been the purpose book, which just released it. And the whole idea is, how do I lead an examined life? And how do I how do I get really clear on what matters to me? And when I know what matters to me, how do I? How do I set the stage so that I am doing what matters? It’s just knowing what matters but not doing it. It’s like literacy, financial literacy versus financial wellness, I understand what I’m supposed to be doing, but am I actually doing it. So, that is the point or the purpose of the purpose book is to help you to do that. And I think right now, we are struggling as a country thinking about different versus same and effect you could apply this to to our country as well, that we need to be skilled and have a good understanding of what is important to us, as individuals as as communities as states and as a country. And that we need to be coordinated. And that not everything should be the same. And simply different, is not necessarily good either. We need to have both the skill, the understanding, and then to be moving in the same direction called alignment, color coordination, whatever term you think is most appropriate. But those are the keys that must be there. You must be a skilled person. And you must be moving moving in the direction and have a good understanding of it, what all the different pieces, what they’re designed to do and how to make them all work together. We’re able to do that. Pick up that French horn. Anytime. Make sweet sweet music, or whatever instrument you’re playing whatever you’re interested in doing. So fundamentally, it’s this I want you to do your part by doing your best