What are some standards that are most important in your life?

A500.2.3.RB - Tell Your Story

What are some standards that are most important in your life?

         These Blog assignments are about our lives and what helped shape us into the people we have become. The experiences, events, and environments that help mold us.

These experiences, events, and environments also give us the bases for our standards and beliefs. The standards that are most important to me in my life are consistency and reliability.

Consistency and reliability have been the standards I’ve tried to live my life by. I talks about my “environment” quite a bit. But it is this environment that I am most proud of and not ashamed. In this environment consistency and reliability have different meanings then that I have based my life on.

Consistency and reliability in my up bring was not a positive. The consistency and reliability that I saw was from law enforcement. And not in a good way. But I did have 3 male role models to learn from. And I’m very thankful for have had the benefit of spending time with them all to learn.

First my father, my experience learned from him was both positive and negative. My father was a navy veteran that had seen combat. He is also one of those people that are so smart that they are crazy. The combination of his combat experience and his craziness (intelligence) was not good for raising kids. I know that he loved us, but he’s was neither consistent nor reliable.

 The second was my step-father. This man also had his own demons. He suffered from substance abuse. He was a part of the fast life of the late 70’s and early 80’s. But he fought to clean and straighten his life up. His display of consistency and reliability is what I have based my professional career on. My step-father move to Denver, Colo. when I was young. He sent for me to come and live with him. He showed me that if I want to have a successful life, what it was going to take. He made sure to lead, teach and guide me through his example. To provide for me he worked for the city’s water and sewer utility. He would be on call for his work year round. And in Denver year round mean some very cold wet nights. But he would always be counted on by his co-workers. It wasn’t enough that he was a reliable person to call on to show up for work, but he took pride in how consistently he was proficient at the task he was assigned. He showed me not only what it took to be successfully in the work place and career, but what it meant to be a father, be responsible for someone other than yourself, and how to be a leader.

Last but not least, Coach Horton. This man consistently and reliability kick my butt in high school. No matter if it was my weakest or strongest sport. I was better at football and track, I loved basketball. Basketball was my weakest event, but Coach Horton pushed me the same as he did with the others. He was the same with everything that his team members or students did. There was a standard to the way you carried yourself.

 These 3 men have helped molded me into the person I am today, intentionally or unintentional. And I’m taking what I’ve learned from them and trying to pass it forward.