“Every little action creates an effect: We are all interconnected.”—Yehuda Berg
I had an interesting coincidence yesterday. I was teaching a lesson on “Marketing Your Program” to my Exercise Motivation & Adherence class. I related a story about my first encounter with my son’s now wrestling coach. At the time, I owned a sports performance training center and my manager approached the coach to invite him to check us out. Without going into great detail, the coach changed his decision to visit after seeing what he perceived as an inconsistency between what he was told about what we offered and what he saw on the website. Fortunately, I had already reached out to a collegiate coach in the area who, with his brother, had trained on the system when members of the USA national team and could support our claims. To make a long story short, after confirming this, a lasting relationship with the coach—both coaches, actually emerged. In fact, both became very loyal supporters of my business. I emphasized to the students that “it (marketing your business and services) is all about relationships.”
There is not much exciting about the above story—especially with such scant details—but later yesterday, after my son’s wrestling practice, this coach addressed the wrestlers with the same message: “it is all about relationships.” I couldn’t help but smile as I listened.
This is coaching, to me. I appreciated the message to my son and his teammates. Indeed, it is all about relationships. Life is all about relationships.
I asked my students if they were aware of the Kevin Bacon game—where one can connect any actor to Kevin Bacon in less than six steps. (Surprisingly, they were not aware of the game!) So, we played. A student selected Ben Affleck. Easy! Ben Affleck starred in Changing Lanes. Kevin Bacon appeared in In the Cut. My dad appeared as an extra in both movies. Bam! (Of course, I am sure there are several other paths from Ben Affleck to Kevin Bacon, but I was able to nail this on the spot and off the top of my head. (I was quite proud of myself.)
Of course, there is also the concept of six-degrees of separation. I have a picture of my sister with the Clintons at Bill Clinton’s inauguration. (My sister was a delegate and was appointed to the Small Business Administration.) This is my avenue to quite a few people globally.
These games are fun to think about, but they also underscore our interconnectedness. I can’t help but think of the effect of even the most chance and minor interaction.
While we can’t really connect all the dots, per se, I liken our connectedness to the “butterfly effect”—where one action can have a compounding effect on other events. No, certainly, one cannot suggest that one minor event can be so linked to one other distant event, but it is reasonable to me that our actions can have a rippling effect that, in turn, is acted upon by other seemingly insignificant events. This is why, personally, I have no desire to go back in time to change even one event in my life. I can have no idea how changing one regret might impact where I and anyone else are in this world. We are, thus, connected in ways we cannot imagine.
It truly is all about relationships. Our lives do not exist in a vacuum. We cannot act without affecting someone. So, we must consider our choices.
We must appreciate one another. We must understand that it is all about relationships and decide to make our connections a priority.
How do we treat those moments when someone comes to mind seemingly out of the blue? Sometimes it is a person about whom we have had little thought for years. I would contend the this is a call to reach out to this person—for whatever reason always seems to reveal itself. This is a notion presented in James Renfield’s novel, The Celestine Prophecy. The idea of synchronicity—that coincidences have personal meaning—has long intrigued me. Fact or fiction, it is a useful way to look at the interactions among the components of the well-centered fitness model and among the people who surround us. It certainly does not hurt us to be attuned to our connectedness.
I find it no small coincidence that my lesson in Exercise Motivation & Adherence was mirrored in my son’s wrestling practice by the very person I exemplified in the story. Life and relationships are awesome that way.
Trust that you are where you are, when you are, and with whom you are for purposes beyond one’s current understanding. Carpe momento! Remember: It is all about relationships.
“Treasure your relationships, not your possessions.”—Anthony J. D’Angelo