2015 is finally here!!

I can honestly say that 2014 was a roller coaster year for me on a personal and professional level. As the name would imply there were many ups and many downs, many moments of excitement and pure joy, alongside many moments of sadness, fear and disappointment, but what I am most certain of is the fact that like every other time I nervously step on the platform just before strapping myself in for another go-round on the roller-coaster of life, I survived.

Not only did I survive this year, but I'm pretty sure I learned more than I expected and I'm even better prepared for when I take my seat on the 2015 ride and this year I think I'll be sitting in the front car ;)
In other words, no fear for 2015. Of course we all have things that frighten us and there are many things we don't like to think about because of the uncomfortableness it evokes, but regardless of all that, I'm pushing forward no matter what. I will take whatever life has to offer and I will greet it accordingly. You don't decide half way up the mountain that this is a dangerous trek, you anticipate all that can go wrong before you leave. So now that my climb has already begun, there is no point in focusing on anything but arriving at the top.

2014 truly finished with a major bang. Most importantly The Joshua Project Foundation received it's official charitable status and on top of how overwhelmed I am with the accomplishment, it was truly a climb I'm happy I embarked on and completed, it was one of the scariest adventures I ever completed. All things totaled The Josh Project has been operating for over 3 years on fumes and essentially everything I had financially, emotionally and spiritually. To find out in the earlier part of 2014 that the CRA was denying my lawyer assisted application to obtain charitable status was a major shot to the chest. I had invested time, money and a lot of energy with our legal team and I was completely beside myself that this could happen. Maybe its part of the world we live in where we believe that if we are paying a professional to get the job done, it's going to get done. When I was reading our potential rejection letter, all those thoughts went right out the window.

Obviously my initial reaction was to go see my legal team and let them have it. I was livid and I wanted someone to pay. For one of the first times in my life, before I reacted I had this aha moment where it was almost like a soft voice whispered, "It was you who decided to leave one of the most important aspects of your life in another persons hands, its you who should pay!" Almost instantly I was filled with a feeling of "if I got myself into this mess, I can get out of it." I immediately connected with the person assigned to our application and over the next 6 months I worked diligently and I accomplished what my legal team could not and in half the time. I have yet to experience such a feeling of success in my adult life, other than the feeling I get when I'm around my 7 year old son.

I didn't know what pride in oneself was truly like. The emotions made me feel like I could fly. I was proud of myself and I didn't care who knew. In fact, I never even made mention to my legal team that I was disappointed or anything. I know I was experiencing a lot of growth when I didn't act on that one. It took a lot of self control and self realization to understand that it was pointless and why taint the positivity I was experiencing by sprinkling some negativity on top.

I truly believe I am on the path I was always meant to walk and I truly feel lucky and blessed every day that I have a chance to do this, instead of being in jail, on the streets or dead. I am thankful everyday and now I feel like my mission is just getting started and I have a ton of fuel in the tank. I want the responsibility of showing as many people as possible what we are capable of and what we are going to accomplish through The Josh Project. The first domino has been knocked over, let's just see if they fall as we had planned!!

Bring it on 2015!!

To find out more please visit www.TheJoshProject.com as always without you, none of this would be possible!!

Climbing Your Mountain

I'd like to 1st apologize for the delay between blogs but to be honest, I'm still trying to figure out how to juggle so many things at once and it gets overwhelming at times. I’d also like to mention that I never intended for this to be a daily, weekly or monthly blog, my goal was more about sharing thoughts and important messages as I continue along my journey. This post clearly illustrates the prior sentiment because I recently felt the need to share some of the inner workings of my mind and what I've been going through. The main reason for any of the work I do is simply based on the belief that someone out there will benefit from it and that's why I do it.

Over the past 6-8 weeks a lot of incredible things have been happening for me and I've literally woken up several times wondering if these things are actually real. I am so unaccustomed to feeling this positive about the way my life is heading and I’m guessing that it’s a product of my past experiences where I have let others support of me affect the final outcome. It has been quite the climb thus far and I don’t even think I’m a third of the way up my personal mountain. I think it’s definitely a product of the hard work and dedication I’ve put in, as I attempt to re-program the way I look at things and life in general.

Outside of my struggles to accept that this journey was mine and mine alone, I spent way too many years letting other people dictate the way I perceive things and more importantly, or maybe more detrimentally I allowed people to have too much influence over my personal journey. The first step to taking back ownership of my journey was to accept that at the end of the day anything I have ever fallen short of accomplishing were based on decisions I made. No matter what the contributing factors were, it was only I looking back at myself in the mirror and it took me quite some time to realize that it was I alone who had the final say in my life. My biggest obstacle to overcome is that even at 38 years old, I was still reflecting on the part of my life where maybe I didn’t have as much control as I do now.  By that “part of my life”, I’m referring to my childhood, adolescence and teenage years.

I believe that my lack of accomplishing goals I had set out for myself at a young age made it difficult when I was trying to accomplish things in my early twenties and even into my thirties. I’m pleased to say that I finally have begun to turn the tides and I use some of the frustration and determination I had as a youth in order to push me forward now. For instance, I am truly thankful for all the years I dedicated towards being a professional athlete. The memories I have of trying to hit a tiny square on my garage repeatedly without fail, (My fathers idea on the best way I could increase my chances of being a top tier baseball pitcher) day after day and well into the darkness of night, definitely is a positive accomplishment I can pull strength from. Especially when I consider the success I had as a young baseball player. Unfortunately for many years all I could take from this memory was the disappointment I felt when my family didn’t support my goals/dreams of trying to be a professional pitcher. I literally paid zero attention to all those years of dedication and hard work solely based on the fact that I didn’t make it to the Major Leagues.

It almost sounds like that saying we have definitely all heard countless times before, which is “we can choose to look at the glass half empty or half full”. I was a glass half empty kind of guy for way too long and that to me is one of the most important reasons for my lack of success in the past. Life is constantly a work in progress and I am nowhere near finished, the finish for me is when I die, so in other words I’m hopeful I still have a long way to go. What I can tell you is that for the first time since my athletic days and even then there were other things going on that kept me from fully appreciating every morning, but nowadays I am excited to open my eyes everyday. I am finally aware of the fact that the way you view your world is most likely the way your world will be. Just like how I have mentioned many times in the past how perception IS reality, well this just confirms it for me. If you change your perception of the world you live in, trust me when I tell you the world you live in will change right along with it!

As always, keep climbing no matter what the cost, unless your goal is not to get to the top ;)

Thank you for taking the time to read and share and most importantly thank you for being a part of this journey!

For more please visit www.TheJoshProject.com