Achievement is not a solo sport. While individual success presses well in media channels and on magazine covers, accomplishment always springs from community. For some, community is a team. For others it’s friends, family, partners or peers. Whatever form community takes, it is undeniable that our odds for success increase significantly when work together.

While many of us already know this to be true, we continue to make goal setting a private affair. We somehow believe that keeping our goals and ambitions secret will lessen personal risk; that the fear of public failure is greater than the power of public support. Nothing could be further from the truth. To demonstrate this point, I’m willing to bet my reputation and my blog!

APRIL CHALLENGE: I challenge everyone reading this blog to set a goal for April, share that goal in the comments section of this post, and leverage this blog as a forum to encourage others and find encouragement to accomplish that goal on or before April 30, 2017.

HOW IT WORKS: I will release a new post each week in April that builds on our collective effort to meet the goals we set. Using the comments section below the post, participants engaging in the challenge can communicate with me directly and/or with one another by selecting “Notify me of follow-up comments by email.” Our ongoing dialogue and goal updates throughout April will be available to anyone following the Me.Now. blog, inspiring readers and giving participants the encouragement of a supportive virtual community.

MY PERSONAL GOAL: I’ll set my goal now and enlist myself as the first participant!

GOAL: I will write 5 consecutive blog posts before April 30, 2017 that give practical guidance on how to set, maintain and achieve goals.   

SET YOUR GOAL: As the first post in the series I committed to above, I will share my suggestions on how to set goals that self-motivate rather than self-shame. I call this technique ‘P-I-R-A-T-E booty’!

P – Precise: Make the goal clear and concise using simple language. Clarity and precision make recall easy, and it helps prevent from the temptation to find/make a loop-hole as a way out.

I – Individual: Tailor your goal to yourself. When someone else sets goals for us, we do not fully invest in the goal itself. Instead, make your goal about you, empower yourself and ignore the peanut gallery!

R – Relevant: Life changes fast. The best goals make sense right now. While it’s always nice to plan for the future, it is often more rewarding to live for today. For this challenge, we’re looking to show success in 30 days or less – we’re pitching a tent here, not building a fortress.

A – Achievable: I am a sucker for setting goals that are unrealistic. I try to ‘stretch’ myself with a goal that is just beyond reach and then I feel like a failure when I fall short. Learn from me, save yourself the ‘booty’ pain, and set a goal that is achievable. One goal – make it realistic.

T – Timely: This one is a freebie! I set the timeline at 30 days for all of us. It is important to give a specific timeframe for goals so that we can plan, assess and make changes as needed. Additionally, clear start and end times give the goal boundaries and keep it from mutating into something scary.

E – Entertaining: Make it fun! If you don’t like to work out, then don’t work out. If you don’t like to eat carrots, then don’t eat carrots. If reaching the goal doesn’t bring you joy, then it’s easy to decide to stop trying. Instead, make the goal entertaining and the process will be just as enjoyable as the accomplishment.

I wish all those who join me in the ‘April Challenge’ good luck! I am already excited to see our progress over the month. Help me show everyone reading now and in the future that success comes from community!

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We all have a breaking point. We don’t like to admit it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. While common conventions are that breaking means we are weak, stupid or lazy, I’d offer instead that breaking is what allows us to shed what was and build what will be. Without breaking points, snakes would be trapped in skin too small, butterflies would wither inside cocoons, and new trees would starve in shadows on the forest floor.

I was broken this week and I am thankful for it. A confluence of illness within my household left me serving as nurse, chauffeur, and janitor for my wife and son as we visited urgent care, primary care, and the All Children’s hospital over the last seven days. My son developed pneumonia after a particularly severe allergy season. His pneumonia resulted in matching sinus and ear infections over the course of his treatment – compounding his required medications and his own discomfort. My pregnant wife, having just re-discovered morning sickness in her second trimester, picked up her own upper respiratory bug along the way and found herself undernourished and painfully congested. For seven days my family didn’t sleep, barely ate, and sought what comfort they could in the light of a TV that droned endlessly in the background. I prayed I would stay healthy long enough to get one of the two of them back to normal.

We live in Florida and are a proud sailing family. Our area, Tampa Bay, is consistently recognized in the top 3 places to sail in the United States. In 2015 I took a 7 day advanced sailing course. Expecting a cushy summer vacation, my trip was rocked by 5 days of uncharacteristically blustery, cold rain storms and rough water. Any hope of rest and relaxation was gone by dawn of the third day when I dressed in the same cold, wet rain-gear from the previous two days to embark on another day of high winds and cold spray. For seven days I didn’t sleep, barely ate, and sought what comfort I could on the high-side of the boat where the seasickness was minimized by fresh breeze. I was broken.

I recalled that boat trip in 2015 while holding my son, shivering in his 103 degree fever, sideways in front of an x-ray machine at Johns Hopkins All Children’s hospital on the 5th day of his sickness. I found a certain peace when I realized that this bout of illness, like that terrible wind and rain in 2015, would pass. All storms pass.

During a storm, things break – ask any sailor and they will agree. But rather than focus on what breaks, the defining mark of a seaman is what they choose to do when the storm ends. Some are fearful of the water for the rest of their lives. They stay in their slip when the wind is up and opt for an engine over a sail when they see whitecaps on the waves. But the courageous few, those who travel across oceans in personal sailboats through squalls and seas as tall as buildings – they experience life unbridled. Rather than fold their sails and return to the dock, they pick up where they left off when the storm hit. Nothing keeps them from their destination.

Everybody has a breaking point. The question is what will you do when you are broken and tired after the storms pass?

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I graduated college with a 2.5 GPA. People who know me are surprised when I tell them my college GPA. I suppose it’s because nobody expects a C-average student to intensely advocate ambition and achievement, have held the keys to nuclear missiles or have spied for CIA. Go figure.

The truth is that my 2.5 GPA haunts me everywhere I go. Even now, 14 years out of college, my GPA is a continual headache as I apply to Graduate Schools around the country. The conversation with most recruiters goes a little like this:

                “Andrew! It was great to get your application – you have a very impressive background!”

Thank you. I appreciate the kind words. I am interested in your Graduate school – can you tell me about your programs?

                “Sure – one small thing first. All of our Graduate programs require a minimum 3.0 GPA. I see from your application you have a 2.53. That poses some problems for us.”

Yes, I am aware that I do not meet your preferred minimum requirements. I was hoping that my professional record and work history would help give a sense of who I am now rather than the student I was 14 years ago.

                “Yes, that does help. Even so, you may want to consider maximizing the GRE or GMAT to offset your GPA. It is difficult to support a candidate with your academic history.”

And so it goes, for about 30 minutes each time, where I try to highlight my real-world achievements and a school administrator keeps reminding me that my ‘empirical scores’ are not well suited to their program. I’ve had 25 year-old grad school interns and 60 year-old admins give me the same speech. I’m beginning to think there is an online training course called, ‘how to deal with empirical dunces applying to grad school’ – the arguments I encounter share much in common.   

While my recent experience is with academia, similar stories permeate American culture. We put so much value in numbers that we often lose sight of the purpose behind why we starting counting at all – to build a better future. Whether it’s a grad school recruiter fixated on a 3.0 GPA, a hiring manager hung-up on an applicant’s years of work experience, or a doctor firing off prescriptions based on partial diagnoses, too often we sideline common sense and current assessment in favor of historic trends. But why?

I challenge that our habitual reliance on numbers is less a matter of preference a more a matter of programming. We live in a world of inputs and outputs. Bank accounts, social media profiles and ‘personal branding’ is at the forefront for most people and requires constant cultivation. We are a culture obsessed with controlling how we are perceived by others rather than simply being who we are. As a result, we lean on past studies and documented trends to guide our current decision making. Consider my graduate school example: I am certain that it was ground breaking when an enterprising scholar in the 1970s identified the relationship between undergraduate GPA and graduate school completion rates. But since then, multiple competing systems have come into play – college rankings, school profit margins, research/grant awards, and many other metric-derived priorities. The original purpose has been so diluted that scientific journals and leading edge companies now REJECT traditional academic ranking altogether as a predictor for future success!

We have the option to build our lives based on where we want to go instead of where others think we come from. It is difficult when we encounter someone who refuses to value our potential over our past. Take heart in knowing that innovators have already started to leave behind notions that the past can predict the future. History is a tool for learning, not a road map for the unknown. I believe I am an excellent candidate for any Graduate Program I choose to attend because I genuinely want to succeed. Any institution that thinks they can predict my success tomorrow based on who I was yesterday is failing to account for today. Your potential is equally as valuable to those who have vision. 

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Me.Now. is proud to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) with our weekly blog post! I am the product of 3 generations of dedicated, high-achieving women and I am hopeful that I will get the opportunity to raise a daughter to carry that proud heritage forward. IWD is committed to the goal of full gender equality for women around the world. Like IWD, Me.Now. recognizes that the only future worth pursuing is one where gender equality is beyond question.

IWD’s commitment to gender equality started in 1908 when a group of 15,000 women rallied in New York to demand voting rights, better pay and healthy work conditions. 109 years later, IWD’s goal for gender equality still has not been reached – but it is getting closer. IWD exemplifies the perseverance and the unstoppable progress that can be achieved when courage and commitment meet. Me.Now. strives to emulate the community and encouragement shared by IWD and millions of women around the world.

My father died when I was a toddler. I have no memories of him. My memories are of my mother and grandmother, who raised me together until I was 5 years old. While I admit to having the cultural advantage of being the first-born boy in a Hispanic family, my childhood was framed by responsibility and independence as much as it was by hugs and kisses. My mother and grandmother were the picture of discipline and determination. My mom, an Air Force veteran and widow, worked two unskilled jobs to support the two of us. My grandmother was born in Mexico and worked as a small business book-keeper in Arizona to build her English skills and raise her family as proud, first-generation Americans. Growing up with these two women as my guides, I had to learn to dress myself, feed myself, and care for myself from a very young age while they worked countless hours to break through cultural and gender stereotypes in the early 1980s to earn a living wage. I could not have asked for better examples of courage and ambition than my mother and my grandmother.

My mom has two sisters and one brother. In a funny coincidence, she went on herself to have two daughters and one son. Every woman in my family, from my youngest sister to my oldest aunt, fosters the tenacity and fearlessness of my mother and grandmother. As a result, our family gets to celebrate the stories of these women – all of them educated, self-made successes – and see first-hand how ignorant stereotypes crumble in their wake. Even more valuable, the men in our family have the benefit of growing up from a foundation of gender equality. A foundation paved by 109 years of courage.

My son will never know bias against women until he encounters it from his peers. When that day comes, I can only hope his mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and father have prepared him to reject sexism, advocate for equality, and advance our world to a better tomorrow.

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Me.Now. completes its first 100 days tomorrow. While those 100 days feel like they have passed somehow both fast and slow, what has been accomplished is owed to all of you who continue to participate in our growing Me.Now. Movement. It is with humble thanks that I share the benefits I’ve seen from Me.Now. in these last 99 days.

Me.Now. is built on the principle we can achieve more together than apart. This principle has manifested for me in ways I never thought possible. The Me.Now. Movement has carried my ambition to be an entrepreneur from bar-napkin doodle to reality. I’ve found encouragement, business connections and practical guidance in the last 99 days that have enabled me to develop a product and launch a business with international ties. Trust Ema LLC is primed to begin sales in April 2017 and would not have been possible but for those Me.Now. early adopters in Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Florida who lifted me up every time I stumbled. While I do not know what the future holds for EMA, I know that I am surrounded by support.

Me.Now. advocates that commitment to passion and ambition will lead to new confidence and new opportunities. I found out this week that I was awarded a full-ride scholarship to the US business school of my choice. I applied for the same scholarship last year and did not receive the award. In my previous application, I researched and prepared a package that modeled every pillar of the scholarship’s ‘ideal candidate’ attributes. I was stressed throughout the process and greatly discouraged when I found out I was not chosen. This year, leaning on Me.Now. principals, I built an application designed only to represent me, not the ‘ideal candidate.’ I felt almost no stress because I knew that my success was not dependent on the scholarship. While I do not know why my package won the scholarship this year and not last, my confidence and commitment are redoubled to both the Me.Now. Movement and my own entrepreneurial journey.

Me.Now. encourages all people to stand firm against doubt and fear. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about ditching discouragement and noted that I and other members of the Me.Now. Movement had suffered recent setbacks. As I write this post, the same members I referenced then have overcome their adversity and built bridges to new opportunities through personal courage and collaboration with other Me.Now. members. The Me.Now. Movement has seen new job opportunities, new goals, new supporters and even new babies in the last two weeks simply because we do not let doubt and fear steer our course.

Thank you for letting me share this good news through a blog usually dedicated to storytelling. I believe it is very important to celebrate the victories whether big or small and simply couldn’t let these first 100 days go by without thanking this group for what you’ve done for me and what our Movement continues to do for one another!

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