Cascading Successes

I spent two years in litigation after the accident dealing with the very real impact of “cascading failures” (i.e.; a guy who owns a venue who molests children hires a guy with a history of drug use, who doesn’t have the proper license, who drives a bus that was modified in an unsafe manner, which was owned by a fictional company to shield liability from the main company); yet I never pondered the flip side of that is the phenomenon of “cascading successes”.

Cascading successes, I’m defining as when all that hard work starts to stack in favor of positive outcomes and achieving goals in life.

for real, this was my office yesterday

Yesterday was an awesome day, a continuation of the successes earlier in the week and something that was achieved by both hard work and a bit of fate.  First, we had a rip-roaring successful day at work with a program site we hosted for the Indiana National Guard and their Youth Symposium.  I had the pleasure of working with 70+ kids that represent the family of our State’s bravest individuals, those who serve in the military without hesitation to defend the country I love so much.  It was also the first time we had a new part time employee (who I would love to make a full time employee), and a great volunteer who is wanting to take an active role in Nine13sports.  It was good from a business standpoint (the client will without a doubt have an ongoing relationship with us).  It was great to see the growth we’ve had as an organization over the last few months.

But the icing on the cake yesterday was an email I got from a donor.  I had randomly struck up a conversation with a group of older guys while getting lunch last Saturday because I overhead “Dublin, Ohio” mentioned.  It turns out that these guys volunteer every other weekend at a different NPO and like to make charitable donations to different organizations.  So yesterday, in short, a guy sends me an email out of the blue that he is donating a good chunk of cash to Nine13.  I shared the email exchange on Facebook, but for simplicity sake…let’s just say the exchange gave me further understanding in how much of an impact our programs can make and that the way I carry myself personally and professionally is exactly how I want to be portrayed in the community.

pretty sure her goal was to get me a little choked up

Plus, the social media post on some of the recent successes and that email I got led me to get a totally unexpected text from my good (soon to be married) friend, Christina, and the message made me smile and quite possibly, get a little emotional, due to the context.

It’s love like this between friends that gets me through thick and thin, good and bad, and everything else that has happened in the last year.

At the end of the day, “FSHD”, right?  It is what it is and you are who you are.  Some of the more positive life lessons a best friend once taught me.

Looking forward to an equally successful upcoming week after celebrating “Sushi Sunday” tonight, after all–it’s how I kicked off last week and we saw how well that turned out!

-th