Vera Jones: Blind Can Lead the Blind...Life and Leadership

Should have worn more comfortable shoes. Does it matter which one? We're good. Good. Hi, everybody, and thank you. Welcome. Hope you're enjoying your inbound. I'm going to jump right to it because they give me a whopping 12 minutes. So I asked the question, why am I here? I don't mean like the senility, why am I here? I'm not that old. I'm not that old yet. I mean the profound one that we all ask ourselves a time or two. Why am I here? I really believe that our biggest clues are in our passion and in our vision. Our passion. Strong feelings of enthusiasm or excitement for something. And of course, our vision. Those thoughts and concepts that we feel here in our imagination and here in our heart. My story goes like this. My introduction to passion came when I was 5 years old and I first fell in love with a basketball. Yep, there I am. Basketball is that one thing that afforded me the opportunity to go on to Syracuse University, become a Hall of Fame athlete. There I am, back in the 80s. Thank you. With my Jheri curl. Please don't judge me. Some of you had bad hair in the 80s, some of you have bad hair today. I'm just not going to mention it, okay? It was only then that I was learning that the purpose of pursuing my passion was to one day put my passion back into my purpose. Basketball afforded me more opportunities to travel the world, become a college basketball coach, and to go on a national television broadcasting career with ESPN and various other stops. I'm still at the Big Ten Network. They say if you allow your passion to become your purpose, it will one day become your profession. And when that happens, you are truly more blessed than you actually realize. The main thing basketball did for me is it taught me how to play through the foul. See, basketball and sports in general, if you've ever played, will give you a winners mentality. And I thought that that was very, very important. Because fouls, to me, we all face them. In this game of life, everybody gets fouls. Fouls are situations, circumstances, technology, and people who can limit, hinder, threaten and alter and discourage us from our desired goal. Ultimately, fouls will turn your life upside down. I am not a tech person, but I can tell you right now, you have no idea how much fun I had flipping that little man around like that. Once I figured out because he looked like an ex boyfriend who called me by some other lady's name, I just flipped him and flipped him. Fouls will turn your world upside down like that little man. Want to know what else will Turn your world upside down, children. Yep, that's right. I am some poor kid's mother. There's my son, Andrew. Soon as I got him home from the hospital, I popped him in a little infant basketball jersey, put a Syracuse basketball by his head. Far be it from me to be one of those wretched parents who force their ideals on their children, right? By the time Andrew turned three, I found out that he was hearing impaired in both ears. He began wearing hearing aids, but still he was such a happy kid, and he learned to play through that with a smile. There Andrew is on his 12th birthday. Cute story. My son doesn't eat cake. Don't even know how he's my son, because clearly I eat cake, right? But he doesn't eat cake. So every birthday I have to make him biscuits. So there he is, smiling on his 12th birthday, saying, Mama, I love these biscuits. Well, shortly after that biscuit moment, about two months after, Andrew was outside playing football with the neighborhood kids, and he came running in the house crying hysterically. What's wrong? I said. He said, mom, Mom, I was outside, and Noah, he went to throw the pass, and I went out to catch it. And then everything got dark. It just got black. And I didn't see the electrical box, and I flipped over it right there in the middle of the lawn. Mom, I'm telling you, something's wrong with my eyes. I said, hmm. I had taken Andrew to the optometrist. Over the past year, he had been complaining of headaches and problems with his eyes, things that weren't rectified by his eyeglass prescriptions. So I decided to get him into the pediatrician first thing on Monday morning. When I arrived at the pediatrician, I began to explain to her, andrew's been having headaches and blurred vision. And of course, the incident from the day before. She said, this sounds a lot like migraines. And I said, no, you know, I know a lot of people with migraines, and he doesn't seem to ever talk about the light sensitivity. He doesn't get the nausea. I don't think this is migraines. Plus, what about the blackout? She said, lots of people that have migraines have blackouts and blurred vision. I said, look, I'm not a doctor, but I do watch House and Grey's Anatomy, and this ain't no migraine. Plus, Andrew's stuck on 4 foot 10, and he's been there for. So she checks his chart. She said, you know, you're right. Andrew has been 4 foot 10 since his last physical. A year ago. This could be a pituitary thing. So she orders an mri. Well, fast forward. It's Tuesday night, and I'm sitting at home. It's March Madness. I'm in basketball. So my world right now is crazy. I've got to get to the Big Ten network in Chicago. So I'm sitting there in my room studying all these teams, and all of a sudden, I heard this voice, and it was really deep. It said, write this down. It was really like James Earl Jones. As Darth Vader was in my bedroom, I heard it again. It said, write this down. So I did what any sensible person would do. I pushed aside the bottle of wine I had been sipping on. Because sometimes you have to just say no. And then I began to write with a fever and a muse and a passion I had never experienced before. Out of me in about 40 minutes came this entire story about this woman who was hanging out with these two knuckleheaded friends, one named Worry, one named Doubt. And. And as long as she was hanging out with those two friends, her whole world fell apart. Till one day, she passed out. And when she woke back up, there was this new friend named Faith. And when she started hanging out with Faith, her entire life improved. Holy smokes. Every line rhymed. The most poetic story I'd ever come up with. I ran into the living room, and I said, andrew, you've got to listen to this. And I read on the poem. He said, mom, this is a great inspiration. You should make it into your next book. And indeed I did. Spoiler alert. But there were some things that I had to learn first. You see, my life had been built on passion. And I learned that passion alone wasn't enough. Because on Wednesday morning, it was time to take Andrew in for that mri. Two hours after that mri, I dropped him back off to school, and it was time for me to get ready to go do the work. And I ended up getting a phone call. Come in. And the doctor stared at me with tears in her eyes, and she said, andrew has a very large brain tumor. He's in an emergency situation. We'll have to get it out immediately. Flagrant foul. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. The next thing I knew, I was standing in front of some neurosurgeon who was telling me, there's a good chance that your son may die, but we're going to do everything we can to save his life. And even if we save his life, there's a good chance that he'll be blind. But we're going to do everything we can to protect his sight. And no matter what, your son is going to suffer with problems of obesity and various problems of dehydration. He'll be in and out of the hospital emergency room constantly. Huge, flagrant, foul. March Madness had never been as mad as it was now. I naturally am crying hysterically. I have no idea how I'm supposed to deal with this, not on my own. But now I have to go and I've got to explain it to my 12 year old, biscuit loving son. And suddenly, as I'm driving furiously down on the highway, not knowing what to do, the tagline to that poem popped up. Stop hanging out with worry and doubt and make Faith your new best friend. And right then I knew that I was given a vision miraculously placed inside of me to know how to lead my son to the next step when he came home from school. I said, andrew, you remember the story I wrote last night? He said, yeah, mom, the one about Faith. Did you call the publisher? I said, not yet. You see, that story's not meant for everyone else yet. That's a book for you and me. Right now, it's you and me that have to stop hanging out with worry and doubt and make Faith our new best friend. Surgery day. And there Andrew is, still trying to muster a smile. It was time for them to put him on the gurney that they take him into the operating room. They had just given him the happy juice. The happy juice is what they give you that you are actually legally high. And as he was sitting there floating, not knowing if I'd ever see my son again, I took this picture and then I ran over to his gurney and I said, andrew, Andrew, remember the story. Who's your new best friend? He said, faith, Ma. Faith's my new best friend. Thank goodness for Faith. For six hours we prayed, and as faith grew, the craniopharyngioma did indeed disappear. The surgeon said they had got it all. It was the happiest 10 seconds of my life. That was the win. My son was alive. My but the foul was Andrew was blind. And at that moment I realized I was blind too, because I had no clue what to do to help Drew. So they brought in Tibbs, the seeing eye dog that they brought in for kids to help them over, to help encourage them. But Tibbs wasn't encouraging me. He seemed to be looking at me as if to say, things have just gotten rough. The only thing worse than losing your sight or as being blind is having sight. But no Vision. Helen Keller said that. And at that moment I remembered that quote. And that moment I started learning a lot of life and leadership lessons. The first one was no peripheral distractions. You see, one day we held on to faith and Andrew woke up and he could see just a little bit of light and the way he still sees. He's blind in his right eye and he's blind in the left. Peripheral. He sees as if looking through a little straw. And everyone said, this will be horrible because when you have no peripheral things pop in and out of your path, it becomes very, very hard to walk and go here and there. So I said, andrew, yes, you see through this little cone, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing. No peripheral could be a great thing. You have a built in mechanism to just focus on the goal straight ahead. Because over here is worry and over here is doubt. So lesson two, just focus on the goal and keep moving straight ahead, one step at a time. Focus on the goal. Andrew wasn't hearing it. He said, that sounds all fine, but you're not the seventh grader that gets bullied and picked on when you go to school. You're not the seventh grader that has become so depressed and withdrawn. I don't even want to go to school. I have to be homeschooled. You're not the seventh grader who has headaches and stays in and out of the hospital and bumps into things everywhere you go. And then he would cry and cry and cry and I couldn't take it anymore. And I'm just going to be honest with you because I feel we're really close now that you got all my business. So I'm just gonna be honest. I snapped. I said, I can't take it anymore. He was so depressed all the time, crying all day, every day. This was hard. And I said, you can't live your life this way. That winner's mentality kicked in and I said, you're not gonna do this. Stop it. Stop it, Andrew. So I put him on a plane and I put him on a train and I took him to the most congested place I could find. Downtown New York City, Manhattan, Fashion Ave. I had to get a couple of shoes and skirts and things, so I put him on that plane and he stayed and he looked at all those people going left and right and he began to cry. I don't want to. I said, stop it, Andrew. I don't. What if I bump into people? I said, you listen to me, you're gonna get that cane. You're gonna look straight ahead. You're gonna follow behind me. And if people get in your way, you take that cane and you just swing it like this. Andrew, just go. Just go. Keep on moving. Hurry up. I got tickets to the Lion King. Sometimes we have to face our fears. He did it. And we saw the Lion King. It was a great show. If you haven't seen it, go. The next thing we learned, sometimes true strength means asking for help. You see, most of us are very, very proud when pride says do it yourself, but wisdom says, find someone who knows. Listen to your wisdom. You're gonna be very, very proud that you did wisdom. We found the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind where Andrew went on in just that one year. He became valedictorian of his eighth grade class. The fourth thing. Don't let things you can't do overshadow the things you can in your business world. In your personal world, you will find people constantly saying, you can't. The magic words always for winners mentality is, I can. Don't let those things discourage you. They said, you can't play football. You can't play basketball. I said, surely there's something you can play. Andrew, he went on and he found goldball. It's a Paralympic sport for the blind. I've been a national television sports broadcaster my entire life. I never even heard of it. You can, number five, trust that eventually you'll learn to survive your new normal. This is a big one, folks, because we're in a world that is constantly changing. Change is often difficult. It's also inevitable. You have to trust that you're going to survive it. After all, every day is a new day and you're still here, right, Most of you. Lesson number six. One thing worse than losing your sight truly, is losing your vision. And this was the big lesson. You see, sight to me, is physical. It's the here and now. Vision is spiritual. It's not about what you can see. It's about who you're meant to be. That's what I would say constantly. So when obstacles become blinding in your life, trust, you can get by it. Sight is perception of your present. Vision is faith in your future. And the last lesson, you are significant. We're living in a political time where everybody wants to matter. It's just a core part of who we are. So passionately play your position. No matter how bad things get, passionately play your position. You are significant. Why we are here is not for our own glory. Ultimately, we're here to lead and to serve everybody. Else. By doing that we encourage others to do the same. Andrew went on. He is now in his first semester after he didn't even want to go to school. He is now a freshman at Florida State University struggling like everybody else. The weird thing, his interest is now helping others with disabilities. You see how those fouls in your life. If you just trust the vision will come back in and it will lead you directly to your purpose. What is leadership? Oprah Winfrey says leadership is about empathy. I love me some Oprah. It's about having the ability to connect with people for the purpose of empowering and inspiring their lives. Based on that definition, I think we're all very capable of being leaders. So I will dare say that the blind can lead the blind. If you follow your passion, trust your vision because your passion and your vision will help you lead empathically. That's how we all win. Thank you.