In this brief motivational talk recorded in Canton, Ohio on July 19, 2023, the speaker shares a recent conversation with a performance‑coach whose father died suddenly. The coach describes how, in the instant of loss, his personal world “stops” while life around him continues unabated. The speaker uses this anecdote to illustrate that anyone we encounter—on the street, in an airport, or in a supermarket—might be experiencing a similar abrupt halt in their own life. He urges listeners to adopt a broader, “zoomed‑out” perspective, showing grace, compassion, and patience regardless of their own circumstances, because that very grace may be the exact support another person needs. The talk concludes with a call to “show up” as a blessing to others, framing this mindset as the day’s “Moment of Yes.”
Chapters
Good morning, everyone. Here is your Moment of Yes for Wednesday, July 19th. Hello from Canton, Ohio. My first time, first time in Canton, Ohio. Not here because of the National Football Hall of Fame, though I have passed it a few times. So here today giving a talk and then home to St. Louis tomorrow for a few days, which will be nice. Moment of Yes for today is inspired by a conversation I had with a gentleman. He and I just met a few days ago. He actually offered to pick me up from the airport and give me a ride to the hotel. I met him, a friend of a friend. He's a, he's a speaker and a performance coach. And we got sitting and talking for a while yesterday, and he was sharing that his father passed pretty suddenly in March. He was really close to him, how difficult that was for him. And we were just kind of sharing some, some different stories, experiences, you know, similar. And he said, he goes, you know, it's interesting because you go into You know, a hospital room and, you know, someone's gone. He's like, it sounds silly, he goes, but when they're gone, like, it's instant. They're gone. It's like, that's it. And he said, you— he goes, your world comes to a stop. He goes, then you walk outside of, of the room and everyone else's life is going like this, but your world has come to a stop. And he's like, you have to have the ability to, to continue to move on with life and doing what needs to get done while your life, or, you know, has been arrested. It's stopped. And I could remember that feeling on a few occasions in my life. And then it got me and it got us thinking about the grace of— obviously you never know what someone else is going through on a day-to-day basis. The people that you pass on the street, the people you pass in the car, the people you pass in the airport, in the supermarket, wherever they are. Maybe their world just stopped, right? Maybe whatever they're going through— a family member, something with their own health, a work crisis, financial crisis, anything— maybe their world in that moment feels stopped while the hecticness of life continues to go on. We never know what someone's dealing with. So do we have the ability to show up with grace regardless of what's going on with us? Never knowing that the grace that we show up with might exactly be the grace and the compassion and the patience that someone else needs at that time, in that moment. So, moment of yes for today is to recognize, to be open, to be compassionate. We talked about zooming out on Monday, to zoom out, to zoom out from our small problems by having a bigger perspective. So everyone is always dealing with issues. Sometimes those worlds are coming to a stop. What can we do to show up and be a blessing to those people? That's your moment of yes. Have an awesome day, everybody.
