Keep the Lesson, Lose the Label

Something you failed at is not the same as something you are.

Learn from a setback without turning it into an identity.

When I was 11 I joined Little League. I was a small, skinny kid compared to the other kids. My family had no money and my stepfather was not around.  I found a glove in my grandfather’s basement in an apple basket with a bunch of softballs that were very old – most of them having the leather falling off them.  This glove was from the 1920’s or something.  The fingers were very fat, and the webbing between the thumb and fingers was a tiny patch held on with two old brittle strands of rawhide.  The ball could fit through the openings in the sides of the web.  I went to tryouts by myself.  They were hitting balls to us in the field and watching.  I could not catch with that glove.  Another Dad saw the situation and felt sorry for me.  He took the brand new red leather Rawlings glove from his son and let me borrow it for ten minutes.

When I was 12, I aged out of the farm team and had to go to the majors.  I was ok at fielding, but I couldn’t hit well. After three games or so, the team manager put me BACK down into the farm team with the little kids.  I was humiliated.  Embarrassed.  But I did not quit. I remember the farm manager and the major manager arguing.  The farm team manager was telling the major team manager he couldn’t do that and that he had to take me back.

I went back to the major team.  At the end of the season, the yearbook comes out with everyone’s batting average in order, top to bottom.  I was on the bottom.  .069.  I did not quit.  I was 80 pounds.  The pitcher had a beard.  The next year – .087.  

You may have made a bad decision, lost, quit, or fallen short.  Learn from the event- but don’t introduce yourself to the future using yesterday’s label.

A scar records an injury, but it also proves the wound closed.  Remember what happened without living as though you are still bleeding.

Through these and other terrible experiences, I learned my superpower.

40 years later I became the oldest finisher of perhaps the hardest feat in motorsports – the Baja 1000 on a dirt bike – 34 hours solo, non-stop – where the number one most important thing you need to do to finish is – not quit.

Motivation = Value + Expectancy

Motivation = Value + Expectancy

Motivation = This has a lot of value for me, this would be really great + Expectancy

Motivation = Value + The degree I believe this will happen/come true.

If an outcome does not have a lot of value to someone, if they don’t care about it, they will not be motivated to get it.

If something has value but they do not believe it can or will come true, they are not motivated.

But to the degree that an outcome has value to a person AND they believe it will come true, they will be motivated.

Think about some of your goals that you have been chasing, wholly or intermittently.

How valuable is the result to you, and how much do you believe it will come true?

Have you been trying to motivate others?  Think about how valuable the result is to them and how much they believe it can come true. 

Can you modify those variables?

I want to sell you something – it’s good for you…

I want to sell you something.  Actually, Apple wants to sell it to you.  I created it and put it on Apple Music so that you can access it, but I have never seen a dollar from any sales – I think they keep all the money or something.  Anyway, I don’t care about that.  I want you to have it.

It’s my album called Blueprint.  It’s 20 tracks.

If you are looking for inspiration you can really connect with, this is it.  Nothing like it has ever been produced.

Get the whole album.

Search Apple Music, and Spotify for Blueprint, Larry Janesky.

Enjoy!

The Grim Old Days – Infancy

“In the preindustrial world, infancy was heartbreakingly fragile. Families faced constant loss; many babies died from causes no one understood. Medical advice often made things worse, and religious or medical ideas sometimes blamed mothers or framed tragedy as moral failure. Out of that fear and pressure, some infants were neglected, abandoned, or killed— not because people were monsters, but because poverty, shame, and lack of options crushed them.

At the same time, early laws, juries, and communities were beginning, however unevenly, to treat infanticide as a social problem rather than pure evil, and to build institutions that could help. Looking back isn’t about judging people who had almost no safety net; it’s about seeing how far knowledge, public health, and compassion have moved us. That progress didn’t happen by magic. It came from learning, organizing, and refusing to accept needless loss as ‘just how life is.’”

The Grim Old Days: Birth