This week's Pep Talk: "Refined, Resolute & Fearless"

It’s a Sunday afternoon, the music is Oldies, the temperature is hot and the mood, mixed. A quick conversation with wonderful Los Angeles based-son about his sister’s pending visit is good, the breeze on Poor Man’s Porch is cooling but there’s sobering news to report: The local baseball team, the Colorado Rockies, are dead in the water and drifting away from land and the coveted island that is the baseball playoffs at season’s end.

They just lost 7-0 to the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was the club’s 14th-straight Sunday loss of the season. What? The Rockies’ best pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez, since traded, was erratic, the hitters couldn’t solve a guy making his first start in two months and the will, to bounce back from a prior night’s shellacking, apparently on the disabled list and unavailable.

To put it another way. The 2011 version of the Jim Tracy-led Rockies have underachieved big time. Underachieving, wherever we roam, is a lousy place to dwell, ain’t it? You want to quickly shower the stench away, don’t ya? We all have been there at points in life, right? Where, despite best intentions, it’s a train wreck leaving us dazed and confused. What’s the saying, “Life gets in the way of our best laid plans?” The Rockies didn’t expect to be buried in a double-digit deficit to the world-champion San Francisco Giants; I didn’t expect to be divorced twice and you didn’t expect - fill in the blank. Life rarely goes as planned.

The question, when mired in underachievement, “What the heck are we doing to do about it?” We do have a choice, right? I’m just a simple dude from Missouri sitting here writing you from my backyard, but I think it’s this simple: We have to decide whether we’re going to be victims of underachievement or students of it. I believe that’s true whether talking baseball, love or whatever. We have to, when faced with the reality of underachievement, look inward and ask, “What could be done better to become superior to our former selves - home, work or elsewhere?”

But here’s where it get tricky. Accepting the truth of underachievement takes courage. First, to admit it and then, to explore a new path encouraging a better way. Simple, not easy. I think it starts with forgiving ourselves. I can only speak for myself, but it seems we’re usually our worst critics. In the Bible, in Colossians, it talks about “being gentle, forgiving and never holding a grudge against others.” I think it starts self.

When underachievement arrives at the most undesirable time, we have to muster the courage to dust ourselves off and move forward. Wiser from the experience, optimistic about the future and courageous despite the past. Refined, resolute and fearless from lessons learned in our quest to turn life’s lemons - heck with lemonade - into sweet and savory margaritas and play like champions down the road.