Being a parent is incredible. Yes, children bring a new way of living to your life. One definitely can not be as selfish, and you are forced to do things you might not want to. You get tested in patience and grown through love. As for me, parenting has shaped my development as a leader in our business. My boys are amazing. Becoming a parent has been one of the best events of my life.  As my boys grow, I am surprised how so much of what they do – relates to my life. For example, this week Clark is now riding his bike with no training wheels.

I don’t know what particular event set the new tone. Maybe we saw another kid riding their bike freely with no support but we decided it was time for Clark to learn how to ride his bike with no training wheels. Just a year and a half ago for his 3rd birthday, he received his bike. At that time he was not even tall enough to fully pedal as his feet would come up short every time the pedal reached the bottom of the swing. Now a year and a half later this kid was riding up and down the sidewalk screaming and yelling with joy because of the new freedoms of not using training wheels. Just the other night he was asking for us to put the training wheels back on after he took a spill that cut open his elbow.

As I saw this process unfold over two weeks, I realized how comparable this is in our life and our need to make adjustments or changes as we travel along life’s path.

• Making changes where we want to grow and improve or create more freedoms in our life comes with a cost.
• Learning to ride without training wheels comes with some crashes, some scratches, bruises, and overcoming fear.

During the process of learning to ride, a child naturally wants to go back to the training wheels.  It was easier; there was no crashing. Riding a bike used to be fun and full of joy, now it’s creating fear.  Isn’t that the case with anything in our own life.? We want to make a change, we get excited, we start moving forward with the new habits, and then all of a sudden it’s uncomfortable. It gets hard; it’s taking too much time; we are doing the work and not seeing the results. So what do we do? In a weak moment, we quit. We go back to the old way, the comfortable way. We put our training wheels back on and then we develop the excuse as to why it didn’t’ work. We find a way to excuse ourselves from not moving forward. But, there is another way.

Clark had me to work through this with him. I had anticipated he would develop some fears, take a crash, and want to go back to his old way. It’s normal; no one taught him this; he’s 4. Unless instructed otherwise, this is how we are wired. To look for comfort, we use our fears to protect us, but in protecting us our fears are also limiting us.

We practiced take offs, pedaling strong, and stopping. We had to learn new ways to do these things. When you have training wheels, you are balanced on the bike with your feet up. Stopping and starting are very different. You have to learn to put your feet down to catch you when you stop. We kept with it. I walked alongside him. We slowly built confidence for two weeks. I held onto his seat while he peddled, then his shoulder, and then towards the end, my hand was on his shirt not offering any real support but letting him know I was close.  Then in one moment, I let go, ran alongside him and he kept pedaling. We made it 20 ft. And he stopped.  Alexis and I screamed. “YAY!! You did it. You just rode your bike all by yourself!” That was it. A smile grew across his face, and he was off. He had reached the tipping point of riding by himself. In one small, very memorable moment, our little boy was riding a bike.

I see the same training wheels coming off in our business. We are moving from amateurs to professionals.  Along with our brand name being recognized, I see our operations changing, our sales and marketing changing and most important, I see our team growing. We are starting to operate at a new level of accountability. Our customers are buying from us because we deliver the best value. Team members are using their earnings to buy homes, start families, and go on vacations. We have real deadlines to meet. School is starting and an entire community is depending on us to complete our job on schedule. This is an exciting time for us. Yes, there are going to be some scratches and some falls, but I can see what it looks like when we are operating at a higher level. The kind of projects we get to do, the clients we get to work for and how we will develop and grow as a team. We are developing and growing to be the best in our industry, the market leader in our region, and having fun while doing it. Because hard work is fun, being part of something bigger than myself is fun and seeing what we can accomplish in making this move to be the professionals is tremendously rewarding. We can’t do it alone; we have to move this way as a team. When we find it uncomfortable, we focus on where we are heading not where we were. The training wheels are coming off.