UNBROKEN [12.17]

June 2, 2017

UNBROKEN [12.17]
Market:  New York
Athlete:  Brian Kuritzky, UBS

Summer 2001

"Brian? BRIAN?! I need your help, NOW!"  My father shrieks as he storms through the door.  My aunt rushes in after him, trying to keep up while keeping herself together.   I follow after them - moving as fast as my teenage legs will move into my mother's room.

Something was wrong.  Something was really wrong.  I knew my mother's battle (more like a 10 year war) with cancer was not going well.  She frequently slept, rarely ate, and barely spoke.  Now, she had no energy to move.

"Brian, you have to help me carry her." My father pleaded.    I didn't ask, I just did.

I lifted her right hand around my neck while grabbing her right leg, my father doing the same on the other side.  My eyes caught my father's for one fleeting exchange - he said nothing and he said everything in that moment.  My arms felt light but my chest felt the heaviest it would ever feel.  We lifted together, side-shuffled her out of the room, into the hallway, and down the stairs.  

I tried not to look, I tried not to listen, I tried not to feel.  My mother was the definition of a vivacious woman - someone whose smile and energy would light up a room.  Now, she was the definition of a terminally-ill cancer patient.  Unhealthily thin, bald, with green-tinted skin, and agonizing in tremendous pain.  As much as I tried not to - I saw, I heard, I felt.  To this day, I force myself to remember her lasting spirit and not the lasting image of her body. 

We placed her into the front seat of the car.  My father drove off without saying a word, my aunt gave me a hug before saying: "You are so strong.”

My mother died a few weeks later.

I share this moment not to elicit sympathy.  Since that day, I began seeing the world differently.  Here are a few things I try to remember:

1) Don't sweat the small stuff
Whenever you find yourself stressed, anxious, or upset, ask yourself: What's the worst that will happen? Will someone die if you are five minutes late?  If you lose your job, are there no others?   

2) Work tirelessly, compete ferociously, live honestly,  and good things will come
There are many clichés about hard work and luck or hard work versus talent.  The harder you work, the luckier you'll be.  The harder you work the more talented you'll be.  The harder you work, the happier you'll be.  Most of them are true.  I've never been the most talented but I've always been willing to work harder.

3) Fail often and hard,  analyze, correct, and repeat
The comfort zone is overrated. Don't avoid failure, seek it out! When you fail, you expose your weaknesses in real time, at which point you can then analyze, practice, and improve.   How else do you grow? Plus, you'll have some great laughs later.

4) CSI
A former coach coined this term CSI - Constant State of Improvement.  Each day is an opportunity to improve yourself.  Spend two minutes in the morning listing what/how you will improve today. Deliberate practice makes perfect - so determine specifically what and how you want to improve and get after it.

4a) Your main competition, is you.
Each day you are competing against yesterday's you.  If today you are beating your prior day's ferocious, hardworking self, does anyone else stand a chance?

5) Identify several moments each day to stop and say thank you.
When good things happen, there are always things outside your control that helped.  Call it luck, fortune, fate... call it whatever you want.  Be humble enough to acknowledge that while you worked your butt off, there was a helping hand along the way.  

Before eating, stop and say thank you for the food.  Before sleeping, take 30 seconds and say thank you for having a bed.  Before stepping out to compete, say thank you for healthy set of legs and a regular heart.

We are constantly measuring up, thinking about what we don't have that we often forget all the things we do have. 

Mother's Days are usually terrible days.  But today helped me connect with my mother again, remembering the above and one of the most important things she gave me: an unbreakable spirit

Hopefully this hardens yours too.

-Brian