…with Gary Moss

Today is yesterday’s tomorrow. If your yesterday wasn’t so great, brush it off and create a wonderful day today.

We all have something that we love to do.

An aside:
There was a time when I hated those people that gave me that ‘pollyana’ cliche that I just dumped on you. It was a time when I was hurting.

I had just been through an ugly, hurtful, costly divorce; my ex had quashed the business that I had built over two decades, which had become my personal identity; I was a single again / forty something / in the limbo of ‘crazy times’.

When a therapist, trying to help me reinvent myself, asked me to make a list of the things that I love to do in life, I couldn’t come up with a single thing for my list. Looking back, I know now that I could not respond because I was in a state of shock. Nothing looked good; nothing tasted good; nothing seemed to matter. I am lucky that I didn’t turn to drugs; I am fortunate that I didn’t turn to drink.

I feel fortunate that I landed where I did. I was looking for love and appreciation when I followed an ad in the local newspaper, in the singles column, to an event at The Presidential Inn in Allen Park, Michigan (a scrabble event). When I got there I was annoyed when I learned that the newspaper had misplaced the ad. It wasn’t a singles activity. It was a playoff event, among some of the best players from the region, to determine those who would be selected to attend the upcoming national tournament.

I was there already, so I hung out and watched. I had always liked the game of scrabble. They were playing a brand of the game that was completely foriegn to me. I knew very few of the words that they played on the board; their scores were way beyond any score I had ever amassed. I was impressed and awe struck.

The players were friendly and invited me to join them for lunch. Then they invited me to come to their Tuesday night club in Livonia. I went. I was hooked.

I found something that I loved and wrote it as the first thing on my list.

One thing leads to another. Shortly thereafter I used my organizational skills and teaching skills to establish new clubs and tournaments in the Detroit, Michigan area. As I played regularly with my new found friends, I began to learn the secrets of how they played the game; soon I was winning now and then.

There’s a song from the depression days that begins, “Nobody knows you when you’re down and out. . .” The truth is, we don’t even like ourselves when we are that way.

At some point we each must take some action to get ourselves out of a slump. For me it was that scrabble event in Allen Park.

Slumps do not have to be as devastating as divorce, loss of a business, or loss of identity. A slump could be related to a self depricating feeling that scrabble players experience when they suffer loss after loss after loss.

No matter what the cause of the slump, the remedy is the same. Take a positive action. Nobody can do it for you. You are free to take that action whenever you choose,