BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Everyone Is On My Team

Everyone is on my team.  Everyone I know, have known, or will know in the future.  They're an important part of my team.

No person is too small, everyone is important.

Just what is this team of mine?  It's everything that flows in and out of me.

Everyone has a team, it's their unique combination of people they interact with.  No two teams for any two individuals are the same.  Everyone has a team.  Even little babies have teams.

Here's how it works.  A team is an evolving list of people that have influenced you, or you have influenced.  People you've worked with, people who you've helped or have helped you.

From the moment you are born, your team starts.  It actually started long before that... Everything you are made up of, your genetic material and your ancestors that contributed to that.  Your family, your friends, your classmates, your work mates.  Old loves, new loves, strangers you pass on the street.  People you interact with at businesses.

No one is an island.  Just look around your room.  Look around your car.  Look around your office at work.  Look around you.  Everything you have in your possession was manufactured by someone.  Maybe you have items that you made yourself, but I bet there are lots of things that are the hard work and passion of someone you may have never even met.

Here's the thing though.  Everything in life flows through you and around you.  You breathe in oxygen.  You exhale CO2.  You drink and eat.  You use words and concepts and ideas that were invented by people thousands of years ago.

We live on a floating rock that no one can claim ownership as a whole because... Who made earth?  We float around a star that burns and gives off light expecting nothing in return.

We use that light every day.  We use the heat from it.

Everyone and everything on this planet are all on a team together.  And everyone you know is on your team, like it or not.  Some people seem to work against you... But the thing is, none of us know the whole picture.

What might seem like a pointless challenge, or what might seem like someone in your way, could actually be helping you later on down the road.

A block in the road could be leading to something later on in life that you never saw coming.  I don't know what's going to happen 1 year from now, or 5 years.  I have no clue what kinds of experiences I'll have.  I have no clue how the people I've known, the people I know, or the people I WILL know might become very important in my life.

If, for example, I reach out to someone and ask a favor and they say no, or I try to network with someone and they don't respond, or I try to collaborate with someone and nothing comes of it.  Or, let's say I even get wronged by someone.... I don't know what might come out of that.

A lot of fantastic works of art came from heart break.

In my own life, this whole connection to Beverly Hills only exists because three other banks rejected the trust.  We TRIED to move our trust to three other places... They all said no... The fact that there even IS a trust right now to be moved to Beverly Hills is because one man decided to modify the trust to keep it in a trust until we reached the age of 50.  If my grandfather had never crossed paths with this man and he had never modified the original trust... We would have received the proceeds of the trust outright on our 30th birthdays.

So it's interesting because of the actions of other people... I have a connection that would never have existed in the first place.

But anything that exists in my life at all... some of it is purely out of serendipity.

I mean look at your life.  Take away family members.  Or friends.  How would your life be different?  What if one of those team members on your life didn't play a role in your life?  What if they just never existed in your life... How would your life be different?

All of our lives would be very different if we didn't have the exact people in our lives, past, present, or future... that we have had or do have or will have.

I can't say I really know anything about where my life is headed.  I can't say if it's good, or bad, or indifferent.  I might end up very successful some day in one of my endeavors, creative or business, or career...

I could end up never doing anything that ever amounts to anything.

No one can say that.  Sometimes life gets shoved in directions that we all never no control over.

There's a LOT of stuff in my life that I have no control over.  But what I do have control over is recognizing and accepting that everyone who plays a part in my life.... Is important.

Even if they may have harmed me in some way... they can still be important.  They may have been preparing me for something down the road.  Or maybe they were meant to redirect my life or make a connection for me that might never have been made if it weren't for their part in my life in the past.

Life is very unpredictable.  But one thing I can say for sure is... Most things that seem completely random at the time, or seem like there's no point... In hindsight there's always something to get out of it.

No decision is ever the "wrong" decision.  Nothing you can ever say or do to someone is ever a "Bad" decision.  Everything is a stepping stone, and a learning opportunity.

And it's just another team member to add to your big giant team of people and places and things in life that make you into the person you are.

I think the best example of understanding the way life works, happened tonight while I was at Panera Bread.

I was going to order their mac and cheese.  That was my first thought.  That was my decision.  But then, I decided as I stepped up to order, I was going to take destiny into my own hands.  I was going to make MY OWN decision and control my own life... Because I AM IN CONTROL OF MY OWN FATE...

I changed my order to the turkey chili, as the menu had in fancy lettering indicating that it was back.  That it was one of my choices.  And that I'm in charge of my own fate and destiny and I can choose my own path in life...

"We don't have turkey chili."

The girl taking my order informed me.

Or, in other words... I don't care how much you think you're in charge of your own fate and your own life... You're not.  You can choose anything you want.... But only what fate wants you to have will you get.

I changed my order back to mac and cheese.  But I INSISTED that I just have a cup.

When the order was served.  It was a bowl.

Oh well.  I give up.

I had decided my own fate and had decided I was in control of where my life was going to go...

A cup of turkey chili.

I sat down at the table to eat my bowl of mac and cheese.  Because that's how life works.

Most of us have things in our life, that through one way or another, were given to us.  Were setup for us.  Our parents, or siblings, or friends... If THOSE people had NOT been in our life...

This opportunity that we were given, this path in life... Would not be the one we ended up taking.

That's why our team is important.  Because it IS the path we took.  Sometimes you can't choose.  You can ask all you want.  You can try all you want.  But life goes in a direction different from where we want.

But why fight it?  Because after all the next time I step up to order, they might be out of mac and cheese and only have turkey chili.

And maybe all the bowls are dirty and they only have cups.

And then I'll be saying... Awwweeee maaaaan... I wish I had a bowl of mac and cheese right now!

Life is ordering food at Panera Bread.  Don't fight it.  Just know what some times comes to us at different times.  And sometimes we don't realize why at the time.

But what's cool about it is... When you step back and don't fight your team but embrace it... You realize how much those around you do for you.

Because in a way, we're all helping each other and shaping each other and building each other's lives as part of each other's teams, as teammates... And we don't even know it.  But if we fight it... Not only do we make our own team work harder, but we make each other's teams work harder too.

Clear as mud right?

The moral is basically that everyone in your life is there for a reason.  And every event good or bad was in your life for a reason as well.  And the more you look back on things, the more you find that no one goes through life alone, and a lot of life is actually a big team where we all rely on each other to get things done and get through life.

And a lot of our success, is simply waiting and trying lots of locked doors until one door opens.

A lot things in life are a combination of chance and timing.  And then once that chance and timing happen in a way that is favorable... Letting your team work for you... Not against you.