BOOK OF THE WEEK: "The No Complaining Rule" by Jon Gordon

A new year and you would think this "book of the week" was done on purpose, well not quite. In 2019, I read a total of 26 books - that's pretty impressive from a person who hated reading in high school.

Over the past year I grew to love books and and reading. The last book I read in 2019 was fittingly finished on December 31 and is a great book to take into 2020. The No Complaining Rule.

Like many of Jon Gordon's books, this book too sets around a fictional story of a company facing the hardships of negativity - both inside the company and outside with bloggers. It was the task of the VP of HR, Hope, to figure out a solution to this problem. But here was the dilemma, things were not going very well for Hope in all facets of her life. Her husband had left her to raise their two kids on her own and her doctor found abnormalities in her blood work and wanted further testing done. It wasn't until the nurse at the hospital, Joyce - who is the sister of the bus driver, Joy, from The Energy Bus - pointed out her "no complaining rule."

The no complaining rule is strikingly similar to Jerry York's, 24-hour rule. At 74 years old, Coach York has lived by the 24-hour rule, both in hockey and in life. If anything bad happened, you had 24 hours to feel however you wanted to feel, but then it was time to move on. Conversely, if anything good happened, you also only had 24 hours to feel that emotion and then you had to move on. When you think about it, it's the only way to live.

Staying with the sport of the hockey. there was a part in the book that made me instinctively think back to the the 1996 third installment of The Mighty Ducks. New coach, Coach Orion, gave his team a life lesson about confidence and positivity. It's easy to be confident and stay positive when things are going your way and life is great. But it is incredibly difficult to keep that confidence and positivity when life has taken you on an alternative course.

Bad things will happen, but legendary Harvard women's basketball head coach Kathy Delaney-Smith put it best two months ago "failure is fuel for success." The failures that you experience today will eventually lead to success in the coming days.

Just keep going.