Do You Know Your Strengths?

As I mentioned in my previous posting, Play To Your Strengths with Marcus Buckingham, I have begun the journey towards focusing on my strengths and removing those aspects of my career that utilize areas that I am weak.

When I say this, what I mean is that I’ve decided to take control over my career (again), get rid of the auto-pilot and really push my goals forward. To do this, I’ve latched onto a growing “Strengths Movement” that has been developed over time, but has more recently been brought forward by Buckingham.

The Strength Movement
To summarize the strength movement, I guess I would personally describe it as,

Aiming your life in a direction that allows for a continual use of the talents and strengths that are most prominent, bring you the greatest sense of accomplishment and helps you create a successful life.

Based on the strengths finder profile, I should be moving my life in a direction that uses:

• Futuristic- inspired by the future and what could be and inspire others to the same
• Strategic - create alternative ways to proceed and can spot relevant patterns
• Ideation - facinated by ideas and able to find connections in seeminly disparate phenomena
• Intellection - characterized by intellectual activity and appreciate intellectual discussions
• Activator - can make things happen by turning thoughts into actions (often impatient)

It’s good to know what I should be moving towards. Just last week, my brother and I were discussing things that we are passionate about. I came up with a number of things but most prominent was my indoor soccer. As you can imagine, we had a good laugh and decided that there probably wasn’t a lot of money in playing indoor rec league soccer.

What I realized was that the passion that I have during soccer is in the competition of the game and the friends I play with.

So my next step is to figure out how to spot futuristic trends and patterns by combinding different ideas then motivating others around me through discussion while taking action on my ideas (and play soccer on the side!)

Let’s see what I can do!

PS. Thanks to Dan at dcrblogs.com for pointing out my problem in his post The Secret Behind The Secret. I guess I did lose sight of what I wanted.

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Tags: marcus buckingham, strengthsfinder, strategic, blogging, achieve success, multiple streams of income

Midweek Ramble 2007-09-19

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post part two of my Dark and Stormy Night article. I was called away on business and simply have not had time to get the posting ready. If you haven’t read it already, have a read at Part 1 of Dark and Stormy Night.

Grand Slam
On a positive note, I went to a Boston Red Sox / Toronto Blue Jays baseball game tonight (my first professional baseball game ever) and was witness to a great Grand Slam Home Run! Although I am more of a Soccer and Hockey fan, it was really cool to go into a new stadium in a new city for the game.

Indoor Soccer Starts On Monday
After finishing a great outdoor season of soccer (finishing in 4th place) I am really looking forward to playing indoor again. There’s just something about leaving the house at 9:00pm in the pitch black for a 10:00pm game.

The unfortunate thing is that since the games are so late, my team doesn’t have the opportunity to do our weekly post-game BS session at the local pub. I proposed that we have the meeting before the game. No one thought that playing on a full stomach of wings and nachos would do us any good!

Of course, I’ll be writing about the lesson’s I’ve learned from each game. To read last season’s series, have a read of:
Related Posts:
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Semi-Final
The Failure Series
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 6
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 5
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 4
The Success Series
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 3
More Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 2
Three Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 1

Bracelona is playing Lyon (plus I’m tired from meetings all day). I’ll write more tomorrow…

I look forward to hearing from you so consider my Full Feed RSS.

Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Semi-Final

I’ve put this off long enough. It’s time to get a few more lessons from Monday Night Soccer out into the world!

To give a recap from 2 weeks ago, our team won the game which put us into 4th place. That meant that in the playoffs we would be playing against the #1 team in the league (playoffs are two games 1 vs 4, 2 vs 3. Winners then play for 1st and losers play for 3rd)

Before I tell you the final results, let me remind you that I play in an intermediate rec league. The understanding within this league is that you have some skill with the ball, but do not play any level of competitive soccer. Apparently our competitors on Monday didn’t get the same memo!

As I mentioned in previous postings, you can learn a lot from success as well as failure. After Monday’s game, I now know that you can learn a lot from competing with people who are much, much better than you…

1. Play your game and don’t let your opponent dictate the terms
The Stars play their best when we are excited, winning and positive. During the game on Monday, the other team caused us to lose our focus so we stopped playing our own style of game. Perhaps it was because they had such great players but, as the game wore on, we started to take shots that were less effective, passed to the wrong areas of the field and just didn’t connect as a team. We tried to get fancy (as the other team played) but our game is really a grind, short pass and score style of play.

Lesson Learned: If you are going to model success, make sure it fits in with your team style, skills and dynamics. Even if you’ve had success with your current strategy keep improving but don’t throw out the basics that helped achieve success in the first place.

2. Bracket effectively - set the field to fit your style
Bracketing in negotiation is to create a scenario or set of conditions that almost force the opponent to play a certain tactic or make a specific decision. In real estate, it’s making the counter-offer prices at a value that positions you to achieve a result better than splitting the difference. (ie. The seller drops from $100K to $95K but you only raise your offer from $90K to $92.5K - this probably means that the final price will be closer to $93 than to $95 - saving you $2K.)

In the game against this team last time, the opposing team modified some of the field sizes (width and goal crease) to fit their style of play. We didn’t object at the time (being the team captain that was actually my job - didn’t I read my own blog post?) but as I look back, they shaped the playing field to their advantage. Great for them…stupid for us.

Lesson Learned: Know your strengths and change the perceived situation to help create your desired results. Also, know the variables that can be modified in any scenario and use that to your advantage.

3. When one player on your team loses motivation, it affects the whole team
Everyone makes mistakes. On Monday, one of our players made a few plays that didn’t work - energy down one level. Then there was a goal scored because of a bad play - energy down two levels. Finally, the player was out-maneuvered and simply stopped running - energy down three levels to zero.

Watching one of our own team mates lose their motivation and energy started to drain the team and slowed us down as well. Not only did we need to work harder to continue at the same level but we started to get down on the player for their lack of effort (not very helpful I might add.)

Lesson Learned: It’s the job of the whole team to bring up spirits, help motivation and stimulate success for individuals and the group. Watch for signs of lost energy and deal with it with positive, rather than negative, feedback.

To Bend it Like Beckham, consider my Full Feed RSS.

Related Posts:
The Failure Series
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 6
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 5
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 4
The Success Series
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 3
More Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 2
Three Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 1

Tags: goal setting, soccer, life lessons, blogging, blogging challenge, business success, team work

The Procrastinator’s Guide To Blogging

I did it again.

I sat down at my computer and had a few hours dedicated to writing. With pages of notes and some great topics in mind I was sure that this would be the night of 1000 posts.

It happened almost right away. The itch began and I had to scratch. A quick visit over to my Google Accounts to check the update on my visits, referrals, unique visitors and most viewed articles for the day. I use Firefox, so I also open link in new tab and out pops my AdSense account. Great, I’m still making money but I need to stay focused…content, content, content.

It doesn’t take long to write a great title for a new post I’m doing (for more info about writing a title check out my post The Top 7 Ways to Supercharge Your Titles.) I’ve decided to use a mixture of #2 and 3 - looking good. I’m happy, and writers block is nowhere to be found. I hammer out a great opening paragraph.

What are your Feedburner numbers looking like?
I take a quick break and have a look. Trending up…would love to have more (click Lewis Empire Feed to help me out) but it’s looking good too.

Let’s do a little research about increasing my RSS Feed.
This sounds great at the time so I surf the web a little more and find some great articles: Problogger.net and copyblogger.com.
What a great hour I’ve just had. I learned some things that I didn’t know before and I justify the time accordingly.

Back to writing…

I get the main topics and sub-topics of my article written and then start to post some more information.

Didn’t another blogger you read write something that could fit in here?
I seem to recall reading something somewhere. It’s time to hit the RSS feeds and go site by site. I’m a huge fan of giving credit to people who provide me with great information. I want to make sure to include them.

Is that an email ding? Maybe it’s Facebook!
Hey, did a long-lost school friend who I lost contact with in grade 2, then never thought about until this very moment invite me to be a friend? I’d better go and check. While I’m at it, let’s have a look at some of my friend’s family photos and make sure I’m not tagged in anything I don’t want on the web!

Man, I don’t want to turn out like some of these guys…I’d better get back to my work and get some postings out there.

Pararaph # 4 is followed by a trip to the kitchen to grab a soda with lime.

I receive an email about a new plugin from a friend.
How easy is this one to implement?
Let’s scan the plugin scene and figure out which ones would improve performance or reduce my time. (7 WordPress Plugins That Work) There are a few here but I’m going to wait and see how some of the other ones work out.

Should I write another post about my newest plugins? Yep.
I create a new post, add the title: My Newest WordPress Plugins and hit save. There’s a topic for another day…

Damn. I forgot to complete my Lessons from Monday Night Soccer - Game 7 post.

Now that I mention it, I wonder what my team ended up ranking in the regular season (I login and check) Fourth! That means we’re playing for the #1 spot on Monday! Awesome.

I jump over the the last post (Game 7) but is it too late to post it? Maybe I’ll merge the two for next week.

I write paragraph # 5 and 6 - backtrack and update a little in # 4 then jump ahead to # 8. I’m still thinking about the best information to throw in paragraph 7 so that can wait a few minutes.

Did Kontera finally pay off?
I login to my account. Dismal. I’m not sure if it’s worth the junk income for the extra code and links. Should this be another post? Maybe.

I create a new title and save it for a reminder later.

Paragraph # 7 is finished and I start on the final thoughts. It’s starting to get late so I spend the last few minutes getting the right combination of words in there.

Preview…edit…preview…edit…preview…looks good.

I add my Lewis Empire Feed and some Technorati tags.

Done!

1 down, 999 to go…I’ll get more done tomorrow.

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Tags: business success, procrastination, writing, blogging, blog humor, blog

Lessons From Monday Night Soccer – Game 6

I mentioned in an earlier post that you can learn a lot from failure. Apparently, I need more lessons than I thought after my team’s third loss in a row!

Once again, I had a lot of fun and scored another goal. My team was good for another laugh and, since we actually had some subs this week, we were a full team for the game.
As per the recent commitment I detailed in Take The Challenge and Create Success I have had a chance to reflect on the game and write about the newest lessons I learned.

1. Reaching your goal doesn’t need to be pretty to be successful
As I mentioned, I scored a goal in yesterday’s game. What I did not mention was how ugly the goal actually was.

I received an excellent pass from one of my team mates and carried the ball around the defenceman towards the net. I wouldn’t call it a break-away but it was pretty close. I moved the ball forward, aimed at the top right corner and kicked away…

My foot hit the ground with a solid thunk but the momentum of my body pushed my foot forward. It contacted the ball and, as the goalie was moving right for the high shot, the ball bounced once and rolled slowly into the left corner.
Ugly? Yes. Successful? Also, YES!
Lesson Learned: If you have set your goals and believe in their success, don’t be worried if they are not achieved exactly as you envisioned.

2. Keep your team in peak form to win in the long run
We have a fairly athleatic team. That being said, we are also a group of professionals who spend most of our day behind desks or driving from one client to the next. Last week, we played with no substitutions - something I do not want to do in outdoor soccer again. Last night the team switched off as if we had no substitutions.

For some reason, many of our players were staying out on the field for 10 or more minutes at a time. As you can guess, these players began to slow down and it cost us some goals. Not only that, the players who were on the sidelines got cold waiting, then felt they needed to play longer to get their time on the field. We stretched ourselves too thin and lost the momentum on the sidelines.

Lesson Learned: Make sure that your team has the proper rest. When your group is alert, they will be able to give more effort when their peak performance is required.

3. Tell people your goals and they may come true
Playing in a co-ed league creates some obvious dilemas for the male players. One important question is: If a girl on the other team is playing rough, what are the rules of combat?

During the course of the game, there was a girl opponent who was pushing our female team mates off the ball and actually swore at one when she fought back. Acting the macho male role, I said, “I’ll play that side and get even for you” with no actual intention for anything to happen. Literally, on the next play I happened to carry the ball up the right side of the field and this girl just happened to be on defence. I pushed the ball forward and she came in with a big kick to get it away. I also went for the kick and made full foot-on-ball contact. She did the same; however, while I ended up continuing my way down the field, she ended up head over heels then flat on her back on the grass! There was no foul (since I didn’t touch her at all), she got up quickly (after milking it a bit if you ask me) and my team mates had a great laugh!
Lesson Learned: Your mind works towards whatever direction you focus on. If you follow my advice in Set Goals The Smart Way, your subconsious will move you in that direction. Just make it positive!

The final game summary was pretty uneventful. We lost by a score of 4 to 3 but I think the team had a fairly decent game all around. All that we’re missing right now is a little motivation and perhaps a good post game party.

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Related Posts:
The Failure Series
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 5
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 4
The Success Series
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 3
More Lessons From Monday Night Soccer (July 16, 2007)
Three Lessons From Monday Night Soccer (July 10, 2007)

Tags: goal setting, soccer, life lessons, blogging, blogging challenge, business success, team work

Getting My Feet Wet

Well, it’s been over a month since I started this blog and so far I’m pretty happy with the results. Not only have I had a lot of fun working on the articles but I have learned a lot about blogging and see a great future ahead!

Posting Success
I’ve also had some excellent success with a number of the posts I have written. The Top 7 most visited posts on my site are:

1. Top Ten Comments That Work In Any Situation
2. Using Comments to Get Linkbacks
3. How Often Should a Blog Stay On Topic?
4. Free iPod At TD Canada Trust
5. Three Lessons From Monday Night Soccer
6. Using Articles to Get Free Traffic
7. Filtering Your Own Blog Comments in Top Commentators

While my blog is relatively new, I think this is a very interesting list of articles that have made it on my Top 7. Of the list, three of my posts have been about commenting and what I feel they should be used for. I didn’t realize I’d written this many posts on the subject but as I spent more time on other people’s blogs reading their articles and comments I came up with info I wanted to share.

The other part of this list that I think is great is the Free iPod article. While this was a quick post about a current bank promotion, it shows you the power of Niche Marketing. Of course, based on this article’s success I am going to continue finding new niches to write about (hopefully this time I can have an affiliate program on the page!)

Top Commentators
I really want to thank all my Top Commentators once again. Without the great comments and questions I’ve received, all I have is Google Analytics’ word that anyone is actually visiting, much less reading what I’ve written.
Here are my Top Commentators as of August 8, 2007:

• FourPillars
• Real Estate Editorial
• dcr
• Tavi Nemet
• mitchboan
• money-blogging.com
• Michael Fultz
• Paypal2u Bloggers
• cooliojones
• Webd360

Thanks for all your comments and for great material for new postings!

Learnings
The Learning curve for blogging and driving traffic to your site is steep (especially when you have Wordpress issues) but I think I’ve got a great handle on it now. What I didn’t realize was the amazing possibility that existed for monetizing a blog. With things like Google Adsense, Review Me, Kontera and the likes, there are great ways to make money from your effort - without over-running your site with advertising!

The biggest pieces of blogging information I have learned so far probably come from John Chow and Courtney Tuttle. As you can see, both these blogs are on my Blogroll and continue to give me valueable information on running a blog and increasing it’s popularity.

Revenue
Actually, I’ve decided to follow the advice of a number of different bloggers out there who suggest to create the content first, get the readership up then integrate ads into your site. As a result, I’ve really only got Adsense and Kontera currently running. Each have made money but I definitely would have been better working for minimum wage!

As I experiment and start to diversify the income sources I’ll let you know what’s going on through the site.

Site Popularity
Although I have created a number of successful businesses online, I don’t have a lot of blogging experience. Here are some of my numbers so please let me know if I’m anywhere near successful!

Technorati
Authority: 21, Rank: 308,341

Alexa
3 Month Average: 940,125
1 Week Average: 565,687
I’m proud to say that my blog attracts over 0.0002% of all internet traffic in the entire universe!

Page Rank:
Still none - but I’m anxiously awaiting the next update.

I look forward to continuing this excellent journey and in reading your comments. I’ve been working hard to create some great postings on motivation, making money, retiring young and getting rich.

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Tags: goal setting, soccer, life lessons, blogging, blog summary, business success

Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 5

I believe that you can learn some of your most important lessons in life from failure. Depending on your personality, you can either dwell on mistakes or learn from them and move on. Learning from mistakes is the path I have chosen to take after the devastating loss at last night’s game.

If I put it into perspective, we (Stars) were missing both our regular and back-up goalie. We were missing 3 other players who always make valuable contributions to the team and I am still fending off the pain from last week’s twisted ankle. Are these excuses? Of course! Do they make me feel better? Yes!

That being said, there are no real excuses for losing by a score of 8 to 3! Not only is it another blow to our ego (after last weeks loss) but with a -5 goal differential we’re losing some ground against the other teams with similar wwin-loss records.

Through all of this, and a little reflection after drinks with the team, I learned some great lessons once again.

1. Don’t try to work with less people than you need to succeed
People get tired, cranky and start to fight internally when they are over-worked. Even when playing a sport that you enjoy, limited (or no) breaks ads stress to the team and creates unnecessary friction between players. Now imagine how this works at a job or work group! If a team of friends can turn on each other, certainly a team of employees will implode much quicker.
Lesson Learned: Know your people needs and fill it properly. If you’re moving into an important project, get the right people for the job and quickly fill any voids.

2. Re-confirm your meeting (game) time and location prior to the event
The league administrators changed the start time of the game from the regular 6:30 to 7:30 last night. As a result, some of the team was showing up 1 hour early and players were emailing to figure out when the game started. This didn’t cause too much of a problem; however, in different circumstances players may have gone home unable to contact the team for more information.
Lesson Learned: Create a distribution list for your team and/or make sure you are up-to-date on the time and location of important events.

3. Even if your offence is lacking, make sure you’ve got your defence covered
We started to get worried as the game wore on and put an in-experienced goalie into the net. Although she did great work in the position, we should have secured our defensive group better and, once again, put our people in the correct positions. Although we had many chances to score, on each of our goals we then let them turn around and score one of their own. With a better defensive mind-set we may have held them off and gained some ground in the game.
Lesson Learned: If you’re losing ground in one area, re-examine your strengths and weaknesses and reposition the team; however, do not sacrifice an area that’s working to grow one that isn’t.

As you can tell, I didn’t enjoy myself as much as usual during last night’s game. It wasn’t just because we were losing most of the game; I think it had more to do with the general attitude of the group. With too few players and by missing some key people, we struggled to gain a positive attitude right from the start.

Hopefully next week we can get back on track and add another shut-out to our record!

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Related Posts:
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 4
Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 3
More Lessons From Monday Night Soccer (July 16, 2007)
Three Lessons From Monday Night Soccer (July 10, 2007)

Tags: goal setting, soccer, life lessons, blogging, blogging challenge, business success, team work

How Connected Is Your Life?

Well, the internet failed me again this weekend! I went away and had a great plan to read some books, spend some time on the beach and write some great content for LewisEmpire.com.

Stage 1 (reading some books). I blazed through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows then continued to read Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and busted through another chapter of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. All together, a great weekend of relaxation.

Stage 2 (spend some time on the beach) was also very successful. The town was packed with tourists so I wanted to get as far away from them as possible. I jumped in the boat and went across the lake into a secluded bay and spent a great number of hours in the sun.

Stage 3 (write some great content) was a little less successful. On Friday night I managed to login to my account and get some articles written. As I mentioned in a previous posting, since updating to WordPress 2.2.1 I have been unable to use the Timestamped posting feature, so I wrote the postings and closed the laptop. That was the last time I was able to connect for the whole weekend! My laptop could not get access Saturday or Sunday night!

As you can imagine, I felt totally disconnected from the world and felt horrible for people reading my blog! Not only that, I think I learned how closely tied my life is to the internet and needing access to it. During this weekend I was unable to do the following daily (yet important tasks):

1. Pay off some credit card balances
2. Access my blog admin
3. Check my personal/business email
4. Figure out if and when my Monday Night Soccer Game was
5. Submit my updated information for my mortgage renewal
6. Register my team for the fall soccer league
7. Find out where my Europe-trotting brother was today

In an increasingly accessible world how much do you rely on having internet access available to you? Even counting out the necessity of posting on my blog, keeping in contact with friends and family revolves around using email or social networking sites. All my banking, mortgage and credit card information is updated and transfered online. Although I love the accessibility of everything through the web AND doing business via email, I can see that I need to make some changes in order to be more organized and prepare for the eventuality of losing a connection from time to time.

Does this sound familiar? How strong is your love-hate relationship?

Take The Challenge And Create Success

Recently, I received a comment from Tavi at www.Loop44.com talking about a potential niche in the market. As my regular readers know, I like to sit back after playing Monday Night Soccer (football for my non-North American readers) and reflect on what could be learned from the game. Tavi wrote:

Wow, this could really be a very original niche right here. Applying what you learn at football (sorry, I’m from Europe ) to business and/or blogging could really add that particular flavor your blog might need to get on the top of the mountain in this domain.

The reason I like this comment so much is because it made me realize how much people let pass them by each day. As a matter of habit, I reflect back on each game to figure out what I learned about playing soccer, life, business, people, personality and competition. Without LewisEmpire to write on, I may not take the time to focus as much and would miss out on a lot of learning. Because of this, I am creating a challenge for myself to spend at least 15 minutes each day reflecting on the lessons that I have learned throughout the day or things I should have learned before!

I think this type of reflection is what is missing from so many people’s lives right now - mine included. I’ve read a number of books about keeping your mind open to opportunity and wealth. Isn’t reflecting on your day or week a perfect example of what people should be doing? Imagine if you spent 15 minutes each day and wrote down all the things that worked, didn’t work or could have been much better during the day. It wouldn’t take long before you would have an entire book of things that would help you better your life.

New Ideas Add Up
An author I’ve read named Vern Harnish wrote a book called Mastering the Rockefeller Habits about organizing a corporation and how to disseminate information and goals throughout the company. One great example of teamwork and success was a manager who implemented a new policy for his team. Each member was required to bring a new idea for making their business better (be it more efficient, successful, cost effective, etc.) to every morning meeting - part of their bonus depended on it. Imagine the success of this place! Even on a team of 5 you end up with about 1,000 new ideas every year to move the company and team closer to their goals.

Success In Your Life
Now take this example one step further and apply it to your own life. What if you identified a new opportunity, cost savings, revenue generating or other success each and every day. It wouldn’t take long before you would be taking your place next to the greatest business/personal development minds in the country!

I’m going to challenge myself to try this tactic for the next 90 days and I invite anyone to join me. I would love to hear about your results and any creative ideas that have helped you!

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Tags: goal setting, motivation, make money online, blogging, blogging challenge, business success, goal setting

Lessons From Monday Night Soccer - Game 4

So I may be a little late on this one (since the game was on Monday) but I thought I would throw in a few other postings before sending this one out.

Monday night was not as great as it could have been. We suffered our first loss of the season and I sprained my ankle. On a positive note, I managed to crush the opposing goalie (his fault not mine) and scored what I consider an amazing goal.

Of course, not to disappoint, there were some more lessons to be learned during the game.

1. Don’t Attack Your Opponent Straight On (Let them make the first move)
Throughout the course of the game there was one player who continued to stop me each time I tried to make a break for the net. As the game wore on I became more frustrated and eventually played a little defence to get my mind off it. Sitting back after the game I remembered a strategy I had once read. It suggested that you don’t try to play straight up the field (as it will be easier to stop you) but you should play on an angle from the net, drag the defender along, then break when they make a mistake.
Lesson Learned: Alter your strategy continually. If you’re trying to attack a larger opponent, the easiest way may not be directly at the goal.

2. Know what you are there to do
As I’ve mentioned a number of times in the past, I have a great team. We decided in the very begining that we were there to compete for the season title but not at the expense of having fun together. Last week during half-time, we all noticed that while we were all having fun talking about important things like pick-up lines and each other’s game-play the other team was talking strategy and positioning on the field. In the end, they won the game, but I guarantee that we had more fun.
Lesson Learned: Know your strategy from the start. If it’s to win everytime, then dedicate yourself to that goal. If it’s to have fun, make sure you have the right people for the job!

3. You may not agree with a decision, but choose you battles
Since I play in an intermediate Rec soccer league, each game is self-administered. This means there are no referees and rules are clarified (depending on your own interpretation) throught the game. During Monday night’s game, there were a couple of instances where off-sides were called that may have been questionable on both sides. Each time our opponents didn’t agree with the call they made a fuss over the rule and created a bit of a scene. Does this make me respect them more or less? You guessed it.
Lesson Learned: Accept decisions professionally and with class. If something is valuable enough to your team then fight for it; if not, then pick your battles and let it slide.

That’s all I’ve got for that game. The total loss was 3-1 but our keeper played extremely well. I think I also forgot to mention that the game was almost 3-2 but my beautiful bend-it-like-Beckham shot missed the top corner by inches!