When a college or professional athlete seemingly “throws it all away” by making a stupid mistake, it is easy to point out their missed opportunity. I spent the weekend in Eugene and with everything going on with University of Oregon football players, their throwing away of opportunity was a common conversation topic. As is often the case, pointing out someone else’s faults is easy… and can even become a hobby or occupation. What is always harder, is to point that same critical and critiquing lens upon one’s self. When the missed opportunity could mean giving up on fame and or millions of dollars, it’s easy to say, “that wouldn’t be me.” But how much opportunity do we, who aren’t in the spotlight, miss out on all the time? From not investing enough in our relationships to not taking care of ourselves to not working as hard as we could in our pursuits… we miss out on opportunity all the time, but our misses aren’t featured in the newspapers.

So if I’m going to take one big life lesson away from the situation that these young men find themselves in. That is this, take advantage of the opportunities that you are given, because as a normal guy, the only person who’s going to know I didn’t is me!