Be Where Your Feet Are

One of the biggest challenges for working parents is balancing commitments between the office and the home – kids’ activity schedules, work project deadlines, professional development, and travel for meetings all compete to find space on our calendars.  Even when we make it to one event, our minds are often wandering to what’s going on in the other world or all the things that need to be done to prep for something else.  For me, I experienced this firsthand while sitting in Dallas at a sales leadership meeting while our 18-year-old was prepping for her high school graduation and our 7-year-old was prepping for a dental procedure.  I experienced it the weekend before this trip, too, when I should have been helping to prepare the kids for the challenges the week would bring, but was, instead, working on a presentation for this meeting.  We don’t get a lot of mulligans in life – the opportunity to do it again.  It’s important to take full advantage of the time we have in each setting by focusing on the task at hand and giving it our full attention.  You must Be Where Your Feet Are.

Scott O’Neil made a name for himself in the fast-paced world of professional sports.  His work to develop organizational culture and advancement within the Philadelphia 76ers front offices has garnered worldwide attention with Entrepreneur magazine calling his success one of the “Top 50 Cultures” in the country.  O’Neil takes the reader through 7 steps to help you really plant your feet in the current situation and learn to be present in everything you do. 

I give Be Where Your Feet Are 4 out of 5 stars.  I am not much for the sports world anymore and found myself speedreading through the sections that covered more sports knowledge and names than I was comfortable with.  However, this book delivered some great “ah ha” moments for me – I feel like O’Neil was writing from a place where he has been through the professional struggles I am currently facing and has come out the other side ready to show the way.  I enjoyed his simple and effective way of laying out the challenge in each chapter with a real-life example from his own life or that of a trusted friend.  He closes every chapter with a section titled “Your Turn to Put This into Practice” giving simple steps to apply the moral of the story to your own life.  In comparison to books in a similar genre we read earlier this year, this book left me feeling empowered, not like a CEO had spouted a catchphrase at my issue and walked away.

This is a great book for all readers.  If you are a student who has work or athletic requirements, or a continuing education student fitting in your classwork between work and family, or a working parent, you will gain great ideas to help you balance your commitments and attention in this book.  I would also recommend this book for those outside the workforce – O’Neil’s lessons can be applied to any area of life.  Homemakers may find his writing helpful in balancing inter-family commitments without guilt.  I am personally recommending this book as our next read for our leadership book club at my company – reading as a group and employing his “Water Buffalo” strategy will be beneficial in any organization!

I chose Be Where Your Feet Are as my self-development read for June.  I was gifted this book last year through a professional women’s subscription box, but it has sat on the shelf unread for quite a while.  Written in part during the 2020 pandemic, I figured this was going to be another one of those books touting quick and easy vignettes of knowledge with no real meat behind the advice, but I was pleasantly surprised this is anything but that.  It was a quick read for me – I started this on Friday night and finished it Saturday afternoon.  This is one of those times that I feel like a book has come into my reading path at just the right time – I am working through one of the largest change management projects I’ve ever led at work, while simultaneously taking my teen on her Freshman orientation trip.  I struggled with the decision to leave my work phone and computer at home while we were gone Thursday and Friday, knowing I would be boarding a plane early Monday to be onsite for this project.  I considered taking it with me and setting hours to check it, but ultimately decided against it.  Knowing this would be one of the final times my daughter and I would get to spend alone together at this stage of her life, I wanted to be fully present and able to experience it with her.  My kids and my husband are 100% my What’s Most Important – what keeps me grounded and my constants in a life that revolves around change.  Reading this book after the orientation trip and just before heading out for my project on Monday confirmed I made the right choice to be present and where my feet are.

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What I’m Reading

• Current print book: The Collected Regrets of Clover, Mikki Brammer
• Current audio book: Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
• Book I’m most looking forward to: The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise, Colleen Oakley