Move Your Feet

When I started playing Little League football all I wanted to be was the quarterback. My favorite professional team with the Dallas Cowboys and I wanted to be just like Roger Staubach. On one of our first days of practice we each got to go and pick out our number from a pile of jerseys. With dreams of playing like my hero I picked out #12.

Our first season together the coaches felt I made an excellent quarterback. I was bright and it was easy for me to memorize all the plays. We were only in the fourth grade and so we didn’t pass much. In fact, the only pass we had in our playbook was a halfback pass where I would pitch the ball to the halfback and he would pass the ball down the field.

Things worked out great. I knew exactly where every hole was in the line and exactly which back I was supposed to hand the ball to on which play.

The following year teams began to pass. It was at this time when the coaches found they had a small problem with their starting quarterback. I couldn’t throw a ball to save my life. It wasn’t long after this realization that I was moved from standing behind the center as quarterback to kneeling in a four-point stance in front of the center on the defensive line–still wearing #12.

I spent the remainder of my football career on either the defensive or offensive side of the line. During all the time I spent “in the trenches” there were a few basic principles that were drilled into my head from every coach I ever had. One of those principles was to never ever stop moving your feet. Regardless of what level of football a person might ever reach one principle will remain true. The last person moving their feet will win out.

Nearly every day of practice is filled with some sort of drill to remind you to keep moving or “chopping” your feet. When I hit the dummies my coach would yell at me to move my feet. When I hit my teammates my coach would yell at me to move my feet. When I was running in place my coach would yell at me to move my feet. He wanted to make sure I knew the importance of moving my feet.

Moving your feet allows you to be prepared to “tackle” any problem you might on the field. Just like football, when we keep moving forward we stay prepared to take on the problems that face us everyday.

As I travel through my life and tell my story I often have people come up and ask me how I’ve made it through such difficulty in my life and if I have any tips for them. When they do I often think back to the words of my football coach, “Move Your Feet.”

If there is one secret or one key that I feel has helped me to succeed through some difficulty it is the idea of continually moving forward. When we “Move Our Feet” we leave little time to wallow in self-pity or become stagnant in self-doubt. Moving our feet keeps us going forward achieving new things and accomplishing new goals. I would ascribe the majority of the success I’ve had in my life to simply moving forward by “Moving My Feet.”

I have never found any benefit in my life in looking back and wishing things were different. It’s not that I don’t sometimes wish that my circumstance was different, it’s that I have never found any real benefit in spending time concentrating on that wish–for wishing won’t make it so.

I have however, found great benefit in moving forward and trying new things. Doing brings an incredible power that wishing never will. Doing keeps us moving while wishing keeps us still.

So when you’re hit with emotional difficulties, “Move Your Feet.” When you’re hit with physical difficulties, “Move Your Feet.” And if life is good and there’s little difficulty at all, “Move Your Feet.”

Jh-