Monday Motivation: Even When You Might Be Winning, Still Feels Like You Are Losing.

Good morning. Happy Monday. Happy Monday to you and yours. Luke Wentland here. Got a little bit of a sunburn. I was outside all weekend with, oh my gosh, we had everything from soccer to basketball, to you name it. But it's so good to be here. Been doing this for a long time now, coming every Monday morning. And it's one of my favorite things in the world to do is show up for the community, be a part of this. So thank you all for joining. live for Mondays. Most individuals have Sunday scaries or freaky Mondays.

I don't. I used to, but no longer. I can't wait to get going in the early days of Monday morning and get rocking and make an impact in this world. So For all that have joined, thank you so much. Again, my name is Luke Wentland. I've been at Cadre since day one. I love this place. I love this community. I love what this group stands for. I love what our contributors do on a daily, weekly basis. They're just amazing human beings. But I just have to take you all through a story this weekend that I think is going to blow your mind.

So this was my first ever experience, like my first true experience. Going to like a soccer weekend soccer where it was at It's this the National Soccer Center in Blaine, Minnesota So this is where like USA soccer takes place all the things. It's pretty cool. There's like 90 fields It's a it's pretty magical but so my son Cameron my son Cameron had a big soccer event this weekend and this is gonna this will blow your knock your socks off. Okay, so Long story short, they play in pool play, and then the pool play leaders go on to the quarterfinals and play from there, right?

So they played in the pool play, and they did well, and so they were able to move on to the quarterfinals, okay? So hopefully you're all staying with me. We competed here. We did well enough. We moved on to the quarters, okay? So here we are. We're in the quarterfinals. This is all a true story. The game is incredible. It's a seesaw battle. These two teams are really, really good. And it went to 4-4 and it was a draw, which means usually in soccer, the game's over. But since it was the quarterfinals, they have to extend and play in overtime.

So there's five minutes and five minutes. So it wasn't a golden goal, which means if you just score a goal, you win. In other words, in this case, you had five minutes and five minutes. So the other team came out. First 5 minutes, nobody scored. They called time. The next 5 minutes happened. There was like, I don't know, 2 minutes into the game. They score a goal. So it's 5-4. There's still 3 minutes of running time. There's this most epic moment where our team was down. There's like probably 30 seconds left, 40 seconds left.

I don't have the stopwatch on me. And one of our teammates hit this amazing shot. followed up and it just missed. It was so close. And the whole audience of all of us parents were yelling like, oh my gosh, amazing, amazing. But when it was over, we lost 5-4 and we all shook hands, did the thing. It was such a good game. Both of these teams played their hearts out. And so I got an e-mail about, I don't know, two hours later, 3 hours later, and the e-mail said, unfortunately, the rules weren't followed.

And so that both teams are going to have to come back tomorrow and play penalty kicks. And so what they were supposed to do is go immediately, there wasn't supposed to be any overtime, it was supposed to immediately supposed to go to penalty kicks, which means each team has five people that go out and just kick the ball and to see if they get a goal or not, kick the ball, get a goal. Five different people on one goalie and then the other team goes, etc. And then you just kind of see how many you get out of the five.

or until math works where one team just automatically wins over the other because they've out kicked them on goals. So I can't believe this. My wife and I are talking like, for us, it was like, okay, well, I guess the rules are the rules, but I can't imagine being another parent and then like having, you spend all day there, you go through this soccer experience, You have this high of winning, and then you have to go back the next day and play it out again. And then you have to go play those kicks.

And mind you, this is U10. This is how serious individuals take this. And so it's like we all go back up there, we do the penalty kicks again, and shocking enough, our team wins. I was like, I didn't even celebrate. because I felt so bad. Like I didn't celebrate for our kids where I'm just like, oh, this just feels really icky. This feels really icky that this team won and really like we're moving on because it's technicality. And then I just, I took a moment and I just kind of like repaused and like, you know, some of the other parents were coming over and they're like, and I'm just like, I'm just gonna be honest, like this doesn't feel good at all.

And so I told my son, I'm like, hey, I just want to let you know, like you got a gift here. You guys shouldn't even be here. So I hope you all can win this thing if you're going to kind of move on. But at the end of the day, like my whole story with this is sometimes even though it may feel like you're winning, you know, technically it could actually be like losing. So I'll give you an example. How many of you work your butt off all week? Just work your entire butt off all week. You go Monday through Friday, you grind, you're working around the clock, you feel like you're winning, and then you get to a weekend, and that's the moment that you should be doing the things you love and reading or playing outside or gardening or whatever it is, and then you're kind of like, recouping the whole entire weekend to recover back to a Monday, to go back to work again.

To me, that's like the same sort of feeling. Like, although you may be winning, like the reality is like you might be losing. You know, you're short with your husband or wife or your partner. You're not the best to your kids. And yes, I mean, I took that gravely 180 from my son's soccer to this, but I think you understand the concept that I'm trying to say is although some people, I had this amazing conversation with an intern and he's like, you know, what is success really? And you know, we chatted for about 45 minutes about this, about success.

And I'm like, some of the most successful people in the world on paper are just miserable, are absolutely miserable. And so although those kids didn't win, technically, what they really did is they won life. They learned how to fight through adversity. They had to go home. Like after that game, they went home and they probably felt like garbage and whatever. And I just have this feeling that those kids won more than our kids that moved on. that our kids that moved on won out of a technicality, that won off the next free kick, comparatively speaking, versus winning outright.

So at any rate, my message to you today is this. Is there some places in life that you think you're winning, but you might really be losing? Think about that. You all have a wonderful week. Thank you for your time. It's always great to be here. Love this place. Love you all. Thanks for spending time with me this morning. Have an amazing week, y'all. Peace, bye-bye.