Here at EverydayQB, our goal is to bring you sports analogies and news that then applies to your everyday life. Sports are an amazing analogy for many of the obstacles and foundations about which families and businesses are built upon. Sports have a way of drawing us into human drama and bringing people together.

There are other blogs like this one out there. But the hopeful niche of the EverydayQB is that the experience of sports and life can merge into a applicable truth for your life. We are all facing obstacles and trying to form the best ‘game plan’ for our families, businesses and organizations. That is what we are striving for here at EverydayQB.
Sports have played an intrical part of my life, and always will. The lessons and truths that I learned and lived while playing football, basketball, baseball and tennis through high school, then college football with the Wolves at Western Oregon University, have shaped me into the person that I am today. Now that my ‘glory days’ are over, however, I find myself wondering and looking for ways in which those experiences now apply to the ‘real world’ of life. Building a career, growing a family and having a positive impact on a community are all deep desires of my heart now. So how do sports relate and in what way can I share those experiences with others?

This blog then, is the birth of that hope. That together, as a community connected through this blog, we can talk sports and bring that love of ‘the game’ into our lives and fuse the popular with the practical.

So keep an eye out for much more from EverydayQB, and leave us comments in the section below so that we can grow together and learn about the deepest desires of your heart.

Every sport has an off-season, every week has a day of rest, every life should spend time working at resting. Mark Twain is quoted saying,”I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting”. While Twain is being satirical, like he most often is, here at EverydayQB I want to make a suggestion and observation: Resting is hard work.

Resting takes effort, takes planning, takes commitment. Yet built into the very fiber of our being is the need to rest. The average human needs 7-8 hours of sleep a day to be healthy. That means that 1/3 of your day is spent sleeping, 1/3 of your life unconscious. We were wired to rest.

Often times in our lives we pack them so full with commitments, work and activities that we completely run ourselves into the ground and wind up exhausted and often sick. There have been times in my life that I have worked so hard and over-planned and under-delegated things that I get physically ill. And yet our American culture will praise the man or woman who spends 12 hours at the office a day because they are ‘living’ the American dream. The truth is that they are not ‘living’ at all, but are rather controlled by an insatiable need to always be working at working, and never working at resting.

It takes a commitment to set aside time to rest. It takes effort to lay aside to-do lists, social activities and the stresses of a normal everyday life. But those that have found the ability to do so will find themselves more refreshed and more productive in the long run than if they try and sprint through life and get tired because they haven’t worked at resting.

Every athlete takes time in every off-season to rest. Even in each week, teams have days of rest. Sundays and Mondays are opportunities in the flow of a college football athlete’s week where they are to rest there bodies and that rest is essential to their production the following week. We were made to rest.

Do you have moments in your week when you set aside time to rest? Maybe its one evening a week where you make no plans except to be at home with your family or by yourself. Perhaps its an entire day where you rest from work and things that cause stress in your life. Hopefully you take vacations or getaways by yourself or with your family from time to time. You will find that if you make the effort to rest, you will be more refreshed and better prepared for the task at hand when you return from that rest. The EverydayQB and his wife are heading to the beach this afternoon for a night and day together of rest and relaxation. Even though its in the middle of the week and there are tons of things to do, we are setting aside time to refresh and relax together so that when we return, we are energized and excited about all that life is bringing our way.

So the EverydayQB challenge today is to find a time this week to rest. To work at making time to relax and recharge your batteries. You will find yourself better prepared for the stress of everyday life and more effective and successful in your endeavors.

Its trade time in the NFL world and teams are shuffling players around, making deals, signing contracts and getting ready for the upcoming NFL draft. Some big names have gone different places and are on new teams. This time of year in the NFL gives players and teams an opportunity to re-evaluate where they are and where they want to go. Often times, teams or players will decide they want to be somewhere else and the search begins.

I’m personally excited that T.J. Houshmandzadeh is heading to my team, the Seattle Seahawks, and I’m a little upset about the possibility of Kurt Warner heading to the San Francisco 49ers. I think that Arizona is the best fit for Warner. I am excited for Matt Cassell to reaps the rewards of a great season with the Patriots and be heading to hopefully reenergize the Kansas City Chiefs, but wonder if New England could’ve gotten something better than a fourth round draft pick from the Chiefs for Cassell.

However you might feel, and you personally may not even care, February and March bring out the ‘business’ side of the NFL, with agents and contracts, negotiations and reassignments. Which brings me to my question for the day: How do you evaluate if you are on the right ‘team’ or not? Some of us don’t choose our teams exactly, but for the ones you do choose, business, career, hobbies, affiliations, etc. how do you decide if you are spending your time wisely and moving in the direction you want to move?

I’m curious what you think. Sure, I have my own ideas, and maybe I’ll stick them up here in the next few days. But I want to here from you guys out there first…How do you evaluate and determine if you are heading the direction you want to?

Click on the ‘Comment’ section on the bottom right of this post and leave your thoughts and we can diaologue together about this important concept.