Changing the Game Project
April 23, 2014
Hosted by Mickey Ellison
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Guest Information
Episode Description
As someone that was fortunate enough to play college baseball in the SEC, Southeastern Conference, I’m grateful to this day that I was the opportunity to play the game that I love at Vanderbilt University. Now, as a parent of two young boys I want to provide that same opportunity to my sons if playing baseball in college is something that they want to do. As a child, I learned to play baseball from my dad and great coaches, but I learned to love the game playing cup-ball behind the concession stand, wiffle ball in the backyard or swimming pool, and epic games of pickle using our shirts as the bases. Thirty years ago the team had two bats and we shared helmets. The cost to play was about $20 a year per kid. Today, every kid has a $300 bat, their own helmet, and if you want your kid to “be the best” you are made to believe that your kid must specialize at an early age and join an expensive “academy” team or he/she will be left behind. It isn’t true! John O’Sullivan from www.changingthegameproject.com joins Mickey this week to discuss taking our kids games back. They are kids and sports are supposed to be fun!
Mickey Ellison Show
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Children are more wise than adults because they question everything, and as adults, we are often annoyed by those questions, especially the question “Why?” We adults become “set in our ways”, when in reality answering the question “why” may cause us to question what we believe. We would rather give the answer, “it just is,” because we are intellectually lazy and we really don’t know why. The question “why” is an important question because it requires critical thinking to answer. “Why” can back up our beliefs or “why” can break them down and cause us to realize that many of our thoughts are really not our own, rather they are thoughts of others that we have accepted as our own.
Here are some “why” questions for you to consider. Why do some churches ban dancing? David danced! Is a little inflation a good thing? Is our tax code over 70,000 pages long? Are there racists? No one is born that way! Never stop asking why! You never know what you might discover.
Mickey Ellison
I was born in a small town in South Carolina with the dream of playing professional baseball. That dream died in 1993 when my career at Vanderbilt ended. I chased wealth through network marketing only to be $200k in debt after two years. In 1999 I became a financial planner, and a Certified Financial Planner in 2006. While in network marketing and financial planning I heard so many times that perception is reality and “Fake it till you make it,” and those clichés are lies! I had that gut feeling that something was wrong and never spoke up or acted, and in 2009, I found myself scared with one prayer, and that was to know the truth. In my search, I had to look in the mirror, and realized many of the gut feelings that I had about the industry were correct. My goal is to educate, and most of that education is simply common sense. For what it’s worth, I believe my experiences in life can help people, from failing in baseball, and reflecting on the excuses. From pretending to be someone I’m not to get rich in network marketing. From being scared to death because of debt. Pretending to be someone I wasn’t in the financial industry, and now helping people understand what they have in investments and what they are paying. Much of what society tries to sell us is a lie, and if we think for ourselves, search inside, question everything, we can find truth. Find the child inside of us that asks the question “Why?”
