March 13, 2025 • 16 mins
Chris Gray, Partner in the Energy & Renewables practice at ThinkingAhead Executive Search, shares his unlikely journey from music to search, the 5 mental categories to consider to stay in the right headspace, how to keep building momentum, and why tuning out reality is sometimes necessary.
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Episode Transcript
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Stephanie Maas (00:00):
Hi and welcome to today's Talent Trade podcast.
(00:03):
This is Stephanie Maas, partnerhere at ThinkingAhead Executive
Search. I am super excited tohave one of our favorite my
favorite partners here with us,Chris Gray. Chris is a true
Renaissance man, but today weare going to focus on one of his
(00:24):
specialties within the executivesearch practices here at
ThinkingAhead, specific withinthe energy practice. Chris,
thank you so much for joining us.
Chris Gray (00:36):
Thank you, Stephanie. It's really an honor
to be doing this with you. Andas you know, I'm a huge fan of
yours and in the podcast, andthat's meaningful to me to be
doing this here with you. And sothank you for having me a little
bit about me and my background.So I did not start out in sales
or recruiting. I started out inmusic. I started playing music
in sixth grade, and my firstinstrument was the saxophone,
(00:59):
and I did that for a couple ofyears, but I was always really,
really drawn to the drums, andmy parents did not really have
faith in me to stick withsomething. I was the typical
kid, you know, I had started andquit multiple things, like Cub
Scouts. I took karate for aboutthree years, where I got the
crap kicked out of me Tuesdaysand Thursdays for three years of
(01:19):
my life. Taught me a lot, but itwasn't that pleasant, so I
dropped out of that, and here Iam telling my parents, hey, you
know, I don't want to play thedrums. And they were like, yeah,
right, sure. Okay, whatever,buddy. But I just persisted. You
know when, when a kid wantssomething and they stick with
it? You know, parents are allover the place and unfocused,
(01:40):
but children, when they wantsomething, they're very focused,
so they can sort of wear youdown. And that's what I did.
Kept bringing it up to myparents over and over again,
and, you know, finally theyagreed to get me a set, but not
before I basically practiced airdrums in my room to MTV for a
year, and then they finally gotme the set. And the first set
they got me was really cheap,and I beat it into the ground in
(02:03):
like six months. But that wasthe beginnings of a probably
close to 30 years in the musicbusiness. Got two degrees in
music, got a master's degreefrom the Eastman School of
Music, lived and taught musicand played music and helped to
run a music business in New YorkCity for about 12 years. And you
know, been talking with myfamily about New York. It's a
very tough place to live, veryexpensive. Now, there's really
(02:26):
two New Yorks. There's the NewYork that you go to when you're
a tourist, and then there's theNew York that you are in when
you have to live and pay bills.And those are two different New
Yorks. Then it just becameapparent that it was at the
time, it was time for a change.So we sort of started plotting
to get back to Tennessee, and wegot back, and I'm kind of trying
(02:47):
to figure out, like, what am Igoing to do? You know, I had
done some HR functions withinthe company I was in New York.
But of course, there was nothingdown here, like what I was doing
up there, which was traveling toschools all over New York City,
Philadelphia. So I just kind ofstarted applying to jobs online,
kind of what we tell people notto do. I did everything through
(03:08):
the internet. Got no results,got discouraged, and I started
going to a group in town calledthe National Career Transition
group. And I met a guy there,and I was talking to him about
my background and things that Ihad done, and he said, you know,
maybe you should go intorecruiting, you know, like third
party recruiting. And he goes,You know, I'm I'm not really
(03:28):
hiring right now, but I knowsomebody that it might be good
for you to meet, and it justhappened to be thinking ahead,
and as I move forward now, afterbeing here for over 11 years,
you know, this has just been avery good place to me that I did
not expect. And that's kind ofhow I got from music business in
New York City to head hunting inNashville. I joined the energy
(03:49):
team because that was theopening that we had. I'd
actually interviewed fornonprofit a year before that. So
what we do here in the energypractices, we work with
substation and transmissionengineers, and these are the
people that design the stuff.These are the people that build
it, highly paid people with PElicenses and bachelor's and
master's degrees. And we've alsobranched out into renewables
(04:11):
engineers and also environmentalengineers. It's been really,
really fun for me, you know,working with all the people that
we work with, and clients andcandidates, but also our
teammates. There's really noplace like this. I've learned a
lot. So wanted to talk todayabout head game, you know, and
Stephanie. And when you'reteaching and training, you break
down what we do into fourcategories, recruiting, biz dev,
(04:34):
planning and the head game. AndI've had some definite doozies
and tests with the head gameover the course of my life. I
broke down the head game intofive categories that I think can
apply to almost anything oranyone, no matter what you're
dealing with, whether it's apersonal thing, whether it's a
professional thing. Something atwork. And so I'm just going to
(04:54):
talk about each one of those,and I'll try to include a little
example of how that applied tome. So the first thing in the
head game. So let's just assumethat you're in a you're in a
you're in a pickle, you know,you're in a situation, you're
you're losing the game, you'reyou're back sliding in some way
in your life, the situation thatyou're in, it's not going the
(05:15):
way that you thought it would goand, you know, we go through
different stages of how we dealwith that emotionally. You know,
the five stages of grief youtalk about, I guess the main
three, you know, denial, angerand acceptance. That can
definitely happen when you'rewhen you're going through
something difficult, you sort ofdeny that it's happening, or
maybe you you don't see thatit's happening, and then you get
(05:38):
you get mad, you know, andyou're just angry at the
situation or yourself, you know,a lot of people go into self
blame at that point, and then atsome point, you accept that,
okay, this is real. I'm dealingwith this. You decided that this
is real, and you're looking atthis, and she said, Okay, I
gotta do something here. So Ithink the first thing I would
say is, get going. Get going.Get started. Move. One example
(06:01):
that comes to mind for me is,you know, it's teaching music.
And I was working for a companythat provided instrumental
lessons and the instruments toCatholic schools all over New
York City. So it's our business.Had well over 12,000 kids that
were customers of ours. And oneof the things we did was every
year we would get the best kidsfrom the school, from each
(06:21):
school, and we'd get themtogether, and it was called
Honor Band. And in New York Cityalone, we had over 300 kids in
the band. When you think about300 kids playing music at the
same time, these are six to 12graders. They are at various
levels. Some kids aresuperstars. Some kids probably
got invited so their feelingswouldn't get hurt. They got
various stages of intonation,how to put the instrument
(06:44):
together, their quality of theirsound, they're just overall
musicianship. And all of asudden, you're standing in front
of these 300 kids, and they youstart the first song, and I'll
never forget like and it was aneasy song, and I could not tell
what was happening. It was sucha monstrosity of sound. It was
such a wall of chaos. And allthese kids were blaring into
(07:04):
their instruments at the sametime, with no regard to playing
with each other, listening tothe beat, watching my conducting
your knee. That was just totalchaos. And I just remember, and
I had my superiors were watchingme. You know, it's like I was
almost like being observed. Ikind of felt like I was on
trial. I mean, it was superintense. You know, you stop the
(07:24):
band because it's terrible. Itsounds awful, and you stop them,
and then the kids are like, allquiet. They're looking at you,
300 kids, 600 eyes, and they'relike, what's he gonna say? You
know, what's he gonna tell us todo? Is he can tell us it was
good. And I froze. I didn't knowwhat to say. I just stood there.
And the more I didn't speak, themore pressure I felt, and I felt
(07:46):
my colleagues staring at me, andit was not a great moment, but
eventually I just said, You knowwhat flutes are at a tune or
something's off, so let's justrun the flutes. And then I said,
let's just run the clarinets,and let's just run the trumpets
and just the act of startingsomewhere, I started to build
momentum off my own action. Andthat's one of the things I would
(08:06):
say, is what you need to do ifyou're stuck is, get going. Get
moving. Do something. Startsmall. Start anywhere but start.
Don't sit in the unproductiveenergy of inertia, but get
going. Next thing, I would say,is one day at a time. So when
you're dealing with a task, oryou're dealing with a mountain
that you have to climb, it'sreally, really easy to look at
(08:26):
the totality of your task andget overwhelmed. And that's when
negative self talk can creep in.You know, wow, look at this huge
thing that I have to do. I'm notgoing to be able to do this. I
can't do this. It's not going tohappen. It's too big. The odds
are against me. Logically, it'scrazy to think I can do this.
And so we start convincingourselves that we're not going
(08:47):
to be able to do what we need todo to fix the situation. So just
one day at a time, just kind offocuses on, okay, I'm here, I'm
present, I'm in the moment, andI'm gonna decide and figure out
what I can get done right now.And these are closely related,
you know, so get going is aboutthe right now, and so is one day
at a time. It's about beingpresent in the moment, not
(09:08):
overthinking the next week, thenext week, or even, really,
tomorrow. And you know, my faithalso tells me that I'm not
supposed to worry abouttomorrow. And that is a skill,
that is a skill that will notcome naturally. We are all
inclined to look forward andstress out. So the skill is, I'm
not going to do that. I'm goingto stay here in the moment. But
one of the things I do is I makea list of everything that's
(09:31):
freaking me out. So it could bea Word doc. You scribble it on a
piece of paper. It doesn'treally matter, but I make a list
of the things that are swimmingin my head that are negative,
and I get really specific. Solike, let's just say it was a
financial thing. Like, right?Let's say I was kind of worried
about money. And I willliterally put not just I'm
worried about money, but I'm.Worried about paying XYZ bill,
(09:54):
and then I just go through and Imake the list, and one of the
things I notice when I do thatis that the list is never as bad
as I thought. You know, when I'mlooking at it on paper, it's
never as bad as what I hadswimming in my head. Is it just
gets it out of me, and I'm notsitting with that negativity. So
one day at a time, the next oneis, remember your most
(10:14):
successful times, or rememberyour wins. And when I think
about that, I think about mytime in New York. I'd been there
for about a year, and I was ateacher, so I was making like,
32k in New York City in theyear, 2000 in a single income
situation. So of course, I'mlooking at the summer, and
teachers don't get paid in thesummer. And I'm like, What am I
going to do? So I startedlooking through the New York
(10:37):
Daily News, like the hard copy,and I saw that there was a job
posting for a couple 100 bucks aweek part time. I thought, well,
if I can start now, this was inJanuary of 2001 I thought, if I
can start now, I can build upenough cash to get through the
summer. So I found out it was apaper route for the New York
Times, and I was waking up attwo in the morning in Queens,
(10:58):
and I was driving to Hell'sKitchen to a warehouse. I was
putting together papers like 225editions in the New York Times,
loading them in my car, drivingacross 23rd Street to the east
side to four buildings calledwaterside Plaza. Each had 37
floors. You need to take theelevator all the way up to way
up to the top stall the elevatorwith your push cart, run out and
(11:18):
toss all the newspapers at thedoorsteps of the people so that
when they came out of theirapartment, the newspaper would
be there and pretty on theirdoormat. And that was four hours
of work. And then I went and didmy full time teaching job, and I
was working overtime with that.So I was basically working from
2am to 8pm I'd go home, eat asandwich, go to sleep, wake up,
(11:39):
do it all over again. I did thatfor a year, and I learned more
about myself in that year than Iever have in my life, the things
that I was capable of doing, theability to push myself, the
ability to believe in myself,and then again, tied to these
other two right, one day at atime, and get going. So I was
able to do that. And I rememberthat a lot when I'm in a pickle,
(12:00):
you know? I remember those timesof of what that was like, and
sometimes what you feel in themoment is the worst times can
actually be the best times whenyou look back and you realize
how you grew as a person, howyou strengthened as a person,
and and just the lessons thatyou learned and the memories
that you made. So the fourth oneI would say, is visualize
(12:20):
winning. So rememberingsuccesses, that's about looking
back at winning. Visualizingwinning is about looking forward
and saying to yourself, Okay,what's going to happen when I
win, not if I win, when I win,what's going to happen? What's
that going to look like? And yougo through that, and you
visualize, okay, if I hit thisgoal, or if I get out of this
situation, or if, obviously, inwhat we do, you know, if I make
(12:43):
that placement, or if I get thatbilling, or if I win this new
client, if I win the search, andyou you start to let your
emotions fill in that picture inyour mind. You start to
visualize what that looks like,and everybody will react to that
differently. You know, somepeople, that'll be great fuel
for them to move forward.Somebody like me, I struggle
with it a little bit. I'm notI'm not as good as visualizing
(13:06):
what the future is going to beand how good it's going to feel.
I do think that it's good to atleast like. Think forward into
the future. Think about thosepositive pictures and what
that's going to look like whenyou overcome, when you pull
yourself out of this and whenyou win. So far, we have get
going one day at a time.Remember your success is in
visualize winning. And so thatbrings me to the last one, which
(13:29):
is tune out the negative as muchas you can, even if it's real.
So an example might be thatyou're in a situation and the
odds are sort of long thatyou're going to win, you know,
almost like an athletic eventbetween a really good school and
a sort of a not really goodschool, you know, the odds with
that not so good school winningare slim, you know. And
sometimes you might be in asituation where you have a slim
(13:52):
chance, or a less than 5050,chance. And sometimes people
around you, even if they loveyou and they care about you,
they'll point this out, youknow, they'll, they'll try to be
realist with you here, you know,we call it being a billionaire,
and it's kind of like, hey, youknow what? You got this thing
going on. It's kind of a longshot. But hey, you know, do your
(14:13):
best. You know, give it a go.We're pulling for you, you know,
we're praying for you, and allthat kind of stuff. And it's
like, sometimes you have to justtune all of that out, because if
you focus on it, even if it'sreal, that's the key. It's not,
I'm not just talking aboutpeople being negative. We all
know that that's probably notgood, you know, people being
(14:33):
negative, but I'm talking aboutpeople being realist with you,
and it's negative. You gottatune that out, because it will
pull you back, and you'll startto give that life. You'll start
to give those long odds life,and you have to tune it out and
say, You know what? I'm notgiving that anything. I'm not
giving it any of my energy. I'mnot giving it any of my time.
(14:53):
I'm focusing on all these otherthings that are positive, and
I'm going to believe in myselfeven when it doesn't make sense.
Six if I don't believe inmyself, why should anyone else
believe in me? So those are justsome things that I have
developed over the years, andI'm definitely not saying that
I'm expert or sensei on thatstuff, but I'll just hit them
real quick again. So it's getgoing one day at a time.
(15:16):
Remember success is visualizewinning and tune out the
negative, even if it's real.
Stephanie Maas (15:21):
Well, I had planned on my brain not being
able to keep pace, and I wasliterally hanging on every word,
Chris, thank you so much. Thatis such good counsel. Thank you
for the vulnerability andsharing some of who you are on
and off the field with us. Andyou know the reality of it is we
(15:41):
only learn these things when wehave to. The fact that you know
them means at some point you'vehad to learn them.
Chris Gray (15:49):
Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Stephanie.
Hi and welcome to today's Talent Trade podcast.
(00:03):
This is Stephanie Maas, partnerhere at ThinkingAhead Executive
Search. I am super excited tohave one of our favorite my
favorite partners here with us,Chris Gray. Chris is a true
Renaissance man, but today weare going to focus on one of his
(00:24):
specialties within the executivesearch practices here at
ThinkingAhead, specific withinthe energy practice. Chris,
thank you so much for joining us.
Chris Gray (00:36):
Thank you, Stephanie. It's really an honor
to be doing this with you. Andas you know, I'm a huge fan of
yours and in the podcast, andthat's meaningful to me to be
doing this here with you. And sothank you for having me a little
bit about me and my background.So I did not start out in sales
or recruiting. I started out inmusic. I started playing music
in sixth grade, and my firstinstrument was the saxophone,
(00:59):
and I did that for a couple ofyears, but I was always really,
really drawn to the drums, andmy parents did not really have
faith in me to stick withsomething. I was the typical
kid, you know, I had started andquit multiple things, like Cub
Scouts. I took karate for aboutthree years, where I got the
crap kicked out of me Tuesdaysand Thursdays for three years of
(01:19):
my life. Taught me a lot, but itwasn't that pleasant, so I
dropped out of that, and here Iam telling my parents, hey, you
know, I don't want to play thedrums. And they were like, yeah,
right, sure. Okay, whatever,buddy. But I just persisted. You
know when, when a kid wantssomething and they stick with
it? You know, parents are allover the place and unfocused,
(01:40):
but children, when they wantsomething, they're very focused,
so they can sort of wear youdown. And that's what I did.
Kept bringing it up to myparents over and over again,
and, you know, finally theyagreed to get me a set, but not
before I basically practiced airdrums in my room to MTV for a
year, and then they finally gotme the set. And the first set
they got me was really cheap,and I beat it into the ground in
(02:03):
like six months. But that wasthe beginnings of a probably
close to 30 years in the musicbusiness. Got two degrees in
music, got a master's degreefrom the Eastman School of
Music, lived and taught musicand played music and helped to
run a music business in New YorkCity for about 12 years. And you
know, been talking with myfamily about New York. It's a
very tough place to live, veryexpensive. Now, there's really
(02:26):
two New Yorks. There's the NewYork that you go to when you're
a tourist, and then there's theNew York that you are in when
you have to live and pay bills.And those are two different New
Yorks. Then it just becameapparent that it was at the
time, it was time for a change.So we sort of started plotting
to get back to Tennessee, and wegot back, and I'm kind of trying
(02:47):
to figure out, like, what am Igoing to do? You know, I had
done some HR functions withinthe company I was in New York.
But of course, there was nothingdown here, like what I was doing
up there, which was traveling toschools all over New York City,
Philadelphia. So I just kind ofstarted applying to jobs online,
kind of what we tell people notto do. I did everything through
(03:08):
the internet. Got no results,got discouraged, and I started
going to a group in town calledthe National Career Transition
group. And I met a guy there,and I was talking to him about
my background and things that Ihad done, and he said, you know,
maybe you should go intorecruiting, you know, like third
party recruiting. And he goes,You know, I'm I'm not really
(03:28):
hiring right now, but I knowsomebody that it might be good
for you to meet, and it justhappened to be thinking ahead,
and as I move forward now, afterbeing here for over 11 years,
you know, this has just been avery good place to me that I did
not expect. And that's kind ofhow I got from music business in
New York City to head hunting inNashville. I joined the energy
(03:49):
team because that was theopening that we had. I'd
actually interviewed fornonprofit a year before that. So
what we do here in the energypractices, we work with
substation and transmissionengineers, and these are the
people that design the stuff.These are the people that build
it, highly paid people with PElicenses and bachelor's and
master's degrees. And we've alsobranched out into renewables
(04:11):
engineers and also environmentalengineers. It's been really,
really fun for me, you know,working with all the people that
we work with, and clients andcandidates, but also our
teammates. There's really noplace like this. I've learned a
lot. So wanted to talk todayabout head game, you know, and
Stephanie. And when you'reteaching and training, you break
down what we do into fourcategories, recruiting, biz dev,
(04:34):
planning and the head game. AndI've had some definite doozies
and tests with the head gameover the course of my life. I
broke down the head game intofive categories that I think can
apply to almost anything oranyone, no matter what you're
dealing with, whether it's apersonal thing, whether it's a
professional thing. Something atwork. And so I'm just going to
(04:54):
talk about each one of those,and I'll try to include a little
example of how that applied tome. So the first thing in the
head game. So let's just assumethat you're in a you're in a
you're in a pickle, you know,you're in a situation, you're
you're losing the game, you'reyou're back sliding in some way
in your life, the situation thatyou're in, it's not going the
(05:15):
way that you thought it would goand, you know, we go through
different stages of how we dealwith that emotionally. You know,
the five stages of grief youtalk about, I guess the main
three, you know, denial, angerand acceptance. That can
definitely happen when you'rewhen you're going through
something difficult, you sort ofdeny that it's happening, or
maybe you you don't see thatit's happening, and then you get
(05:38):
you get mad, you know, andyou're just angry at the
situation or yourself, you know,a lot of people go into self
blame at that point, and then atsome point, you accept that,
okay, this is real. I'm dealingwith this. You decided that this
is real, and you're looking atthis, and she said, Okay, I
gotta do something here. So Ithink the first thing I would
say is, get going. Get going.Get started. Move. One example
(06:01):
that comes to mind for me is,you know, it's teaching music.
And I was working for a companythat provided instrumental
lessons and the instruments toCatholic schools all over New
York City. So it's our business.Had well over 12,000 kids that
were customers of ours. And oneof the things we did was every
year we would get the best kidsfrom the school, from each
(06:21):
school, and we'd get themtogether, and it was called
Honor Band. And in New York Cityalone, we had over 300 kids in
the band. When you think about300 kids playing music at the
same time, these are six to 12graders. They are at various
levels. Some kids aresuperstars. Some kids probably
got invited so their feelingswouldn't get hurt. They got
various stages of intonation,how to put the instrument
(06:44):
together, their quality of theirsound, they're just overall
musicianship. And all of asudden, you're standing in front
of these 300 kids, and they youstart the first song, and I'll
never forget like and it was aneasy song, and I could not tell
what was happening. It was sucha monstrosity of sound. It was
such a wall of chaos. And allthese kids were blaring into
(07:04):
their instruments at the sametime, with no regard to playing
with each other, listening tothe beat, watching my conducting
your knee. That was just totalchaos. And I just remember, and
I had my superiors were watchingme. You know, it's like I was
almost like being observed. Ikind of felt like I was on
trial. I mean, it was superintense. You know, you stop the
(07:24):
band because it's terrible. Itsounds awful, and you stop them,
and then the kids are like, allquiet. They're looking at you,
300 kids, 600 eyes, and they'relike, what's he gonna say? You
know, what's he gonna tell us todo? Is he can tell us it was
good. And I froze. I didn't knowwhat to say. I just stood there.
And the more I didn't speak, themore pressure I felt, and I felt
(07:46):
my colleagues staring at me, andit was not a great moment, but
eventually I just said, You knowwhat flutes are at a tune or
something's off, so let's justrun the flutes. And then I said,
let's just run the clarinets,and let's just run the trumpets
and just the act of startingsomewhere, I started to build
momentum off my own action. Andthat's one of the things I would
(08:06):
say, is what you need to do ifyou're stuck is, get going. Get
moving. Do something. Startsmall. Start anywhere but start.
Don't sit in the unproductiveenergy of inertia, but get
going. Next thing, I would say,is one day at a time. So when
you're dealing with a task, oryou're dealing with a mountain
that you have to climb, it'sreally, really easy to look at
(08:26):
the totality of your task andget overwhelmed. And that's when
negative self talk can creep in.You know, wow, look at this huge
thing that I have to do. I'm notgoing to be able to do this. I
can't do this. It's not going tohappen. It's too big. The odds
are against me. Logically, it'scrazy to think I can do this.
And so we start convincingourselves that we're not going
(08:47):
to be able to do what we need todo to fix the situation. So just
one day at a time, just kind offocuses on, okay, I'm here, I'm
present, I'm in the moment, andI'm gonna decide and figure out
what I can get done right now.And these are closely related,
you know, so get going is aboutthe right now, and so is one day
at a time. It's about beingpresent in the moment, not
(09:08):
overthinking the next week, thenext week, or even, really,
tomorrow. And you know, my faithalso tells me that I'm not
supposed to worry abouttomorrow. And that is a skill,
that is a skill that will notcome naturally. We are all
inclined to look forward andstress out. So the skill is, I'm
not going to do that. I'm goingto stay here in the moment. But
one of the things I do is I makea list of everything that's
(09:31):
freaking me out. So it could bea Word doc. You scribble it on a
piece of paper. It doesn'treally matter, but I make a list
of the things that are swimmingin my head that are negative,
and I get really specific. Solike, let's just say it was a
financial thing. Like, right?Let's say I was kind of worried
about money. And I willliterally put not just I'm
worried about money, but I'm.Worried about paying XYZ bill,
(09:54):
and then I just go through and Imake the list, and one of the
things I notice when I do thatis that the list is never as bad
as I thought. You know, when I'mlooking at it on paper, it's
never as bad as what I hadswimming in my head. Is it just
gets it out of me, and I'm notsitting with that negativity. So
one day at a time, the next oneis, remember your most
(10:14):
successful times, or rememberyour wins. And when I think
about that, I think about mytime in New York. I'd been there
for about a year, and I was ateacher, so I was making like,
32k in New York City in theyear, 2000 in a single income
situation. So of course, I'mlooking at the summer, and
teachers don't get paid in thesummer. And I'm like, What am I
going to do? So I startedlooking through the New York
(10:37):
Daily News, like the hard copy,and I saw that there was a job
posting for a couple 100 bucks aweek part time. I thought, well,
if I can start now, this was inJanuary of 2001 I thought, if I
can start now, I can build upenough cash to get through the
summer. So I found out it was apaper route for the New York
Times, and I was waking up attwo in the morning in Queens,
(10:58):
and I was driving to Hell'sKitchen to a warehouse. I was
putting together papers like 225editions in the New York Times,
loading them in my car, drivingacross 23rd Street to the east
side to four buildings calledwaterside Plaza. Each had 37
floors. You need to take theelevator all the way up to way
up to the top stall the elevatorwith your push cart, run out and
(11:18):
toss all the newspapers at thedoorsteps of the people so that
when they came out of theirapartment, the newspaper would
be there and pretty on theirdoormat. And that was four hours
of work. And then I went and didmy full time teaching job, and I
was working overtime with that.So I was basically working from
2am to 8pm I'd go home, eat asandwich, go to sleep, wake up,
(11:39):
do it all over again. I did thatfor a year, and I learned more
about myself in that year than Iever have in my life, the things
that I was capable of doing, theability to push myself, the
ability to believe in myself,and then again, tied to these
other two right, one day at atime, and get going. So I was
able to do that. And I rememberthat a lot when I'm in a pickle,
(12:00):
you know? I remember those timesof of what that was like, and
sometimes what you feel in themoment is the worst times can
actually be the best times whenyou look back and you realize
how you grew as a person, howyou strengthened as a person,
and and just the lessons thatyou learned and the memories
that you made. So the fourth oneI would say, is visualize
(12:20):
winning. So rememberingsuccesses, that's about looking
back at winning. Visualizingwinning is about looking forward
and saying to yourself, Okay,what's going to happen when I
win, not if I win, when I win,what's going to happen? What's
that going to look like? And yougo through that, and you
visualize, okay, if I hit thisgoal, or if I get out of this
situation, or if, obviously, inwhat we do, you know, if I make
(12:43):
that placement, or if I get thatbilling, or if I win this new
client, if I win the search, andyou you start to let your
emotions fill in that picture inyour mind. You start to
visualize what that looks like,and everybody will react to that
differently. You know, somepeople, that'll be great fuel
for them to move forward.Somebody like me, I struggle
with it a little bit. I'm notI'm not as good as visualizing
(13:06):
what the future is going to beand how good it's going to feel.
I do think that it's good to atleast like. Think forward into
the future. Think about thosepositive pictures and what
that's going to look like whenyou overcome, when you pull
yourself out of this and whenyou win. So far, we have get
going one day at a time.Remember your success is in
visualize winning. And so thatbrings me to the last one, which
(13:29):
is tune out the negative as muchas you can, even if it's real.
So an example might be thatyou're in a situation and the
odds are sort of long thatyou're going to win, you know,
almost like an athletic eventbetween a really good school and
a sort of a not really goodschool, you know, the odds with
that not so good school winningare slim, you know. And
sometimes you might be in asituation where you have a slim
(13:52):
chance, or a less than 5050,chance. And sometimes people
around you, even if they loveyou and they care about you,
they'll point this out, youknow, they'll, they'll try to be
realist with you here, you know,we call it being a billionaire,
and it's kind of like, hey, youknow what? You got this thing
going on. It's kind of a longshot. But hey, you know, do your
(14:13):
best. You know, give it a go.We're pulling for you, you know,
we're praying for you, and allthat kind of stuff. And it's
like, sometimes you have to justtune all of that out, because if
you focus on it, even if it'sreal, that's the key. It's not,
I'm not just talking aboutpeople being negative. We all
know that that's probably notgood, you know, people being
(14:33):
negative, but I'm talking aboutpeople being realist with you,
and it's negative. You gottatune that out, because it will
pull you back, and you'll startto give that life. You'll start
to give those long odds life,and you have to tune it out and
say, You know what? I'm notgiving that anything. I'm not
giving it any of my energy. I'mnot giving it any of my time.
(14:53):
I'm focusing on all these otherthings that are positive, and
I'm going to believe in myselfeven when it doesn't make sense.
Six if I don't believe inmyself, why should anyone else
believe in me? So those are justsome things that I have
developed over the years, andI'm definitely not saying that
I'm expert or sensei on thatstuff, but I'll just hit them
real quick again. So it's getgoing one day at a time.
(15:16):
Remember success is visualizewinning and tune out the
negative, even if it's real.
Stephanie Maas (15:21):
Well, I had planned on my brain not being
able to keep pace, and I wasliterally hanging on every word,
Chris, thank you so much. Thatis such good counsel. Thank you
for the vulnerability andsharing some of who you are on
and off the field with us. Andyou know the reality of it is we
(15:41):
only learn these things when wehave to. The fact that you know
them means at some point you'vehad to learn them.
Chris Gray (15:49):
Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Stephanie.
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