Our Circle of Very Special People

A couple weeks ago we drove to the annual Stein Eriksen “Trollhaugen Tennis Tournament” in Montana. Before I went I worked my buns off. Okay … some of what I had to do might not fit your definition of work since a lot of it was using the tennis ball machine to work on and improve my backhand and forehand but  I also did cram in a bunch of office work. In that time I wrote up a complicated contract, worked on a refinance of my Kauai house and made an offer on 3 new Family Dollar stores. All that office work and the tennis workouts were crammed into two days which made it a couple of frenzied days but it also make the tennis tournament all the more rewarding–even though I didn’t win. It was a ‘break’ that was all the more prized because of that hard work, just as I’ve been saying the last couple weeks.

Going to this tournament is actually not so much about the tennis as it is about the wonderful friends and great conversations. I mention this event on page 134 of my book “How to Ignite Your Passion for Living“. There is even a picture of the Eriksen’s and us in the book. Most of the people we see at the tournament are friends we only see once a year but still those once a year friends have become very close and dear to us over the last 15 years that we’ve been going.

Stein Eriksen (the 1952 Olympic ski gold medalist and world cup champ) along with his wonderful wife Francoise and son Bjorn are an inspiration to me. They have such an incredible ability to surround themselves with many very dynamic, successful, kind and gentle friends. I just hope over the rest of my life I can come even close to doing the same thing that the Eriksen’s have done.

There are few loftier goals, in my opinion and experience, that a person could set for themselves than to have many great, successful and kind people as friends. Surrounding yourself with these types of people is inspiring, motivating and so very fulfilling. You can never have too many so I say let’s go out and work on increasing our circle of very special people.