I've been moving forward my entire life.

I've kick boxed on and off, for the past 10 years. Nothing gets your heart pumping or relieves stress like beating the hell out of a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling and I try to do this around 3 times a week.

Occasionally, depending on the trainer, they will throw pads on their hands and you get to do your best Rocky impression while following the instructions of what types of punches and combinations to throw. Of all the things involved in the workout, this part is probably my favorite. It's the closest thing I do to actually sparring with someone and nobody hits you back. I have a pretty face and I want to keep it that way.  I'm also too old for that crap.

In addition to trying to remember the punch combination or to breathe (it's odd, but sometimes you forget to breathe) I try to work on closing in on the trainer as I am setting up each punch. This past week, my trainer said something to me that stuck in my brain and was very symbolic of the current moment in my life. "Man, you're always moving forward".

I grew up watching Mexican boxers like Roberto Duran and Julio Cesar Chavez. My dad taught me how score boxing matches at a young age and the thing I remember most about those fights is how those fighters always seemed to move forward. It's a testament to their heritage and strength, because most Mexican boxers consistently move forward and towards their opponent. Even when they were getting tagged by punches, they kept moving forward. Kept looking for an opportunity. They kept looking to improve their situation.

Sly Stallone once delivered a speech to his son in the movie Rocky Balboa and it is something that everyone needs to hear at least once in life. I heard it years ago and then again as a set up to a question I was being asked on a podcast I did while doing marketing support for my book #Tryharder.

"The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward".

Truer worlds have never been spoken.

My whole life, I've been moving forward. I lost count of the times this world has brought me to my knees and physically, as well as metaphorically, bloodied my lip. If I kept count, then life wins and I'm not ready to accept defeat.  I live a blessed life, but I'd be lying if I said it was easy. We're all fighting something in life and know that I am right there with you.
So I keep moving forward. Personally. Professionally. I #Tryharder to learn from my mistakes and the sucker punches I endure. I move forward and keep breathing as I absorb the beating and sharpen my wits for the next round. You have to...because staying down isn't an option.

Living ain't easy, but it sure beats being dead.

Ring the bell.

So this week I came up with a new mission for myself. Connect with 52 new people in 52 weeks.

I've never had a problem meeting new people. I'm aware that I am charismatic and, from what I've been told, engaging. I have a friendly face and that often results in some sort of connection or magnetism. We all have a "super power" and mine happens to be the ability to connect with people quickly. It's important to be aware and embrace what you do well.

My goal in this year long, and maybe longer, experiment is to connect with people I would traditionally never meet. I want to expand my life Rolodex and branch out to other categories of people. Not people I meet through the traditional routes, but rather people I would never imagine meeting.

Social media makes it easy to just blindly pick out a profile and click "follow" or "friend", but I want to go beyond that. I want to make contact with these people, learn their story and share mine. Almost kind of creepy to some of you reading this right? I am a student and teller of stories and I always want to add more to my collection.

Here's what happens in life. You grow up, become an adult and fall into a rut of friends. You can easily put your relationships in buckets like "people I still talk to from school”, "people from work" or "people I met through stuff my kids do". For most of us, that's the breakdown of categories. Maybe two to three buckets of people. Although all these groups are great and I appreciate and love the people in my life; I would be selling myself short in the relationship department if I limited life to just these buckets.

We should all want to have tentacles and branch out. Think of the doors of knowledge, experiences and maybe even opportunity that could he opened with an additional bucket of "life friends" or people you have met through living and not through arrangements of where you grew up, where you work and what neighborhood you live in.

When I was in college I used to play the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game with my friend Robyn. We actually executed it on stage during a talent show and impressed crowds of people with our useless knowledge. You know the game right? People shout out an actor/actress and then we connect that name back to Kevin Bacon within six actors. I can even do it with myself.

Example:
I was in the movie "O" with Martin Sheen. Martin Sheen was in "The Departed" with Jack Nicholson and Jack Nicholson was in the movie "A Few Good Men" with Kevin Bacon.

I did it in 4.

The challenge is to be able to do it within six actors. Hence the name "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". Why Kevin? I honestly don't know.

Like the game, we see that the world increasingly gets smaller and we learn that most of us are separated by just a few people. Imagine tightening up those degrees of separation and realizing that you are only a handful of people away from becoming aquatinted with 1000s of potential connections. Maybe you are not a "people person", and that's fine, but we should #Tryharder to be aware of the importance of people and the value that comes with having more relationship buckets.