What's Your Dash?

Go to any cemetery and look at a headstone. You will see a birth year. You will see a death year. And between those two dates, there is a little dash. That dash is the whole point.

Nobody remembers the birth year. Nobody remembers the death year. What people remember is what happened in the dash. That is where you lived. That is where you loved people, worked hard, made mistakes, and hopefully made things right.

I spent a lot of years chasing the wrong things in my dash. I served in the Army, then moved into the corporate world. I worked at Cisco, SAIC, Aviat, and Ivanti. I climbed the ladder. I got the titles. I told myself that was the goal.

But somewhere along the way, I lost sight of what my dash was actually for. I made choices I am not proud of. I hurt people I loved. I found out the hard way that success on paper does not mean much if your dash is empty where it counts.

That failure did not end my story. It became the turning point. I had to face what I had done, ask for forgiveness, and rebuild. That process taught me more about leadership than any promotion ever did. Pain has a way of teaching you what really matters, if you let it.

These days, my wife April and I run Jenisys Group out of Nairobi, Kenya. We train leaders and business owners across the United States and Africa. I do not do it for another title. I do it because I know what it costs to waste your dash, and I want to help other people spend theirs well.

Here is the question I want you to sit with today. What are you doing with your dash right now? Not your five-year plan. Not your resume. Today. Nobody puts "answered every email" on a headstone. They remember how you treated people and what you stood for.

You do not get your dash back once it is spent. Spend it on purpose. If you want to learn more about leadership training and my story, visit herbadkins.com.