Were You Born To Follow?

So for many of you who know me well out there you know there are only a few things I TRULY love!  I love my amazing partner in life Matty, my crazy Greek family, my friends, and BON JOVI!  Yep…you heard me….The best band of all time in my opinion, Bon Jovi! And so I begin this blog post with the wise words Bon Jovi’s latest single…Were you born to follow?

Let me start from the beginning…I fell in love with Mr. Jon Bon Jovi when I was 11 years old…it was October of 1986 to be exact.  Growing up we struggled financially and so for me to get tickets the Slippery When Wet Tour – it was not going to happen….at least I didn’t think so.  My father had owned a Carvel franchise at the time.  I wanted to stay home from school and dial that 1980s rotary phone until I could get through to TicketMaster 3 hours later and buy some tickets.  I had no money and my father was NOT going to buy them for me…I mean after all I was an 11 year old girl and wanted to go to a rock concert..and who was I going to go with? I wasn’t allowed to go alone with a friend….so anyways…I wasn’t allowed to stay home to try and call in for the tickets…but my father challenged me and said ”if you work at the Carvel and save your money from now (January 9th) until April 3rd (the night of the show) I will take you down there and we will buy scalp tickets.

Let me explain what this really meant……if I save my whopping $2/day for the next 3 months and come up with enough money to buy tickets for me and MY FATHER, THEN we get to go to the show.

So I don’t know about you but I didn’t know very many 11 year olds up for that kind of a challenge.  As a matter of fact, my friends laughed at me and said “good luck” (in a very sarcastic manner of course.)  Well long story short even at that age I “wasn’t born to follow” and I busted my butt picking up as many shifts as I could.  I saved $125 dollars.  The night of the concert my father came home from work and I stood there all ready to go with the money in my hand and said “Let’s Go!”  With a shocked look on his face, he took his keys and said ok.  To this day that concert is my favorite memories of my life.  Here we are 24 years later and I still get a little choked up when I think about that little girl.

I have been a fan ever since.  Jon came from a blue collar town and life just as I did and  look at him today.  There really isn’t much he hasn’t accomplished in his almost 48 years of life.  Rock Star for 21/2 decades, family man (married to his high school sweetheart for over 20 years with 4 kids),  actor (and not too shabby if I do say so myself ), entrepreneur, philanthropist, political supporter just to name a “few.”  He has such ethics and drive to be the BEST and never give up.  I look back and think that maybe that is why I continued to love him over all of these years.  I could’ve listened to my friends or given up on that challenge, which to me seemed impossible, but I didn’t.  And everyone was quite jealous when I was the only one in our class who got to go! 

His latest single is just another amazing message for everyone.  Our world has had so many leaders and influences by people who were NOT born to follow.  We all can make a difference in our lives and in the world…if we choose to.  Were you born to lead or follow?  I don’t know about you but I am going with the leading.

Here’s the video to the song..it was so well done.  Simple yet powerful.
Enjoy!

Yours in Leadership,

Eleni

Tagged as: Bon Jovi, choose, decide, Jon Bon Jovi, leader, leadership, WE weren't born to follow, your life