“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
John Wooden
Connier Coats Parrish Nordan
I have often pondered if I were born in CA, or the midwest, or the northeast, would my life path been different. Education in the east is valued, but in the west it would be more inclined to superimpose my sensibilities of creativity. Would CA have consumed me early before I learned what keeps me grounded in making productive common-sense decisions. Growing up in the south, moving often, indigent and with a poor role model, I saw the biases and culture early and it was my intention to discover more. However, I was in poverty constantly moving from place to place, state to state, and with a role model who was dealing with their issues. I had to use education and sports to get me to a better place of critical thinking, mental acuity, and social effectiveness.
In your life you periodically meet different phases and segments of time where you close and re-open, you find a different self to grow into. The past is there for re-visit, the future for motivation, and the now for contemplation and action. You actually develop a different ontology with a different look and a different mind. This is growth, for we are always changing into something else. Yet our core values are most stable. When I was young I was compared to the character MacGyver of the 80s and 90s. While in other more physical and survival roles I was compared to Rambo. And then later epistomogically in my years Jean-Luc Picard. I would like to think I have traits of all three. And, I have been considered a Polymath.
My heritage is an integral part of the United States. I was born in Harnett County, NC, south of Holly Spring-Cary, NC–burbs of Raleigh, and my great-granddad James T. Coats founded Coats, NC with land he owned and as a community minister and store owner. My heritage included Scandinavian (Parrish) and German (Nordan) while Coats is English/Euopean. I have experienced events others would consider monumental and ominous growing up and as an adult. My experiences and cognitive reasoning, critical thinking, and intuition has been used to help myself overcome the travails and to help others. Moreover, all of this was inspired by what I have been blessed in, and my relationship with the creator of the universe.
I experienced indigent and challenging environments as a youth, and I eventual chose to take great lessons from them. I learned through personal and environmental detriments, and I applied formal education and sports to surmount the challenging environments and develop higher levels of thinking and reasoning. I have worked to return these lessons and mental acuity to improve people, organizations, and society. I have had friends whom lived in poverty as well, no floors, 8′ campers without electricity; and, later conversely I have been inside the environments of millionaires and billionaires and observed their mentalities.
To this end, I have been honored to be vetted in the past for many opportunities within sport, government, military, and education to include the being vetted and recruited by the Air Force, medical school, the NFL and the FBI. I have been an instructor for the National Safety Council, American Red Cross, and the American Heart Association. Some of them I followed and others I opted to go a different direction related to a rare condition found while playing college football–Sarcoidosis. And, I have consulted many in varied professions. I received an open invitation to speak at the NFL’s National Rookie Symposium, and I was nominated and selected to the National Leadership Honor Society. I was also selected to help an icon in business (Harry Sonneborn) who founded the McDonalds Corporation Franchise before his death. I have found very successful people and organizations structure their lives and self-development in a specific way.
I have written a children’s book published in 2021 which I designed when I was younger. I was an excellent athlete and excelled in most areas, heptathlon in track, basketball, billiards, ping-pong, and playing for the NFL or other leagues in other sports; and, although my endeavors with the NFL, military, and FBI were stymied by a health condition called Sarcoidosis, I continue to keep myself in top condition physically and mentally today.
All of this I have dedicated to one thing: for the betterment of ourselves so there is a legacy to leave a productive, effective, and compassionate society when our time is finished here on earth. Moreover, keep the creator of the universe close to you– it is the best partner you will ever learn from and rely on.
Connier with Grt. Grandfather James T Coats, founder of Coats, NC.
http://www.coatsnc.org/history.asp
“What you do in private is reflected in public.”
Connier Nordan
Connier Nordan 