“The Pursuit” will be a bi-weekly feature on Goodness Determined, written by my brother, Hayes Grooms IV. He’s extremely intelligent and talented, so make sure to check back often for more. You can also follow Hayes on Twitter – @H_Grooms

Seems like a chaotic clash, but if you listen closely; it’s more a connecting calm.

We see it in the morning traffic, along the nation’s highways and underground train stations, across airport terminals, down grocery aisles, and even within our social media feeds; everyone is on the move, darting and hustling toward the go. Everyday 6,840,507,000 hearts move forward in their own unique beat. And if you listen closely most will charge ahead, looking to get anywhere…but here.

“The Pursuit” will be a bi-weekly feature on Goodness Determined, written by my brother, Hayes Grooms IV. He’s extremely intelligent and talented, so make sure to check back often for more. You can also follow Hayes on Twitter – @H_Grooms

Failure. No one likes to fail, yet everyone has. Of course, it’s not something that we shout or boast about because it doesn’t feel good—in fact, it feels terrible. Yet, as much as we prefer not to own up to it, everybody has failed. Whether it’s an executive telling you that you are not qualified enough, and that you should go back to school. Perhaps the business banking team thinking your business plan is not efficient and not achievable, or, the head coach sitting you down in his office, and mentioning that you cannot be on his team because you lack the talent. The experience is universal. We’ve all heard: You’re too young. You don’t have a clue. You don’t know what you’re doing. Do you have any idea of what you’re getting yourself into? Yes, everyday folks, fail every day. Seldom do we ever embrace the failures. It is the lessons learned in these failures that are the crown jewels. Look at how these people bounced back from failure:

“The Pursuit” will be a bi-weekly feature on Goodness Determined, written by my brother, Hayes Grooms IV. He’s extremely intelligent and talented, so make sure to check back often for more. You can also follow Hayes on Twitter – @H_Grooms

Today is a new day, a new year, and, in essence, a blank canvas. I recently visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, and stood in awe of the inspiration within. I roamed the halls of Grecian and Egyptian sculpture. I gazed at Romare Bearden’s masterpiece, “The Block,” a colorful and insightful collage of the very neighborhood in which I live. I admired bold, bronze, warrior masks of my African forefathers. I daydreamed among the Impressionists—the Monets, Cezannes and Van Goghs— and reflected on what this could all mean. Why were there so many people doing the very same thing as me and my family in this great space? What was it about these grand works of art that literally pulled us in?

“The Pursuit” will be a bi-weekly feature on Goodness Determined, written by my brother, Hayes Grooms IV. He’s extremely intelligent and talented, so make sure to check back often for more. You can also follow Hayes on Twitter – @H_Grooms

Synergy is one of those words. There’s something about it; but what’s truly amazing about such a great word is how it comes to life. Good ole’ Webster claims that synergy is when two forces come together and do something much greater than they can individually. We all see high levels of achievement. We read the stories of Oprah and Steve Jobs. And naturally we wonder about ourselves and if it’s possible for us too? Regardless of who you are or whose story you identify with, here’s the blunt truth—they didn’t do it alone. This is no mystery; it’s absolute fact. No one can make it out here alone. Alliances are necessary; in fact, they’re crucial.

The same rules apply in the animal kingdom. I have a deep respect for animals. Their world is tough, even brutal, yet they all have tactics, skills, strengths to survive, which I admire. Recently, two of the most powerful and dynamic animals on the planet, revealed an important lesson to me on the use of synergy—the Carcharodon carcharias and Orcinus orca, or the Great White Shark and the Killer Whale, respectively.

“The Pursuit” will be a bi-weekly feature on Goodness Determined, written by my brother, Hayes Grooms IV. He’s extremely intelligent and talented, so make sure to check back often for more. You can also follow Hayes on Twitter – @H_Grooms

Life is a sum of days. We each get a day and with that we each get a choice, sometimes two or three. What we do with those choices determines our life. And at one point in my life, I faced a crucial choice that changed everything.

After I decided to go over a thousand miles from home to play basketball in Texas, I was alone, scared, and quite honestly failing. Nothing was going right. I changed my major twice because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. When things couldn’t get any worse, I broke my foot and missed the entire season.