Jenna and I feel extremely blessed to live in Lexington, KY. We have been in this community in some fashion continuously for the past 13 years. During that time Lexington has become home for us. We are raising two young daughters here, we have many friendships that we’ve made over the years and we receive incredible love and support from virtually every segment of Lexington society. We started the Mitchell Family Foundation with deep love and caring for our community. With the foundation, we want to improve the lives of people in Lexington by giving everyone in the city opportunities to strengthen their character.
Our mission statement is very simple.
We believe in strength of character, and we work tirelessly for its cultivation in our community.
We’ve been asked on numerous occasions, “Why is the focus of your foundation focused on strength of character?” It is a great question and one I want to answer for you today in this blog post.
As a young person in my late teens and early twenties, I had major responsibility issues. I made a series of irresponsible choices that left me feeling very empty inside. My self-esteem, self-confidence and self-awareness were suffering mightily. I had no spiritual, mental or physical focus. It was way back then that I started climbing out of that irresponsible state and started down a path of responsibility, productivity and some level of professional success. It has been a long journey and one that continues to this day. So many people have poured wisdom into me and for that I am very grateful. I have had the great blessing of being mentored by some unbelievable people. All of these relationships have one common thread: the people I have learned the most from have strength of character. I have learned there is no short cut to success. There is no possibility of being happy, healthy and productive when you are irresponsible and make poor choices. In short, strength of character is EVERYTHING.
I love the following definition of Character:
Moral quality, the principles and motives that control your life; the strength of your mind to make decisions that affect the people in your life and all of society; the sum of your qualities.
As I have traveled around the country recruiting players to our basketball program, I have noticed a very powerful truth. Living a life of high character has nothing to do with where you are from, how much money is in your bank account, what kind of house you live in, what kind of car you drive or what kind of clothes you wear. You can have very little money and be a person of extremely high character and you can find people with all the money in the world and those folks can have very low character OR the exact opposite situation can be true. My point is our character has to do with WHO we truly are on the inside. All of us, no matter what our circumstances, have the ability to live a life exhibiting strong character.
The Mitchell Family Foundation will work tirelessly to provide you with opportunities, resources and events to help you strengthen your character. Let me close with this: I have tried living life both ways. I’ve lived exhibiting very low character and I’ve lived striving for strength of character. I am constantly a work in progress but I can say without a doubt, my life is much happier, much healthier and much more productive when I am striving for a high character life. I hope you find the inspiration and motivation from our foundation and others in your life to strive for this important quality- STRENGTH OF CHARACTER.
Thanks for your support!
Matthew Mitchell