TALLAHASSEE, Florida – My daughter, a headstrong little cherub named Harper, turned one yesterday.

As it goes with birthdays, especially those of your children, it called for reflection on a year in which there were as many children as parents in our little townhouse in Tallahassee, and our lives were altered in as big a way in 365 days as any such stretch I can recall.

I’ve written before, when Harper was young, that the birth of our second child was the death of ambition. Given some time, I’ve realized that isn’t quite right, though it isn’t entirely wrong either.

It is, rather, the redirecting of ambition.

It has taken all my personal ambition – commentate the Olympic Games, become a head coach, write a New York Times best-seller – and simplified it into a simple question: What is best for my family?

If you were to tell me, six or so months ago, that adding a child would simplify my life, I’d have laughed it off as a crude and very unfunny joke. In almost every way, adding another child makes life exponentially more complicated, more exhausting, more fulfilling – more everything.

But simple?

Absolutely not.

With the exception of this one category: Ambition.

Even when we had Austin, it was still relatively easy for me to pursue everything I wanted in my career with very little regret. Dads are useful for babies, sure, but moms are needed in a primal way fathers just are not. This was an unexpectedly difficult realization for me at the time. When I’d leave to either play in or commentate a tournament, I knew Austin would be fine without me, if he even noticed at all. Delaney would certainly prefer I be home, but again, I wasn’t needed.

I was free to travel and compete and commentate and pursue everything I’d ever wanted to accomplish.

So I did.

But as Harper grew, and Austin graduated from baby to toddler to Little Boy, the tradeoff — because in life, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs — of pursuing personal ambitions plummeted, to the point that it was never worth it. Not for a personal sake, anyway.

Sometimes, yes, traveling to be the provider is exactly what my family needs, because my traveling, be it with Florida State or Volleyball World, is how we sustain a lifestyle we love.

Sometimes it is not, and I happily, without a second thought, turn down financial opportunities, status, prestige and, yes, potential ladder climbing, in the name of what’s best for my family — because that is now where my ambition lies.

Opportunities that would have been no-brainers to pursue a year ago no longer even register. Everything is weighed significantly against what is beneficial to my family, and how and where we want to raise our children. It has made my perpetually fidgety self, rarely able to stay still, calmer, more content, because I’m no longer in a constant search for what could be better for me. 

Because I know, right now, we’re exactly where we need to be.

This new filter has made the next stage of my multifaceted career – commentating, coaching, writing – incredibly simple: Will this opportunity improve our family in some way?

That is the redirect.

So, no, Harper’s first year didn’t kill my ambition.

It just aimed it in the proper direction.

How can you beat this?