Building off of what we’ve been doing with our Monday Twitter posts, I will expand upon my weekly motivational message here on my blog as each week begins. I will still tweet condensed versions of the message, but here you will find a bit more meat on the bones and a way in which the message has affected me, my family, my staff or my friends.

This week’s theme is “Family.”

On Sunday night, our family had dinner together – all five of us – for the first time in what seems like forever. My oldest daughter Erin is in Lexington before she starts graduate school and both Megan and Bradley are home with Ellen and me. With the breakneck speed everything has been going the past four months, it was so great to be able to sit down and have an old-fashioned Calipari Family dinner. I am so lucky to have the wife and children I do, who understand the demands of my job but who never hold it against me.

But blood relatives are not the only family I have and I hope you can say the same thing. It’s the extended “family” that you allow into your life that fully complement who you are. For me, it’s my players – past and present – my staff, my friends and all the people I’ve been able to touch and those who have touched me.

When you allow others to share in your existence, they then allow you to share in theirs and that is how we all become more complete people. When good things happen for others, you need to take pride as if it were your own accomplishment. Likewise, when others are in pain, you can share that pain and help them through out.

I had the chance to share the ESPNU TV set with Bruiser Flint and Derek Kellogg on Sunday in Orlando. Bruiser coached with me at UMass and Derek played for both of us there and then coached alongside me at Memphis. It is such an incredible feeling when I see the success Bru has had at Drexel and the ambassador he has become for our game. With Derek, my pride overflows not only because he is entering his second year as head coach at UMass, his alma mater, but also because of the fine husband and father I have seen him grow into.

Each of us roots for the other (except when our teams play!) and we all root for the former players and staff we have been privileged enough to work with and alongside.

Our family continues to grow and branch off and with each new opportunity for any of us, the others share in the results.

Let your “family” be the same way and make it a priority EVERY day.