“To achieve what you have not, you must become what you are not. You have to grow into your goals.” ~Darren Hardy
As I crossed the finish line, arms outstretched, head held high, I still had no idea what I had actually accomplished and what my experience would mean to me later. The journey had changed me. I’m not talking about just completing the distance of 192 miles or that it was done in only two days. I’m talking about the commitment, the event, all the training that went into it, all the work, the sacrifice, the agony, and the victory, all of it.
All of it was life changing!
Originally, when I first wrapped my mind around committing to and completing the ride, I anticipated there would be a sense of exhilaration at the end. There was… But what was really exhilarating was seeing the magnitude of the task and realizing I had achieved it. What I didn’t know, what I didn’t realize at the time, was how the event had already changed my life before I had ever crossed the finish line.
It wasn’t until after, and only looking back, that I was able to connect the dots. Steve Jobs gave a famous commencement address where he talked about this concept.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference.” ~Steve Jobs
What I realized after finishing the ride was my life was a literal tapestry of all the events I had experienced leading up to the completion of this epic feat. Each of the milestones I experienced throughout my entire lifetime had their instrumental place in my journey. The events of our lifetime are those that weave together the story of our life. The Pan-Mass Challenge, or the PMC (PMC.org) as we lovingly call it was just part of that story. This article is just part of that story. What lies in front of me is a future I can’t even possibly imagine just yet, but there is one thing for sure I now know:
I am UNSTOPPABLE!
And, by making a commitment to learn from everything, YOU can be UNSTOPPABLE too!
We never ever truly fail… unless we quit. Even if you do quit, that’s usually just an opportunity to begin again with new information. The real question is if you do quit for whatever reason, is it temporary or permanent? Will your quitting stop you from achieving your goal? Have there been people like me who have attempted to complete the Pan-Mass Challenge or to complete a marathon who were stopped in their tracks? Absolutely. But not all of them permanently quit. For many it was only for that moment or for that specific year. They learned from the process and took it with them to the next event and let it make them even stronger.
The one thing nobody else can do, is be a better you, than you.
You get to write the story of who you are and what you do with the life you’ve been given. You get to write the beginning, the middle, and the ending of that story by the choices you make.
I have come to acknowledge the following words as a guide for how I choose to live:
“When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen.” ~Harley Davidson
Just because your life hasn’t gone the way you wanted it to go up until now doesn’t mean anything. Every day, the clock starts new. A fresh page is turned, a new chapter begins. Every day is a blank canvas. There is no aristocracy of time. We all get the exact same amount each day. You can have a script for what success looks like today, and you can tear it up and completely rewrite that script tomorrow based upon new plans, new information, a new idea, or a different direction you want your life to go.
Whatever you decide, it’s available to you.
We don’t give up on the hero in the middle of a story. The hero doesn’t get to claim victory until the end of the story. We don’t know the outcome until the end. As long as you are alive to continue working through the obstacles and problems you face, there is hope for you to change your outcome. And, If you’re in the middle of the story, don’t write yourself down as a failure. You’re still in the middle of the story.
Also, what happened in your past has no bearing on anything except to shape who you become by how you choose to handle it. That’s it.
Whether you’re a success, or a failure is up to you. You get to define success. No one else can define success for you. You must be the one. You must take control of the definition and it’s the one thing you must take ownership of if you choose to become a success.
My COMMITS method is not just a PATHWAY TO PROGRESS; it’s a proven process to take you from where you currently are, to exactly where you want to be, not overnight, but systematically and methodically, one day at a time! And to get started, all you have to do is choose to begin. To achieve success, all you have to do is make a commitment to the process, because success is nothing more than a commitment to show up and do the work.
Tip One: Choose To Begin
“Choices are the hinges of destiny.” ~Pythagoras
All things are created twice, first in thought, then in action. Beginning is a choice. Make the choice to “CHOOSE” to begin. Starting is the hardest part. Most people hesitate. They believe they must know HOW before they begin. Stop asking how and start asking who and what instead. Ask first, who do I need to become? Next, ask, what skills will be required? Then, get busy acquiring the skills and becoming the kind of person you need to be to accomplish what you choose to do!
This is “HOW” you become UNSTOPPABLE!
Take massive imperfect action! Dare to suck! Dare to fail!
Tip Two: Take it “One Day At A Time.”
“Everybody is looking for instant success, but it doesn’t work that way. You build a successful life one day at a time.” ~Lou Holtz
We don’t go from 0 to 192 overnight. We don’t go from thinking about running a marathon to actually running one. There is a process, and that process develops day by day, week by week, month by month, “one day at a time.” Becoming UNSTOPPABLE is a cumulative process that develops over time, day by day with determination, commitment, persistence, and patience. Trust me, the work and the wait are worth it!
Tip Three: Manage Expectations
“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.” ~Stephen Hawking
Managing expectations is all about expecting the unexpected. Obstacles are sure to materialize if you intend to do anything worthwhile. Things will invariably go wrong. The weather, believe it or not, is unpredictable! A sunny day can quickly turn into a torrential downpour. Where do you think the term “rain on your parade” came from anyway?
For the rest of the “Tips” (I know I said three but there are actually seven) go here, grab a copy of my book on Amazon, or…
Practice some patience and wait until next week when I will cover the rest of my proven process for achieving unbelievable results, “One Day At A Time.”
Keep Pedaling, Keep Going, Keep Growing!
Advance Confidently!
If you enjoyed and found value in this article, please share it.
In Gratitude,
Bobby Kountz, Author, Speaker, Sobriety Scholar, Inspirationalist!
PS. You can find out more about me here. You can find my book on Amazon.
“If you have dreams, goals, or aspirations, you need to GROW to achieve them. But, if you’re like I was — and if you are like most people — you have one or more mistaken beliefs that create a gap that keeps you from growing and REACHING your potential. Each of us has the opportunity to bridge that gap. But we must make that a goal and follow through.” ~John Maxwell
It’s a well-known leadership principle that we either grow or die. However, this harsh dichotomy is not consistently applied to the lives of the broader community.
Many of us never actually choose a path, so we naturally just drift along from job to job, place to place, or path to path. Be assured there is nothing wrong with any of these choices.
Life tends to temper the resolve of an individual much the same way steel becomes hardened with fire. When we become ready, a subtle shift develops almost imperceptibly. In this shift, the sub-conscious prepares the waking mind for the acceptance of new ideas. This is where the gap is either bridged, or not. If the “GAP” is identified and acknowledged, progress is all but guaranteed. However, if the “GAP” remains unexamined, it will invariably prohibit growth.
Growth almost always occurs because of one of two pairs of things: planning or pain, goals or inanity, success or failure, dedication or procrastination, contemplation or COMMITMENT!
This is the paradox…
If we will simply commit, we can then learn to bridge the gap. The bridge spanning the gap typically comes in the form of a goal or mentorship. With proper coaxing and collaboration, a healthy dose of guidance or coaching, an individual becomes ready for the step of CHANGE. With this step, knowing the “how” is unimportant. However, the “why” is critical. Our “why” provides the fuel for commitment. We conquer the how with the why. This process requires action and resolve. These attributes are activated with one small word: commit! The strategy is simple: COMMIT, then figure it out! The plan will unfold and develop once the act of resolve is initiated. The final phase comes with dedication, persistence, and hard work! This is the process of going from unsure to UNSTOPPABLE!
Welcome to the path of success!
Success is not a destination but a commitment to the process. Success is showing up again and again. Success is baby steps… Success is the natural result of commitment and persistence. Success operates on her own schedule and her own timeline.
Many give up before she reveals herself… She is often just on the other side of the most recent obstacle we encountered. She readily hides just on the other side of one more feeble attempt. She often blends in with circumstances and even disguises herself as failure.
She is elusive, not unlike an early morning mist or the evening fog that ebbs and flows with the setting sun. As darkness falls, she can be seen in the shadows, just out of sight, just out of reach. She is often experienced in the dusty recess of our fading dreams as we awake only to find it was indeed just a dream…
Ah, but what is a dream if not a prelude to the possibility, for it has been said that if we dream it, we can do it. And beware the dreamer of the day for they may act their dream with open eyes and bring it into the physical realm of existence.
“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.” ~T. E. Lawrence
Keep Pedaling, Keep Going, Keep Growing!
Advance Confidently!
If you enjoyed and found value in this article, please share it.
In Gratitude,
Bobby Kountz, Author, Speaker, Sobriety Scholar, Inspirationalist!
PS. You can find out more about me here. You can find my book on Amazon.
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” ~Vincent Van Gogh
Masterpieces are created one word, one note, one brushstroke, and finally, one day at a time. The wizards that flew around in an author’s head found their way to the page, one word at a time. Amazing Grace became amazing, one note at a time. Mona Lisa’s smile was created one brush stroke at a time…
Each of these well-known creations, just like everything else in the world, were all created, one day at a time. They were cultivated from thought, fertilized with effort, tended with daily activity, and finally, after a consistent daily commitment to their finish, they were abandoned first and only then harvested, because as the great Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Da Vinci represents the essence of everything my “ADVANCE CONFIDENTLY” mantra stands for. He was a writer, poet, musician, sculptor, scientist, painter, mathematician, botanist, engineer, geologist, inventor, cartographer, and author. Leonardo had an I can do anything and everything kind of mindset and I believe the reason he was able to do so many things was because he simply made a commitment to try!
It should be noted however that anything Leonardo either did or attempted to do, was not done in a rush or all at once, but instead, one day at a time.
The one thing we don’t know is “how” he managed to do all the things he did. What we do know though, are some of the things we can learn from his UNSTOPPABLE, do-it-all style. One of the things said about Da Vinci, other than perhaps being called crazy, was that he didn’t understand the word impossible. It wasn’t part of his vocabulary. The word had no relevance in his life.
One of my mentors has a great saying that came to him from his mentor who said, Michael, “Everything is neutral until you label it.” We are the ones assigning value to our experiences. We are the ones labeling the good, the bad, and the ugly. There is no way for us to initially know whether something is good or bad. Good and bad are words we assign in the moment based on our interpretation of the experience.
Image courtesy of Michael O’Brien
Wayne Dyer, who was clearly a student of life, once stated, “No one knows enough to be a pessimist.”
Here’s some more Wayne Dyer WISDOM:
“Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.”
“When YOU change the way you look at things the things you look at change.”
“As you think so shall you be.”
Wrought with despair, a man found himself admitted to an asylum. In the early days of his stay, most of his time was spent laying on his bed in the dark. After a bit, he grew a little stronger and eventually ventured out onto the grounds where he discovered a garden. It was here, in the silence and without the daily pressures of everyday life that he noticed the blossom on an apple tree, the journey of a caterpillar making its way across a leaf, and the gnarled roots of a Southern Pine.
When spring came, it was the bloom of a group of purple irises that garnered his full attention and brought him back from the edge where he had once helplessly stood next to a puddle of blood and his desperate attempt to remove his ear from his head.
The transcendent beauty of everyday life was captured eloquently in a vase full of some of those beautiful irises that came from the garden where his recovery unfolded, where he slowly found himself again, struggling toward the end of the day, hopefully not trying to harm himself, and putting the pieces back together, “One Day At A Time.”
In my own life, it was my decision to approach recovery day by day that has methodically allowed me to slowly but surely accumulate over 11,190 days of sobriety, “One Day At A Time.”
And finally, if I may leave you with a parting thought, a point of reflection from the great Walt Whitman, the four words with the potential to change the world as we know it.
“Be curious, not judgmental.” ~Walt Whitman
Deb Sofield ~ Public Speaker I was happy to find your article while searching the web for material to support this article. #Grateful for YOU and your work.
Keep Pedaling, Keep Going, Keep Growing!
Advance Confidently!
If you enjoyed and found value in this article, please share it.
In Gratitude,
Bobby Kountz, Author, Speaker, Sobriety Scholar, Inspirationalist!
PS. You can find out more about me here. You can find my book on Amazon.
“Time is a fixed income and, as with any income, the real problem facing most of us is how to live successfully within our daily allotment.”~Margaret B. Johnstone
Time truly is a fixed income.
Each of us receives the exact same amount every single day. There is no
hierarchy of time. There is no aristocracy of time. Wealth won’t buy you one
second more than the poorest of the poor. Intelligence provides no advantage
here either. The most intelligent person on the planet receives the exact same
allotment of this precious commodity as does the person who struggles to think.
Wisdom however, now that’s a
different discussion. Wisdom is the gift that allows for the full utilization
of our very precious 86,400 seconds of income. Wisdom helps us determine how to
best invest this precious resource. Wisdom is often mistakenly referred to as the accumulation of knowledge.
Wisdom is not the accumulation of knowledge, it’s the application of knowledge.
“Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible, without it nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it.” ~Arnold Bennett
Time can never be managed. It
can only be invested into the activities of our choosing. Time management is a
catchy phrase that made a complex issue seem simple. What we manage, if we are
disciplined enough to see the importance of it, is activity. Time is simply a
receptacle for activity management.
As it relates to time, we don’t
even get paid for our time even though many of us are paid by the hour. What we
get paid for is the activity we put into the time allotted for the activity.
Some would argue this is semantics, but if we truly got paid for our time we
could just simply stay home and eat bon bons all day. No, if we work for a
company or for ourselves, either way, whatever we are paid, it will be for what
we produce, for the activity we put into the time allotted.
As human beings we have free
will, which also means we have free choice. We choose how we invest and spend
our time. We choose our work, our vocation, our creative outlet, our leisure
activities, what we read or don’t, what we watch, or don’t, what we listen to,
or don’t. The allocation of our time is one of the most important decisions we
make on any given day.
A common phrase we often hear
is, “If I only had more time.” The hard truth was expressed over a hundred
years ago by the author Arnold Bennett and was captured for all eternity in the
following quote.
“We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.”
When determining how to best
invest your income, consider what you really want and then strategically
allocate specific blocks of your daily commodity into that activity.
Most of us procrastinate to
avoid the discomfort associated with a specific task or activity. We fool
ourselves into believing we can do it tomorrow, or the next day, or the day
after that, or even worse, someday…
As a recovering
procrastinator, I am all too well versed in the many ways of avoidance.
Creativity is NOT a superpower for procrastinators! But let’s be honest, we all
do it at least every now and again. As a matter of fact, we are prone to it and
without discipline and vigilance it’s easy to have a day slip away never to be
regained.
Fortunately, tomorrow is kept
for us, no way to get into debt, impossible to borrow from the future. Now, now
is all we have. We talk about our twenty-four hours because of the system we
use to measure time, but the truth is all we have is this moment and then it’s gone,
and we are onto the next moment. Therefore, it’s so important to structure the
proper use of this ever-precious commodity.
Another note on time. We tend
to overestimate what we can accomplish in a day and to drastically underestimate
what we can accomplish in a decade. Here’s a rudimentary example that might
shift your thinking based on what I refer to as the cumulative effect. One hour
per day invested into the endeavor of your choice is 365 hours per year which
equals approximately 45 workdays. Multiply the 45 days by 10 and you have 450
days or 1.25 years. When we think about all the things we could accomplish in
this amount of time, it’s absolutely amazing. All because we suddenly
understood the value of an hour consistently invested into the activity of our
choosing. No, it won’t happen overnight, but think how much smarter you’ll be a
decade from now.
Ponder this one-hour rule and
think of all the different experiments you could conduct in your own life by
applying this rule every day. Oh, and as it relates to habits, think of how
many productive habits you could develop and apply to your future with this one
simple change in focus. This is an example of what I call the cumulative effect
and what Darren Hardy calls “The Compound Effect” in his bestselling book.
“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” ~H. L. Hunt
Be “WISE”, don’t
leave this task to chance, for if you do, you will find this gift slipping away
just as the sand slips from one side of the hourglass to the other…
For a truly interesting read,
check out the work of Larry G. Maguire.
