"The shortest answer is doing”
English proverb
This blog is about doing something BIG. Sure, the big thing this blog obsesses over -- besides Po the Kung Fu Panda -- is the marathon. The marathon is a big deal. It is a Big Thing. But challenging yourself is new, impossible ways, are also Big Things.
As I will say so often, many dreams that people wish about and pine for are also the ones that are easily disposed of because they appear to be impossible and out of reach.
Actually, I hope you are harboring one of those dreams now, because the only thing between you and realizing that dream -- even if it is a marathon -- is making the decision to go after it.
There is an important bridge linking your dreams to your reality: a decision.
As I will say so often, many dreams that people wish about and pine for are also the ones that are easily disposed of because they appear to be impossible and out of reach.
Actually, I hope you are harboring one of those dreams now, because the only thing between you and realizing that dream -- even if it is a marathon -- is making the decision to go after it.
There is an important bridge linking your dreams to your reality: a decision.
Big dreams and deep thoughts are beautiful things, and I encourage you to find time to mediate on them as often as possible.
Our dreams are what give us hope, provided we give our dreams life. Otherwise, dreams are burdens and sources of frustration. Left unfulfilled, dreams are, as Langston Hughes would describe them, shriveled up “raisins in the sun.”
Dreams become living things when you determine that you want them to become reality. When you reach a point when your dream must come true, when you can’t live without it, and you make a decision “that this must be,” that’s when dreams come alive.
The decision is the fulcrum to the lever that moves your world. It is the flashpoint that begins your crusade to greatness. It is the point in your life when you choose to live and thrive, not just exist and survive.
A decision, I mean a honest-to-goodness true blue decision, represents a near religious conversion. It is not a mere wish or New Year’s resolution, which are made fairly thoughtlessly and without the conviction necessary to back them up.
In fact, such wishes and resolutions assume that because you declare them (“I want to stop smoking”), they will come true. Some very legitimate desires like stopping smoking or losing weight are made so casually and without the proverbial fire in the belly that without a decision and follow though to make the wish become reality, they end up as a representation of our failure. They become a demoralizing albatross of failure hanging around our necks, reminding us that we are indeed failures (because if you believe you are a failure, you are. Sorry. It’s the truth.)
No, a real decision says, “Dang it, I can’t live like this any longer! If I don’t stop smoking, I will die! It is killing me now! I will not tolerate this any longer! I decide now that I will stop smoking! Why am I shouting?!”
A real decision is a game changer in your life. It is a crystalline moment in your existence when you determine that you will no longer tolerate the status quo and endeavor to embrace something greater.
Or, sadly, a rock-hard decision can appear in the form of a glassy-eyed dreamer declaring, with pitcher of beer in hand, that he will absolutely run a marathon. It happens.
How do you know when you’ve made a real decision and not just a casual consideration? I don’t know. Only you know that. In fact, much of what is in this book is an exploration of what you already know and what you are already capable of doing. What separates you from what you want and what you get is… you. Make a decision to do, have, be, or go. You have the power to decide you want it and have it.
Can you remember a time in your life when you were empowered with a decision to do, have, be or go? Did you ever say, “I’m going to stop smoking,” and do it? Did you ever decide that “That person is the love of my life and I want to be with that person the rest of my life”? “I want that job.” “I want that house.” “I will get into college.” Or, in this case, “I am going to finish a marathon.”
Think of those times when you made a true decision in your life. What triggered the decision-making? How did you feel? What did you do after? Really stop to think about these moments in your life and meditate on them now. It is important for you to reflect back on the power of these moments and assess why they were so transformational.
Yebbutz, Doubting Thomases, and Impossible Dreams
Decisions – true decisions – are hard to make. Seriously, this is a tough exercise, and one that I believe is going to be difficult to make. It is a turning point from mediocrity to greatness.
Mediocrity to greatness? True, the fragrance of hyperbole wafts from this chapter on decisions, but I cannot stress enough its importance. And when you make a decision to pursue a life’s goal, well, isn’t that great? Or stated differently, greatness? If a goal has personal value and meaning, it is truly a great thing. Achieving such a goal is, in a word, greatness. Preservation of the status quo is, of course, mediocrity. Therefore, your decision to pursue a goal is indeed a turning point from mediocrity to greatness. I am soooo Socratic!
Perhaps the biggest, most difficult obstacle preventing you from making a decision is the poisonous belief that a dream is impossible. Such a belief is supported by your evil doppelganger of self-doubt, and even worse, by other Doubting Thomases who second-guess your ability and commitment to see a goal to fruition. Your self-doubt and the Doubting Thomases
If the great achievements in life (like finishing a marathon) were easy, everybody would do them. Then again, what’s easy and what’s not easy is really a difference in how one mentally measures a challenge. Believe it or not, the most powerful weapon in overcoming challenges, fighting off defeat, advancing toward your goals, and achieving success is, quite simply, knowledge.
When the time comes, when you know in your heart that you can do something, indomitable mountains suddenly become mere clods of dirt. When one achieves that religious, spiritual awakening called “knowing,” then he or she becomes a powerful person.
How often do you look back on those issues, events, circumstances in your life that were intimidating, insurmountable, and impossible at the time, and feel silly for worrying over nothing? Maybe it was a test, or your first date with your spouse, or a game, or a project at work (or writing a book like this).
Often, when we’re kids, we let our imaginations inflate the size of our greatest fears because we do not know or understand. With experience and knowledge we learn that the “monsters” under the bed and in the closet were nothing more than empty space. Even as adults, our imaginations give our apparent “monsters” their teeth and claws when most of the time there is really nothing to fear at all.
Rumplesnitz!
In “The Fifty-first Dragon,” a story I recall from my childhood, a young, timid knight named Gawaine trains to become a dragon slayer. His confidence to face the dragons is so weak, his mentor teaches him to use the magic word “rumplesnitz” to empower him when confronting dragons. Enchanted by the spell’s power, Gawaine’s heroism is legendary, invoking the charm as he destroys dragon after dragon.
Upon smiting the fiftieth dragon Gawaine discovers that the so-called magic incantation is actually his teacher’s ruse designed to inspire Gawaine’s confidence. Gawaine is ironically crestfallen to learn that it was his confidence, not a magic spell, that helped him best the beasts. When a small, second-rate dragon threatens a nearby village, Gawaine is called to arms, but is never seen again. Having no confidence in himself, and now stripped of the power of the spell, Gawaine is destroyed by a meager opponent.
In this story we observe Gawaine’s two character flaws: (1) the utter lack of faith in himself, which diminishes his self-worth to nothing, and (2) the absolute faith that his opponents are his betters. Though no facts support his beliefs, Gawaine succeeds in completely emasculating himself while simultaneously empowering his problems.
If you can learn to size up a challenge or “impossibility” for what it’s really worth, you’ll know that there are fewer challenges and impossibilities in the world. The world becomes your playground. If you’re like me, you may not necessarily be able to face down your challenges by sheer will. You must experience it to learn it. And when you learn, you understand.
What this book hopes to achieve is to empower you, through the “fearful” experience of running an “impossible” race (isn’t life also an “impossible race”?), to size up obstacles, competition, and impossibilities and knock out their teeth. I want you to know, really know, that there are big dreams – BIG THINGS – out there, and you can dream them. But more importantly, you can make those dreams real.
I have a completely unscientific, unsupported theory that states that throughout human history, the list of the “impossible” that is now “possible” is exponentially longer than the current list of the impossible. Human flight, moon walking, splitting atoms, fashionable polyester… we can all look back on these impossible dreams and, believe it or not, take them now for granted.
Too many of life’s challenges and obstacles seem insurmountable. Unfortunately, we allow our imaginations to lead us to our perception of things. This leads to molehills becoming mountains and mice becoming monsters. A marathon is one of the inflated challenges that is apparently insurmountable. However, in life, the way to deal with these challenges is to create a plan, a strategy that draws a diagram of success. When you write a plan – or in this case compose a training schedule – you explain to yourself how the impossible becomes possible. In other words, you deflate the challenge to its real size, thereby creating a reality that anything is possible.
How is it that we humans are so prone to self-doubt? Why is the impossible, well, impossible? Like fear of the dark, the boogerman of impossibility is really a fantasy manufactured in our minds. We learn it. We assimilate it. We nurture it. We make it part of us.
Why is it that when we’re children we are so certain that boogermen lurk in the closet or under the bed? How is it that we’re so sure that darkness is bad and should be feared? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out this notion now with my 4-year old daughter.
Then again, when is it that we decide the dark is safe? When and how do we dissolve the boogermen from our imaginations? At some point in our lives – perhaps when we’ve achieved some sort of greater awareness – we are less intimidated by the straw men that inspire fear.
But is greater awareness the answer? Why can’t we just tell ourselves that there is nothing to fear in the dark, and believe it? Must we wait for some Zen moment to achieve the clarity necessary to mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually move forward?
I mean, if all of this fear and courage, chaos and clarity, and doubt and confidence exists in our minds, and if at some point in our lives it is WE who flick the switch from one to the other, why can’t we just do it now? Why not choose now to flick the switch?
I am saying we do have the power and we should use it. All we have to do is DECIDE.
Dispensing with the impossible and believing in the possible is the critical step to making a decision. And making a decision is the critical step to changing your life.
Hyperbole? It’s your life. You decide.
Dreams! Decision! ACTION!
If making a true decision is the marriage between your dreams and the desire to make them come true, the next step is to CONSUMMATE!
Stated differently, and perhaps more family friendly appropriately: TAKE ACTION!
A dream is a fantasy until a decision is made to make it real. A decision is powerless unless it is empowered with the action to make it real.
In the next chapter I describe to you how to make a goal. Taking action means that as soon as you make a decision – no matter your dream – execute by making a plan to make the dream come true. Get started right away. If you allow a decision to occur without taking the first step to making it happen, it will lose energy and momentum. You’ll find that the dream will float away like a feather in the wind, and then a couple of months or years from now, you’ll wonder what happened to that dream of yours. Worse, you’ll poor mouth yourself and complain how your dreams never come true.
I stated it earlier, the hardest part of making dreams come true occurs in the decision making process. And a real decision is only worth its salt if you take immediate action to make it happen. If you take no action, then you truly haven’t decided. Once a decision is made, and action is taken, the world becomes clearer to you. Your vision gains focus and direction, and suddenly the world seemingly joins in your conspiracy to achieve your goal.
In the next chapter you will also learn the importance of making new habits, which – good or bad – is the process of reinforcing specific behavior. Our objective is to great good habits that support your goal. By taking immediate action, and daily reinforcing this behavior, you set in motion a pattern of empowering behavior that reengineers your thinking, perception, and motivation.
See how important it is to make an action-oriented decision?
In marathon preparation, this is why the training schedule is so important. Getting out on the road and running daily (well, almost daily) is how you will finish the race. It is that simple.
Procrastination
One little note about that gremlin ne’er do well of procrastination, which is of the writer’s block and stage fright of goal making. You spawn a dream by making a decision and even setting a goal, but somehow it doesn’t take flight because something has clipped your wings.
As it is with the seemingly impossible, procrastination is a fabrication of our minds. It can manifest as the residual thoughts of impossibility that you have already tried to remove from your decision making and action taking.
It can also manifest as the “perfect” being the enemy of the “good,” when we resist doing what we know we should do because we fear or avoid our charge because we overestimate the labor involved with the task.
True, when we pursue the BIG THING, there will be toil and sweat, but having read this book through its entirety, we have learned that we can break up the big, intimidating tasks and minimize them into small, manageable efforts.
Often when I have sat down to write a page or chapter of this book, I have avoided sitting altogether and put off the writing another day. Indeed, I had to remind myself that this book doesn’t have to be perfect, and that the only way a book like this will be written is if it is actually written. Besides, life is filled with rough drafts, do-overs, time outs, and mulligans. I didn’t have to get it right the first time; I just had to write it. And after 10 years of ignoring my own advice, I owned up to it, sat down and remembered just how wise this advice is.
When faced with procrastination ask yourself why you aren’t tackling the action you committed yourself to. What is it you are afraid of? Why are you resisting?
This is very important because for a BIG THING to become a reality, you must take action. Procrastination stops action in its tracks and is the quickest, deadliest blow to killing a dream (or perhaps causing it to suffer a slow, painful death).
Understanding the root of procrastination and seeking a swift resolution thereto will empower you and lift you toward achieving your goal.
