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Not Worth The Effort
Yes, it’s February. Time to get on with life, with muddling.Those goals, those hopes and dreams and aspirations: too much work. Too much effort.Way too busy.And who makes them, anyway?Turns out the numbers are fairly grim.Statistics show that less than half the population bothers to set goals for a New Year. (In the audiences I have polled this month, it’s less than 20%!) And by the beginning of February, nearly 80% of those who do have given up.(So whether you set some goals… or didn’t, you’re in great company!)Of course, as the research shows, the problem is that we’re socially conditioned to the status quo; to think small; to underestimate our abilities. And we’re comfortable, even in our discomfort.Change rocks our boat. (Even little change can mess us up: try brushing your teeth tonight with your opposite hand.)And other folks: they don’t like us to change. It’s unsettling. Disturbing. Threatening. When our “friends” and family react to our “audacity,” we retreat to safety so as not to lose our place.And those big goals are, well, big; daunting; overwhelming; scary. Buoyed by holiday revelry, they may have seemed exciting. Plausible. Obtainable. Now they seem impossible.Too, there is that evil lizard – the lizard of resistance. (I know him well. He hides under my bed.) The lizard says, not today, not now. It’s not the right time. Tomorrow will be better, safer, easier. Put it off to another day.Well, I’ve some bad news for you. The only constant is change. Whether you like it or not. And you don’t have time. There may not be another day. Today is the only day you have. Today is the day. If you’re too old, too fat, too tired, too poor, too unprepared, tomorrow won’t be better. (In fact, you’ll likely be older, fatter, more tired, poorer and even more unprepared.)(And, oh, by the way, how long will it take to finish that project you never start?)But I’ve got some good news too. Resolutions aren’t limited to the New Year. Every day’s a new beginning. Filled with possibility and promise. So, today,- Set a goal that really means something to you, that excites you, that jazzes you, that urges you up in the morning, that rocks your world.
- Break the goal down into small, incremental, manageable steps so you don’t get overwhelmed.
- Take a little step every day toward your goal; small consistent steps over time lead to magnificent outcomes.
- Surround yourself with positive, affirming people; fly with eagles; don’t hang with pigeons.
- Know that the evil lizard always lurks; acknowledge him and walk on by.
- Get a mentor, a coach, a partner, a fan. It makes a difference.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”— Marianne Williamson
Kryptonite Is Everywhere
Cardiac arrest. CPR. ICU. “It doesn’t sound so good,” the caller said. 
We thought of him as Superman: tall, trim, fit, handsome, strong.
Meticulous in his diet; committed to his exercise. The epitome of health.
Invincible, we thought.
Then the day after his 50th birthday, he dropped.
A savage reminder of our vulnerability, our mortality; the tenuousness of it all.
All of us have hopes and dreams and plans and aspirations. About who we want to be. Places we want to go. Things we want to do.
We tell ourselves that we’ll get to them next week, next year, when the kids are out of school, when we retire.
We delude ourselves. We tell ourselves there’s time.
We put things off.
We like to pretend: that we will live forever; that we’re invincible; that we’re immortal; that life is not capricious; that death does not exist.
And yet it does.
When someone like our friend is stricken – all of us have known that moment – we get the whack in the face: we know again that it all changes in an instant; that death is near.
And in its shadow, there is the urgency, a mandate, to live: deeply, fully, richly, intensely; without pettiness or waste.
Don Juan said this:
Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm’s length… It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you.
How can anyone feel so important when we know that death is stalking us?
The thing to do when you’re impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you.
Death is the only wise adviser that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do , that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.’
The legendary Steve Jobs lived with that intensity and taught the lesson well:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?'”
“And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
Here’s the truth: There is no time. Now is all we have. Live large. Play full out. Don’t waste a single moment.
Death, like Joe Black, lurks just beyond the shadows.
Our friend will live to celebrate another day.
But Kryptonite is everywhere.
Ya Just Gotta Start
Sometimes when we think about a goal, an objective, a new project, we hesitate to begin. We think: conditions aren’t right; we’re not fully prepared; we don’t have all the information; we haven’t raised enough money; we don’t have all the resources we need; there’s not enough time.
But here’s the scoop. It’s never exactly the right time to begin. Conditions are never exactly right.
What you need to do is to start out and see what happens.
I’ve discovered this lesson in the mountains more times than I can count. A day that starts out looking like a storm day so often turns into something grand and glorious.
Other projects too: a run that starts out gruesomely begins to flow; a photo project that seems to be going nowhere turns into a gallery show; a chapter that lacks any form or substance suddenly takes shape; a work project that seems flat and dull unexpectedly transforms a life.
How it looks in the beginning is not how it will be.
Starting creates the magic. Starting creates the momentum. Staring tells the Universe that you’re ready.
Start now.
Start out and see what happens.
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Dream Catcher
This post first appeared on July 15, 2010. What are your hopes and dreams and aspirations for the New Year? Get busy!
And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.
– Joel 2:28
Dreamer.
The word has a bad rep. It connotes laziness. Distraction. Fuzziness. Idealism.
To dream suggests that we are not fully present, that we are somehow disconnected from reality.
“Get real,” we tell dreamers.
And some dreams can be pretty damn weird.
But many are visions, hopes, and aspirations that reside in the recesses of our minds. They may represent things we want to do, to achieve, to have, to be. They can form a mosaic of our lives made whole.
Our dreams are our own silent visitors from an unconscious world that inspire us to create; that urge us up in the morning; that drive us forward. They are the engines of our heart.
Climbing Denali was a dream for me. Ever since I was a boy, I wanted to climb The High One: the one that rose up out of the plains with the highest uplift in the world, the one with the coldest temperatures and the highest winds, the epic storied one that has always challenged mountaineers from around the globe. Inspired by a book my father gave me, I dreamed of being an explorer, of walking on Denali’s glaciers, climbing through Denali Pass, traversing beneath the Archdeacon’s Tower and standing on its summit. And I did.
It was a somewhat curious dream. Not terribly practical. Some would say downright inconvenient (my wife), especially as a contemplated a third attempt in eighteen years.
But dreams aren’t always logical. Many don’t make sense to other people.
But they don’t have to. Our dreams belong to us.
Dreams are sometimes vivid, sometimes not, sometimes odd, always elusive.
But many whisper to us. Of joy, of hope, of possibility. Of life fulfilled.
I love the symbol of the dreamcatcher. Woven in webs with sinew, The Chippewas believed that by sleeping beneath these hoops, they could sift out the “bad” dreams and capture the good.
Too few of us capture and pursue our dreams. And time is not our friend. “Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time, ” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. ”Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”
Time will rob us if we let it. The clock will run out.
Tony Robbins says: ”We’re so caught up in all we have to do – be sure to take the time to stop, be silent. Listen to the whispers of Destiny… guidance is waiting.”
The Carmelite mystic William McNamara admonishes us: take long, loving leisurely looks at the real.
We must take the time to touch our dreams, to cradle them, to nurture them, to bring them to life. (No one else will.)
Reclaim Your Dreams is the title of Jonathan Mead’s excellent e-book.
I hear so many of my contemporaries talk of being “too busy,” “too out of shape,” “too old” to do what they otherwise might do. That the time for fulfilling the dreams they once had has passed.
That’s bullshit.
“The best is yet to come,” Sinatra crooned.
“Your car goes where your eye goes,” writes Garth Stein in his beautifully crafted bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain.
Your heart goes if you will but follow.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined,” wrote Thoreau.
Denali was my dream. (There are more, of course!)
What are yours?
Keep The Bucket Full
This post first appeared on May 10, 2010. I share it again as we begin the New Year:
What do you do after you stand on the top of the world?
It’s the question Ann and I have been asking after Jordan Romero summited Mt. Everest last week. At age 13, he’s the youngest climber in the world to accomplish this feat.
After you’ve achieved your dream, what’s next?
There’s a wonderful article in this month’s Success magazine about Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969. But when he returned to earth, his life unravelled. He churned through jobs he didn’t want. He drank. He became depressed. His marriage failed.
Aldrin was a graduate of MIT and a career military man. His entire life centered on service to his country. The lunar program was the pinnacle of his career. He believed that he could rest on this achievement. But when it was over, he was lost.
Aldrin’s failures, according to Mike Zimmerman who wrote the Success article, “forced him to recognize that a man can’t walk on the moon forever. And shouldn’t try. At some point, you have to dream beyond what you dreamed before. So [Aldrin] set out to fix things.”
Now in his 80s, Aldrin went on to reinvent himself many times over becoming an author, motivational speaker and advocate for space exploration. He even competed this past season on Dancing With the Stars!
“I’ve had great results in turning myself into a far more productive, more enlightened, more contributing person than I think I ever was before going to West Point,” Aldrin says. ”If anything, there’ll be a motto on my tombstone: He kept trying.”
The key for Aldrin, according to Zimmerman, is this question: ”Do we dream big enough? And when we achieve those dreams, do we dream beyond them to discover not greater greatness, per se, but deeper greatness? The kind that enriches us, that would drive an already great man to fight past his self-destructive tendencies and build on a legend?”
Do we dream? And do we keep on dreaming?
“What’s on your bucket list?” Ann asked. It’s one of her favorite questions.
There was an uncomfortable silence. And then the response: “I guess there’s nothing left really.”
I felt sad. He’s just 75. And he’s my dad.
Contemporaries of his just returned from a six week open ocean sail across the Drake Passage. They’re planning their next adventure. A friend of ours graduated from George Washington University as a Physician’s Assistant (and valedictorian) at age 60. For the last dozen years, she has cared for the poor and the oppressed in some of the world’s most remote corners. John Keston, recently featured in The New York Times, began running when he was 55. He’s completed 800 races including 53 marathons. He holds the world record for his age category. He’s 85.
Our coach had us list 101 life goals. Try it. It’s hard. But exhilerating too. There’s the ride through Yellowstone on the Honda Goldwing. The river raft of the Snake River. Biking along the Great Wall. The climb of Everest. The islands of Greece. The nascent projects. The unmade photographs. Books waiting to be written. Stories yet to unfold.
Our buckets give shape and meaning to our lives. We wither without our buckets.
Perhaps we grow weary. But I read about Buzz and I have hope.
Who knows what young Jordan Romero will do. There are so many possiblities that lie before him. May he keep his bucket full.
May you as well.
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