Do your own thinking

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” – Walter Lippman

How much of what you believe, associate with, and repeat is from the thinking and refrains of others or the group?

How much is from your own clear observation and thought?

The easy way will not make you happy

One could say that the purpose of life is to be happy.  But in a great irony, doing the easy thing and doing things that are fun all the time will not make you happy in the long run.  People who seek short-term pleasures to make them happy will always be looking for greater pleasures, and in the end, feel shallow and empty.

It turns out ceaseless leisure and short-term pleasures do not, in themselves, equate to long-term fulfillment and purpose and the deep sense of happiness that comes with them. 

“Happiness does not come from doing the easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.” – Theodore Isaac Rubin

Pleasure or purpose?  Happiness or meaning?

What we want is to matter.  The struggle makes it worthwhile and matter.

Hero – Strength for Two

Taking care of yourself is important.  If everyone did it well, we’d have a much better world because many people wouldn’t need so much help.

So the first and best thing you can do for the world is to take care of yourself.

But we are made for much more than that.  If you can take care of yourself AND someone else, or a lot of someone else’s, that is the definition of a hero.  

Each moment is a choice.

Everything you say yes to, you say no to something else.

Some things are valuable and/or fulfilling, and many things aren’t. 

It’s your choice.

What will you say yes to today?

How do you see yourself?

You will never outperform your own expectations of yourself.

How do you see yourself?

Is it time to elevate that?

How YOU got to be YOU

This is how you got to be you.

You were born with certain onboard attributes.  That you had no control over.  THEN –

It’s what you learned +

The environment(s) you were in +

The people around you +

The decisions you made +

What happened to you +

The story you tell yourself about what happened (which is ongoing).

This all adds up to your current –

Beliefs and Expectations, which shape

Your Thinking, which causes

Your Actions, which determine

Your Results.

That’s how you became you.

If we want to get better results, we need to change the inputs.  You can change –

1) What you Learn

2) Your Environment

3) The people around you.

4) The story we tell ourselves.

What inputs can you improve to get better?

The Beholder

I hadn’t listen to this track in a while.  I played it today.  

Sometimes you are in a place to hear it and it hits home and influences you.

Check it out – The Beholder.

And get the whole album, Blueprint, on iTunes.  

Learn.  Enjoy.  Repeat.

Inner Winners

Some people win some things sometimes.

But a higher form of winning is to become one inside – where winning is not something they do sometimes, but who they are inside and outside.

They know how to do well, how to stay out of trouble, how to stay clear of negative drama, and how to make things work well around them no matter the circumstances they found in the beginning. 

They win the long game because of who they have become.

In the end, it’s not what you get, but who you become.

Have you BECOME a winner?

Keep working on you.

Develop good character, and make you proud.

“A wolf does not lose sleep over the opinions of lesser species.”

The average adult spends 3 hours a day on non-work screen time.  In that time you will invariably come across opinions and armchair critics.  Most people, with their desire to be liked (me included) will be affected by these wildly varying often baseless ideas.

People are mostly concerned with themselves and how they look compared to others.  Most critics don’t care about you, and after levying their criticism, move on and never think of you again.

Being your own Rock, is a good idea.  Develop good character, and let it be your measuring stick.

Make you proud.

Self-Disclipine

Self-discipline – the ability to do it when you don’t want to do it.  

If you know what to do, but don’t, you’ll start making excuses and blaming, and even deceiving yourself.

If you wait for motivation to strike, you’ll be waiting most of the time.

Winners do the small things, the habitual things, and yes, the big things, even when they don’t want to do it.

And when you do the right things over and over, you develop habits.  Habits allow you to do those things with less thought – so they become easier and even automatic the more you do them.

But it starts with self-discipline.

Discipline = Freedom

No discipline –  no control – and ultimately less or no freedom.

If I exercise self-discipline I can be free of others’ attempts to discipline me.

If I discipline myself with my diet, health, and fitness, I can be free of medications and limitations.

If I discipline myself now, I can be free later in life too.

I discipline myself so someone else doesn’t have to.

Sometimes you walk alone.

It is much better to walk alone in the right direction than to follow the herd in the wrong direction.

You’ll need the knowledge, character, and discernment to know which direction is right, and the courage to make the right choice.

Man in Motion

Have a clear goal – one that you have thought about all the reasons you want.  Write it and these reasons down.

See yourself doing it and accomplishing it.  Know all the hard work it will take and commit to paying the price ahead of time.  See yourself embracing this work – and loving it.

Got it clearly?

Now move on it. 

Nothing good happens after midnight

This one is especially for young people.

Nothing good happens after midnight.

Your life could change for the worse, or worse.

I’ll spare you the stories – but if you want some they aren’t hard to find.
Learn this lesson from others, not from your own experience.

Get home.

Rise to the level of your character

Everyone has a talent, or a few of them.  Some people have a lot of talent.

But regardless of your level of talent, you will never rise higher than your level of character.

If you are dishonest, crude, mean, disloyal, a narcissist, or not self-disciplined, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, you are going to hit the wall as to how far you can go.

Why?  People.  

People are our family, our friends, our customers, our admirers, our neighbors, the fans to show up and watch us play or perform, our employees, our spouse….without people that like us and want to work with or be around us, we can only go so far.

Character matters more than talent.

Racing is life

Today I give you my race report.  As you may know I raced the SanFelipe 250 – a 285 mile race in Baja.  The terrain there is especially difficult.  Besides 25,000 whoope (big bumps) there were several tight canyon washes with very intimidating boulder gardens and rock falls to ride through somehow.

Racing is like life.  Especially long-distance racing.

There is preparation.  I worked out a lot – even when I didn’t want to.  Once I started though, I got into it each time.  

There is teamwork – I have a great team to build (rebuild) the bike and to chase me throughout the race.

There is inspiration and motivation – you have to make decisions to get involved and take action.

Perseverance – you have to keep going even when the feeling you had to do a thing has long since left you.

There is acting in the face of fear – giant rocks to ride over – got to gas it and beat them.

There is competition – it brings out the best in you to try to beat them.

There are setbacks – the second day of prerunning things were going good and I made a mistake when dropping off a 4-foot step.  I landed on an off-camber spot with loose rocks and my front wheel washed out.  I crashed and hit the back of my right hand on a rock.  It broke an artery in my hand below the skin and within a minute there was a big ball of blood under my skin.  I was 35 miles from the truck.  I got lightheaded.  I didn’t know how much blood would accumulate under my skin or how dangerous it was.  I had to ride out.  

There is danger – when 1000 horsepower trophy trucks pass you at 3x your speed, it’s scary.  You have to get off the course fast.  The first few usually have helicopters that buzz you at very low altitudes to tell you the fury that is coming within seconds.

I started at 6:30 am, determined to run my own race and keep my heart rate in the optimal zone – not too high.

My hands ached for the first 80 miles, especially the injured one.  After that they settled in.  I was in second place out of three teams.  The leader had four fast guys.  When you have a team you can sprint and give it your all for 70 miles and give the bike to the next guy.  I was solo racing against two teams.

Things went pretty well for the next 130 miles.  I knew the rocks in Hatamote Wash were coming at mile 210.  Oh boy…  When I got there I did not delay.  I hit a steep rocky hillclimb that terminated into boulders at the top.  Drop back down into 100 feet of deep sand, then pick a line through boulders the size of microwave ovens.  I drop the bike once.  Gas is leaking out.  Pick it up quick – don’t want to run out of gas.  Make it through those boulders.  100 more feet of deep loose sand.  Then giant ledges on the left and giant boulders on the right.  I choose the ledges.  Good choice.  Navigate over and back down to the sand and rock gardens – made it!

Fifteen miles from the finish I see one of my chase trucks.  They had to drive in 30 minutes over deep sand whoops to get there to see me.  I stop for 2 seconds and say “I’m good!” and I go on.  One minute later I hear a bike coming alongside me.  I look – it’s 513x – my competition!  Ut oh!

At first, I wonder if I have enough left to put up a fight – and what he’s got for me.  I have to try.  We were in sand whoops that flowed fairly well.  I kick it up two notches and pass him.  I couldn’t look back – I needed all my concentration on the terrain.  I pretended he was right on my butt.  I rode faster and better than in the whole race.  I had trained well and had something for him at the end.  I had the skills to handle the bike at speed in deep whoops and drop offs.  

Two miles to go.  A vast silt fields opens before me.  I skirt the edges – still deep, downshifting and getting all the horsepower I could.  The deep silt turned to deep silt whoops.  One mile to go.  Sand dunes now.  The locals built a jump for show.  I hit it to celebrate.  Pavement.  Two blocks.  Police making sure no traffic is on the racecourse.  Fans line the course.  Last turn onto the Malecon – the beachfront boulevard where it starts and ends.  No 513x.  I did it.  I beat a team by myself.  

I roll across the finish line with my hands in the air.  Relief.  Joy.  Proud of what I had done.  Happy for what it did to me.

My wife and friends are there. 

Big deep smiles all around.  

Life.

Active Pursuit

You can learn a lot, and many people do.

You can wish and hope a lot, and many people do.

You can get ready all you want.

But there is no substitute for action.  

Action is the faster way to learn.  When you mix it with healthy doses of reading and listening to the few who have really done it before, you will make forward progress.

The world cannot resist someone with clear goals, courage, and persistence who is in ACTIVE PURSUIT.

Uncommon Sense

There is stupidity.  This is common.

Then there is common sense.  This is what the average people have.

Then there is uncommon sense.  This is what you’ll need to go beyond average.

Learn a lot about what you want. Take action and learn from it.  Think and study a lot.  Talk to masters who embody qualities of what you want.

Then depart from the common thinking, and go for it.

Be uncommonly great!

Limits are not outside of you…

Your limitations are not on the outside of you, they are on the inside of you.

They are yours to throw out.

So what is that limitation that has been holding you back?

What do you say – keep it or work hard enough and do what it takes to blow through it like it doesn’t exist?

OLD you/NEW you. Choose just ONE.

Beliefs, habits, actions.

You can’t be the old you and the new you at the same time.

You have to let go of one of them.

Which one will it be?