You Can’t Be Brilliant Every Time

Mining for Gold (photo by Creative Commons)

Everything isn’t epic.

Everything isn’t brilliant and better than the last.

We aren’t always remarkable.

Some days are simple, mundane and even average.

Yet our western culture is bannered with headlines that suggest otherwise.

I know titles sell, attract attention and shock us into investigating further.

The number of headlines that race across my screen making outlandish promises is causing me to not believe any of them.

  • 10 immediate steps to improve
  • 15 ways to be awesome
  • 3 reasons you keep failing
  • 7 simple things to fix everything

I don’t believe them.

  • Not every idea is going to work
  • Not every sale is going to close
  • Not every blog is going to have hundreds of thousands of followers
  • Not every client is going to get great results
  • Not every run is going to feel fast
  • Not every new hire is going to stay

Digging for gold

It reminds me of when you buy an entire album from your favorite band. Yeah I know most of the time we only buy the one song we love, but that feeds my example even more.

When you listen to the whole album you usually find one to maybe two songs that you really love.  The rest of them are fine, but they don’t strike a note in you like the others.

Why is that?

Why does the artist ship twelve or fourteen songs on an album when clearly only one or two are super solid?

He had to write twelve songs to find the gold one.

Were the others a waste of his time and talents?

No, instead we should consider that this is the process of extracting the art from within each of us.  In order to find the gold, you have to bust through a bunch of rocks in order to find a vein.

The artist wrote twelve songs in search of the one.

He knew immediately when he wrote it.  This one, the golden mother load, magically flowed out of him with ease.

The other twelve were just the prelude to the treasure.

I think this is how we should view our life’s work or as Pam Slim names it as our Body of Work.  Stop being eluded by the latest headline, frankly some of those writers are offering self-promotion more than substance.

Be willing to do the work, to ship your art without fear and know that every now and again you will find the gold you were looking for.

In the meantime, embrace that the other twelve versions are getting you closer each day to the brilliant one.

You are brilliant; you just need to keep digging.

Not For Sale. How Not to Sell Out

Cabo San Lucas-Mexico NOT FOR SALE

This message screams to every entrepreneurial tourist from the hillside of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Not For Sale

Why does this landowner feel compelled to post a 15″ x 92″ billboard facing the Pacific Ocean bay with capital letters stating his position?  I think I know why.  Put yourself in the landowner’s shoes for a minute.  He is saving a hundred phone calls from needing to be returned or ignored.

Here is the scene

Every rich guy that comes for seven days of self-indulgence sees this choice plot of dirt (see below picture) and cannot imagine that a shantytown would occupy this hillside

I’m going to call that guy and offer him a price he can’t refuse.

1784 phone calls later, the land owner must have cussed his way through painting this sign NO se Vende.  I laugh thinking that most of the phone calls likely came in English and his native tongue adds the explanation mark he intends.

Isn’t there something honorable about saying “Not For Sale”?  In a world where everything is for sale, there is still one guy who is saying NO.

You can’t have what is mine.  It’s too valuable to me.

I’d rather hang a hammock and drink a cooler of beer with my buddies than take your money.  

I am already wealthy in relationships, lifestyle and fulfillment. 

Go buy another plot of dirt and build your hotel. 

This one is No Se Vende. 

The view from next door-Pacific Ocean

How to stick it to The Man today

Joy Bucket-Key Ingredient in Regularly Sticking the Man

Two quick requests before I divulge my secrets on how to Stick It to the Man.

  1. I’m usually pretty upbeat in my writing. If this one seems a bit grim in the intro, hang on to the end for the sunshine to break through.
  2. Please don’t take this article to Human Resources and blow the whistle on us non-conformists.  I’m not going to give you advice on how to cheat on your expense report, pretend you are working when you are at the baseball game, or the like. This is a more covert approach.

Working for The Man

For a lot of years, I worked too much and played too little. My kids were little, my marriage was fragile, my career was young, my financial resources were limited, and my vacation time amounted to less than ten days a year.

If you’ve been working in your career for more than five-to-eight years, this idea of The Man will make sense to you.

If you’re married, have kids, a mortgage, and some general desire to “be successful,” this story will not need a lot of translation.

You’re already feeling the angst of The Man.

Get ready to revolt.

Who is The Man?

The phrase “stick it to the Man” encourages resistance to authority and essentially means “fight back” or “resist,” either openly or via sabotage. (Wikipedia)

The Man isn’t our boss, our company, or our customers; the Man is bigger than all of them. The Man is more intrusive than the government. He is more controlling and persuasive than any one person, organization, or individual in power.

The Man is

  • Mortgage payments
  • Deadlines
  • Obligations galore
  • The pressure to have green grass
  • The sticker on our windshield reminding us to not exceed 3,000 miles before the next oil change
  • The owners manual recommendations on everything we own
  • The house we live in
  • The Jones’s who live next door
  • The pressure to give our kids a better life than we had
  • The cars we drive
  • The PTA
  • The pressure to live an epic life
  • The word “should”

About eight years ago, the weight and pressure of working for The Man started making my knees buckle. With every additional grain of sand added, every increase in PSI (pounds per square inch) on my chest seemed to be foreplay for an inevitable implosion.

Kind of grim, huh?

Come on, haven’t you felt this same stuff yourself? If you had the pen, you could tell us plenty about your woes with The Man.

Remember, hang on to the end.

Transition the balance of power

The Man wasn’t standing over me every day imposing his dogmatic regime. I was allowing my obligatory beliefs and my allegiance to him to control my actions, decisions, and priorities.

How do I stop living under the weight of what I’m supposed to do and start living what I want to do?

How do you stick it to The Man?

You have to start with a quick list.  Title it “What I would do today if I was going to revolt to the system of The Man?”

Let me help you get started.  Think of all the stuff you say you are going to do if you were independently wealthy and didn’t have to go to work every day.  What about that list of adventures you keep saying you are going to take?  How about those Life List items you have vowed to complete. Write them all down.

If The Man didn’t have me, I’d…..

  • Watch the sunrise every day
  • Fly fishing in Montana where Brad Pitt caught that monster trout in A River Runs Through It.
  • Travel to Italy and spend a month taste-testing the countryside
  • Live in a shack on the beach of Hawaii
  • See Game 7 of the World Series

You probably don’t need a lot of help with the list. You can see my list here.

Here is the bottom line:

We are going to close the gap between the lives we wish we had and the ones we are living today. We blame it on The Man, but we are about to remove him from the picture.

Start Small

When the Man had me down, I blamed my lack of adventures on him. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough everything. I had this MSR Pocket Rocket stove stored in my basement that I had never used. I resented the fact that I hadn’t used it on some big multi-day trip where I brewed up Starbucks Via packets in my tent vestibule.

I decided I’d pluck it out of the basement storage and put it in the back of my car.  Maybe I’d find some way to use it.

MSR Pocket Rocket

If it weren’t for my friend Morgan and his Joy-to-use ratio idea, this stove would have stayed dormant in the basement.

His shitty grin said,

Why do you care if you only use that stove on the back of your truck instead of on a bike trip in France?
The Joy-to-use ratio is all that matters.

Translated:

How much Joy you derive from using it each time matters more than how many times you use it or where you use it.

I started using the little joy bomb stove after a bike ride or a run.  During lunchtime at work, I started going out to my car  just to fire it up and brew up some coffee. I started Sticking The Man anytime I could find an excuse to light a match and boil some water.

I was winning. With every BTU I was getting revenge.  I was standing over Him for a change.

My Joy meter went up and my oppression meter was going down.

Take that!

Insert Joy Bucket

I had this white 10-gallon Home Depot bucket that I bought to use for Triathlons. I would stuff my towel, helmet, goggles, etc. into the bucket and use it in the transition area when switching between race legs. I also had this file of stickers that I was saving for the future when I could figure out what to do with them.

Bland bucket plus cool stickers = Joy Bucket

I plastered the stickers in a mosaic across its white canvas and it transformed into certifiable coolness. I took all the little pieces of gear that I had accumulated for the hopeful adventures that weren’t taking place and dumped them into the bucket:

  • MSR Pocket Rocket stove
  • Cook set
  • Petzl headlamp
  • Shackleton tea brew
  • Spare running socks
  • Stainless steel wine glass
  • Ramen Noodles
  • Starbucks Via
  • Sunscreen
  • Wool gloves from the Dollar store
  • Bike inner tubes, tire tools, flashers,
  • Spice kit
  • Pocket knife
  • 1/2 lb. of white minute rice
  • French Press & coffee grounds
  • Toothbrush, deodorant, tooth paste
The Man can’t keep me down

Here is what the Joy Bucket has become:

  • Portable anticipation
  • Serendipitous-expectant-possibility  
  • My favorite things assembled and waiting, short, small bursts of use

You see The Man doesn’t stand a chance anymore when his lopsided influence over my life has been diminished.   Now fifteen minutes on the back of my trunk can yield stories that last years. Ask some of my buddies about the time’s I brewed up a cup of Ramen or a French Press cup of Joe.

The Oppressed became Kings.

Summary

The Man only has as much power and influence as we permit. He is far less of a tyrant than we believe him to be. Find small ways to stick-it-to-him every day. I’ve gone fishing at 6 am and to my desk by 8:30 am but refused to wash my fishy hands just so I could smile each time I got a whiff of their odor.

He can only have what you allow him.

What would you put in your Joy-Bucket?

When are we going to fire up a brew together?

How Would You Measure Your Impact Without a Chart?

Photo by Holden McHugh

If you’re the alleyway graffiti artist from the photo my son took in Paris, how do you measure impact?

Our world is finitely measured.

Charts, graphs, metrics, this vs. that, goals, targets, and baselines.

Your impact cannot be plotted and measured on a chart.

Impact is so much greater and yet so allusive to always quantify.

Big Data Drives Big Charts

If you’re a musician then you have been programmed to believe that ticket sales or downloads are how your effectiveness or success is measured.  Where is the impact meter on your screen that shows how your music influenced another musician to dig deeper to find the lyrics buried inside them?

If you’re a writer, book sales are your master.

If you’re a sales person, year-to-date sales performance is your dogmatic boss.

If you’re a CEO, profit for shareholders keeps you awake at night.

If you’re a (fill in your place in the story), (then fill in your metric).

There are clear elements that belong on a chart like sales, profit, average order, cost of sale, number of downloads, total new customers and the like.  For every plotted data point there is a more human sub-text story of impact that usually gets ignored, dismissed or forgotten.

How would you measure your impact?

Our impact, the real deep way that we each shape and influence the world cannot be measured on a chart.

I had lunch with a friend over the weekend and we talked about this idea of impact. He wrote a book a year or two ago and it wasn’t a NY Times Best Seller.  He threw everything he had at it: video, online, radio, and social media support.

But it did not break any sales, download or viral video records.

Are the measured results the only verdict on his work?

Despite the record smashing desires, he is still hearing echoes about the impact that his book is having on individual people.  The stories that are still come in are about how his book is making a difference in one or ten or twenty people’s lives.

Should that be enough?  In the business world, you have to make a profit or you simply have a hobby.  Profits, progress, and popularity are a necessary ingredient to get a chance to write your next book or keep the doors of your software company open.

I want to highlight the tension between achieving the required profits and digging to measure the impact of your life and work.

If you threw out the charts and graphs, how would you attempt to plot your effectiveness and impact?

You might be surprised how the sub story of impact is more significant than you know.

The Unashamed Truth About Leadership

Pacific Ocean meets Columbia River

It’s difficult some days to know the way to the right path.

It’s a challenge to know what the effect is of the conversation I just had with an employee.  I used a coaching and sports analogy to attempt to communicate my idea.  But maybe I just sounded like another chowder-head using a sports analogy.

When I took the car away from my 18 year old today, was that the right thing to do?  How much patience should I extend and how firm should I make the boundary in the sand?

I don’t know.

Learning to lead without feedback

I had a few glasses of wine last night with some good friends and we talked about this idea of stepping into what we call “Young Kingship”.  Yes I’m entrusted with a lot to manage, care for and grow but the truth is that it is an experiment.

It is an experiment in outcomes.

Science experiments usually consist of a couple of key factors:

  1. Try something different
  2. Give it some time
  3. See what happens

I run experiments every day at work, in life and at play.  Yet it’s still an experiment, an unknown, and a risk as we wait for the outcome.  Will the employee(s) that I lead embrace the invitation for action vs. in-action?  Will my son understand the lesson is about respect and not about a clean car?

Most of the time I don’t know what will happen.  Most of the time I move forward in spite of a clear distinctive path.  I used to wait, pause, ponder, poll the room and then decide what to do.

Leadership is lonely

I would wait around for a real-time poll to measure the audience’s reaction to my leadership.

I wasn’t leading.  I was trying to build fans.  The irony was that they weren’t willing to follow me, as they could smell the fear in me.  Now I’ve learned that the more I lead, the more lonely it becomes out on point.

No “good job”.

No “thanks dad”.

No “thanks so much for doing that”.

Instead I hear crickets chirping.

Lewis & Clark

I often picture Lewis and Clark on their epic adventure trying to unlock a pathway to the Pacific Ocean through local waterways.

Can you imagine how lonely they must have felt?

Two years of stumbling, mumbling and fumbling their way forward.  I bet they couldn’t recall if the mission was a mythical story or reality.  They must have felt crazy some days and heroic an hour later.

They nudged their way west as they experimented with another dead-end, another shortcut turned foolish and a second winter stuck sipping whiskey waiting for the river to thaw.

Dollar Cost Averaging

If I judge my parenting, career performance or leadership on any specific day, I might just throw in the towel.

The experiment process allows us the time to await the results over a period of days, weeks, years and decades.

Lewis and Clark found the passage to the Pacific Ocean in two years.  It took them another two years to get home to tell anybody about it.

My children’s children will likely be a better measurement of my parenting success and shortcomings.

For my employees, I am leaning on the idea that the best judgement of my effectiveness should be measured over the course of their entire career.

I have to remind myself not to pull out the grade card and tally up my score each day.  The unashamed truth about leadership is that we don’t always feel confident about what we’re doing.  We should keep moving forward in spite of that uncertainty and counting on Dollar Cost Averaging to make up for the bad days.

Keep going

Play More with Your Kids: Scooter Hero’s in Denver

Scooters in Denver

I never play enough, but when I do it’s usually pretty sweet.

The irony is that I love to talk about playing but I actually spend more time dreaming about it than actually doing it.

Although my play plots low on the line graph for overall time spent each year, I’m told I’m pretty good at it.

My daughter and I hit the road this summer and meandered across the Front Range of Colorado for 48 hours.   I’ve done this a lot with my son over the years but my daughter and I had never dirt-bagged it together like this.

We hit the Denver Natural History Museum, road-side camped above Boulder, swam in the historic El Dorado Springs pool and rented a scooter in downtown Denver for a couple of hours.

We had no real plan

None of this was planned. We just moved from one idea to the next and let the day unfold. The truth is I/we pray a lot about what the next step should be.   It’s not always crystal clear but a lot of the times it’s perfectly evident which path we should pursue.

Found on Yelp

I’m a big Yelp fan when it comes to finding where-to-eat and in this case renting a scooter (what I would have originally called a moped-old school I guess?).

Here is what I loved about Dave at ScootoursDenver, he started the business for fun.  Dave started the company because he had always had ideas swirling around in his head for companies to start or ideas to launch and he choose to just do it.

The bottom line

We romped around downtown Denver on a hot summer day for hours. We rode through city parks, stopped for lunch, shot video and had a phenomenal daddy-daughter experience together.  Check out the photo gallery below.

Don’t make playing so hard.

Just go for it.

If you’re ever in Denver, check out Dave’s ScooToursDenver.

Keep going.

Stop Waiting. Just Go For It.

M Field center stage at Quiksilver launch

A lack of action guarantees 100% probability that absolutely nothing new has a chance of happening.

None of us, not a single one of us, can predict what will or won’t happen tomorrow.

You have to risk the next unknown step.

No one knows if they’re going to become the next

  • Steve Jobs
  • ProBlogger
  • TED speaker
  • Entrepreneur on the cover of Wired Magazine
  • NY Times Best Selling Author
  • Grammy winning Musician
  • Surf wear designer

We should go for it anyway.

We don’t have to:

  • Know where it is going to finish
  • Have a five-year plan
  • Know what shape it is going to take
  • Wait for permission
  • Have a budget
  • Know how to do it
  • Know all the right people

We do need to:

  • Swing for the fence not for a single
  • Risk embarrassment and rejection
  • Tune out negative people
  • Believe in ourselves
  • Try something different when we get stuck

We are guaranteed to:

  • Meet interesting people
  • Feel alive again
  • Have new experiences that will stretch you
  • Never regret that you tried
  • Learn a lot about yourself

They are just like us

They too faced doubt, challenges, discouragement, slim moments of hope, but they went for it anyway.

Get out your pom-poms and your list of excuses.

You’re going to want to cheer, cry tears of joy and cross off every excuse you’ve entertained.

Leading the way to simplicity

Mike Field

Artist, Waterman, after 15+ years as a painter and designer M. Field was announced last week as Quiksilver’s newest beach wear clothing line.

Ask Mike what he knew about apparel design 18 months ago?

Ask Mike how confident he was that he was going to be on the big stage with brands like DC, Hawk and Roxy?

Tweet this to @Quiksilver and congratulate them.

Listen to our Podcast interview last year when this was just kicking off.

He’s just like us.

Corporate Escapee

Pam Slim

Author, Blogger, Career Coach

Just published her second book, Body of Work (book review coming soon) after she escaped corporate consulting to go out on her own.

Ask Pam if she knew Guy Kawasaki was going to promote her now famous letter to CEO’s, COO’s and CIO’s?

Tweet this to @PamSlim.

Ask her if she thought that the blog she created in a computer class would be read by hundred’s of thousands of readers each year?

Her adventurous story Podcast.

She’s just like us.

Finding remarkable again

Tess Vigeland

Broadcaster, Author, Finance guru.

Jumped without a net after 11 years as a leading host of National Public Radio weekly show-Marketplace.

Ask Tess how easy it’s been some days getting up each day embracing the unknown?

Ask her if she ever thought a fifteen-minute speech to 3000 people would have changed her life forever?

Tweet this to @TessVigeland.

Ask her if she believed she’d get a book deal two weeks later?

More on Tess’s journey.

She’s just like us.

Finding new rhythms

Jackopierce

Jack O’Neill & Cary Pierce

Dads, Musicians, Entrepreneurs.

Started rocking together in 1988 in central Texas.

Two decades later, ask these two musicians if they thought they’d get a second shot at the big show?

Tweet this to @Jackopierce.

How about a recording contract in Nashville?

Give a listen to some of their tunes.

They are just like us.

On stage TED2013

Nilofer Merchant

Author, Speaker, Corporate Director

After her long tech career at silicon valley giants like Apple, Nilofer earned her spot next to U2’s Bono at this year’s TED2013.

Ask her if she thought she’d be featured in the Harvard Business Review after writing a break-out article about how sitting is killing us?

Tweet this to @Nilofer.

Now (among many things) she’s the messenger of Walking Meetings.

Podcast interview from a cafe in the valley.

She’s just like us.

Bringing big ideas to light

Mario Schultzke

Founder of IdeaMensch

After a 50 state road tour on a shoestring budget, armed with only a MacBook Pro, and a US map; IdeaMensch has now helped bring over 2000 entrepreneurs ideas to light.

Ask Mario how confident he felt when tomorrow night’s next Meet Up had zero tickets sold?

Tweet this to @IdeaMensch

Ask him how easy it’s been doing his now day job at the University of Montana and running IdeaMensch?

Listen to Mario’s nine lessons that every entrepreneur should know.

He’s just like us.

Author of Accidental Creative

Todd Henry

Author, Podcaster, Consultant, Creative.

Ask Todd about how he accidentally became one of iTunes top business podcasts by faithfully recording his ideas every week since 2007?

Tweet this to @ToddHenry.

Ask him how much caution he received over his latest best-selling business book title “Die Empty”  Who wants to read about death Todd? 

Listen to his story.

He’s just like us.

Zero to on top in two years

Jeff Goins

Tribe Leader, Author, Mega Blogger

Ask @JeffGoins if he thought he’d be speaking side-by-side with Michael Hyatt at his Platform conferences when he cold called him to have coffee?

Tweet this to @JeffGoins.

Ask him if while he was leading mission trips he thought he’d build a Mega Blog in less than two years time?

Podcast early in the upward trend.

He’s just like us.

What are you not doing today that you wish you were?

Come on…tell us.

Keep going.

I Was On Pace to Win, But I Didn’t

a-perfect-photo-of-usain-bolt-after-losing-a-race-in-rome

You were out the gate and setting a blistering pace.

The crowd was offering their cheers and accolades.

Everyone believed you were going to do it this time.

It looked like you were pulling out in front ahead of the rest.

You were on pace to win

It is easier to start than to finish.

It’s easy to be ahead of others in the beginning.

It’s bloody difficult to actually win.

When self-evaluation is missing

I hear this phrase a lot I was on pace to win.

Runners or athletes use it in their post race analysis.

At some point they were on pace to set a personal record, win their age group or win the race.

Early in they boast of how great their race was going, then comes their proclamation of I was on pace…

What I often fail to hear is an athlete’s self-reflection connecting what mistakes were made that threw a monkey wrench in their on pace plan.

The cruel reality is that being on pace to win and actually winning or finishing are not the same.

Difficult questions to ask ourselves

As Teddy Roosevelt famously argued,

the credit goes to the man actually in the arena.  

I think you’ll agree that there is due credit deserved to the man who even attempts to be in the arena.

Yet, I believe we owe it to ourselves to perform the necessary self-assessment to reconcile what really happened in the arena.

  • Why didn’t I finish?
  • Why didn’t I accomplish my goal?
  • What role did external factors play?
  • What should I consider doing differently next time?
  • What excuses am I making that are masking the real reasons I didn’t accomplish my plan?

Immortal Words

As Teddy Roosevelt said in 1910 “…and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly...”

I have a list of things I’ve failed at.

Those experiences have been my teacher.

I hope you accept this as my invitation to have the courage to engage in some honest inward evaluation of why you fell short.

Failure yes, but we dared greatly, right?

Enjoy the rest of Teddy’s words.

Teddy Roosevelt, Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic”
delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Acknowledgement to www.Teddy-Roosevelt.com for the above expert.

Get Outside Every Day and Move More

I wish this was the view from my office

When was the last time you got up from your desk and got outside for five minutes before the next meeting? Instead of checking one more email or returning one more phone call, I think you should stand up from your cubicle and go outside.

In America we spend most of our time at work. Vacations total less than four weeks a year for most people. Weekends are often comprised of runs to Home Depot and our kid’s sporting events.

Throw in a daily commute to work and poof a week goes by and the only time we were outside was walking between our car and our office building.

I know many people who only engage the outside world on a weekend or a vacation.

That seems like a long time to wait to be outside.

Years ago I found this sustenance for good living, get outside once everyday.

Walking laps is better than nothing

I started walking laps around my building between meetings just to get some fresh air.

At first this was driven by stress and the hopeful desire of alleviating some of the environmental pressure.

I didn’t change my shoes or swap out my work clothes; I simply walked out the door.

I discovered that by making it a goal to be outside every single day something was slowly restored in me.

The truth is I can’t really explain to you what changed other than to say it was positively affecting my outlook, lowering my stress level and increasing my optimism.

The Jawbone Up and FitBit

If you’d love to have a coach to help motivate you to get out and away from your desk, for less than $130 you can pick up one of these.

The Jawbone Up and the FitBit are both wristbands that track your daily activity including sleep, steps walked and calories burned.

They will sync with your iPhone or Droid through a downloadable app.

Eat better. Sleep better. Move More.

My wife just got her’s in the mail today.

These charming little accountability partners will give you a nudge when you’ve been sitting for too long or have yet to meet your daily exercise objectives.

You will be amazed at how much more activity you engage in when something is nagging you to get moving.

Fitbit

I’d encourage you to give it a try for two weeks.

Get outside once everyday and witness for yourself the benefits.  Let me know how it goes.

You’ll never go back.

One last piece of advice

If you haven’t listened to my podcast interview with Nilofer Merchant on Walk-n-Talk meetings you need to.

She eliminates any remaining excuses that you can conjure up as to why you can’t walk “Sitting is our generation’s smoking”.

You don’t stand a chance if you watch her Ted Talk.

Why Shouldn’t It Be You?

Kelly Slater-Surfing Legend

Someone is going to

  • Win a Grammy
  • Start a women’s movement
  • Raise ten million dollars
  • Ring the opening bell for trading at the London Stock Exchange
  • Move to Hawaii
  • Write a New York Times best seller
  • Win the Boston Marathon
  • Live to be 110 years old
  • Set the world record for eating the most goldfish
  • Ride across America on a bicycle raising money for an orphanage in Haiti
  • Meet the President of the United States
  • Open up for the Dave Matthews Band
  • Displace Intel as the world’s largest server chip manufacturer
  • Remarry after the tragic loss of a spouse
  • Discover the cure to cancer
  • Eject from status quo and take the kids on a year long tour of the United States in an RV
  • Be the boss
  • Meet “the Boss”
  • Run a 5K for the first time
  • Receive needed forgiveness
  • Speak in front on 5000 people
  • Take a year off work to travel
  • Lower cholesterol by 50 points
  • Become a father
  • Pay off a mortgage
  • Raise $25M but only selling 25% of the company
  • Go surfing with Kelly Slater
  • Quit a job without having a job because its the right thing to do
  • Leave an abusive relationship
  • Write a blog that is read by 200,000 people
  • Create the next Sundance Film festival winner
  • Write songs for a living while commuting back and forth from NYC and Nashville
  • Qualify for Ironman Hawaii
  • Be voted Denver’s most innovative architect

Why shouldn’t it be you?

We often tell ourselves “it will never happened to me”.

When we entertain that type of thinking then we preclude ourselves from the possibility that the unlikely will ever happen to us.

Someone is going to accomplish each of these items on this list.

Why shouldn’t it be you?  Why can’t it be you?

What would be on your list if you dared to engage it?

I know it can be done, as many of these are not examples, they are real people’s lives.

Why shouldn’t it be you?