Success Sucks

Life is a series of choices that made every second that domino down the line. Your choice this very minute affects the rest of your life.

There is a lot of discussion around what success is and what it is not. My personal view is that success is doing what sucks, what is hard and what is painful to get to a greater place in your life.

I think back to Ironman and I know that I use it a lot but it has so many values to me. I am sure that your passion or your hobby has taught you many lessons as well.

As I got off the bike and made my way into transition, I was feeling okay. I knew that all I had left was to run 26.2 miles and I would be done. Within a mile of the run, I knew it was going to be painful. My legs were cramping and I could not get my nutrition and water in check. I knew that I had a long road of suffering ahead of me.

The reason that many people do Ironman is the very reason why so many people choose not to do Ironman, it sucks. The time you have to put into it just to get to the start line giving up your social life to stay on your training schedule. Feeling the fatigue and pain as your workouts get longer and longer and increase in intensity. Then you get to race day and it sucks some more. The whole day, no matter how good you are, is a struggle and it should be.

The difference is that the people that compete in an Ironman know that it sucks but let the feeling of crossing that finish line and the experience triumph over the pain. This is the key to life. Embrace the suck.

The key to success is not doing what makes you happy or trying to find your passion much less follow it. Success is taking the obstacles head on, making the hard choice and doing what is right, not what is easy.

We have been told that success is accomplishing great goals and winning but what if we reframed the way we think to see success as the work that we put into it. The moment we decide to take the hard way, the road less traveled and do what is best, not what is the easiest.

Do not get me wrong, I still see success as a conglomerate of things but a majority of what we see as success is really the output of choosing to make the best decision. We know what success looks like in the end but most of us have no clue how to get there.

How do you get to be a millionaire, by having a million dollars, pretty simple, right?  However the road to getting to a million dollars is a series of hard choices, do I go out tonight and spend my money, have a good time or do I save my money, invest it and hold off for the long term goals.

Success is not an accident; it is a series of hard choices.

The greatest part is that you can be successful today, even if you chose to not be successful for a single moment in your life prior to this. It is just one decision away from changing your life. Go be successful.

What I learned from Ironman

Ironman some say it is the toughest thing you could ever do, to me it is one of the greatest things you will ever do. I love endurance athletics because you get to push your mind, body  and spirit to new limits and all of the les

sons that you learn while you do them. Here are some of the lessons that I learned about life and success from completing an Ironman.

Focus on where you want to go. I signed up for Ironman being a very poor swimmer and now; I am just a poor swimmer. I can always get better and that is the point, I can get better. I knew my weakness and what it would take but I focused on where I wanted to go Stop waiting for the right time because there will never be a right time. There will always be something wrong. Stop waiting for when you are ready because there will always be an excuse. Forget what you do not know or what you cannot do, you will get there, just commit to getting there.

One small step. Is how you complete an Ironman, change the world or change your life. One step after the other. An Ironman  is really not that complicated. You just need to keep going. One stroke after the other, one pedal stroke and one foot in front of the other, if you just keep moving you will get to your destination, never give up. It is a balance of figuring out how far you have to go and focusing on that next step. Just keep moving in the right direction.

Everyone travels at a different pace, but all that matters is getting to the finish. It does not matter your pace as long as you keep moving forward and meet the deadline. We get too caught up in trying to keep up with everyone else that it ends up hurting us. As I said before I am a poor swimmer. If I were to try and keep up with the great swimmers I would be dead on the bike and the run and I may not cross the finish line. This happens in real life. We see the success of our friends and we get happy for them but we get mad at ourselves. We tell ourselves that we should be there and we should be that successful. If we would have just worked harder and done more, we would be there. We look at all of our failures and tell ourselves we are not good enough. We stop, give up and are out of the game. Remember that your pace is your pace and you will get there. Whether that be crossing the finish line or reaching another goal that you have, you have what it takes. Some parts will take you longer and others will take you shorter, just focus on getting there.

Ask for help. Surround yourself that have the same passion as you but have different insights. My friend Kare Anderson is an expert in this area. How can your differences help the people around you and how can their differences help you? From reading this post you know that I suck at swimming.  I take every opportunity that I can to learn how to be a better swimmer. I also take every opportunity I can to help push people past their limits to live more. I will help people in any way that I can, not for the recognition but to see that person grow. It is amazing to see that your investment in a person can truly become a lifetime of change. Even it is not a lifetime, just for a moment it is worth it.

Embrace what sucks. Stop doing what is easy and what does not hurt. It is okay to become broken, worn and be filled with pain, because that is where all the growth happens. We think that when we fall or when it gets hard we are weak and that is a lie. The truth is that we are truly the weakest when it becomes easy. There is no challenge so there is no growth. Whether we want to believe it or not, we are tough enough to do anything that we want. Stop looking for the easiest way out because it is the easiest way for a reason, there is little value in taking the easy way if any value at all.

Thank the people that help you get there. Ironman is amazing for a number of reasons but one of the biggest ones for me are the volunteers and the spectators. Here are people that get up early, stay up late, stand around for hours, travel, take time out of their day, cheer for you and help you and they do it all for you and ask nothing in return. I know that you have those people in your life. Remember to thank them for being right there with you before, during and after your journey. Far too often we focus on proving everyone wrong that told us we could not do it, we waste time that we could be focusing on those that knew we could all along.

Forget about the medal. I get joy in the experience and the relationships that I get to build during not only these events but during the training. I have made some of my best friends over endurance events and you can talk these people about anything. Medals get lost and they get dusty, these friendships, memories and lessons will never fade. Not only do you get to see how great you are, you get to see how great others are and how far they can go. The takeaway for this in real life is to stop focusing on the extrinsic values and start to focus intrinsic values. Do not be successful just to be successful, define why you want to successful and what will motivate you to get there

Your end result is all about what you put into it. We hear a lot about overnight success stories. The success is not due to luck but because the person that had the success stayed up all night and working their ass off. This is not only true for endurance events but in life as well. If you are not getting where you want to go; give some more, try harder and try it a different way. You cannot expect excellent results when you only give mediocre effort.

Remember why you started. When it gets tough and when it starts to hurt, remember why you started. When it gets easy, you start to enjoy it and you begin to smile, remember why you started. When you feel like giving up, remember why you started. Ironman is a journey and life is a journey.  Making a choice to live bolder is a journey. There will be times when you want to give up but don’t, always remember why you started; it will fuel you to accomplish anything that you want. Always remember why you started.

Show your appreciation. Ironman is amazing for a number of reasons but one of the biggest ones for me are the volunteers and the spectators. Here are people that get up early, stay up late, stay around for hours all for you and ask nothing in return. I know that you have those people in your life. Remember to thank them for being right there with you before, during and after your journey. 

Your end result is all about what you put into it. We hear a lot about overnight success stories and my guess is that it is not due to luck but because the person that had the success stayed up all night and gave everything that they had. This is not only true for endurance events but in life as well. If you are not getting where you want to go, give some more, try harder and try it a different way. You cannot expect excellent results when you only give mediocre effort.

Be ruthless with your life

Your time is limited, so stop wasting it on things that do not matter, with people that do not matter or. Sometimes we care too much other times we just get sucked in because we want to be part of the group, not because we really like the people but because we do not want to be left out.

We need to start to be ruthless in everything that we do. This does not mean that you have to be rude, it means knowing what is worth your time and what is not, more importantly who is worth your time and who is not.

We all want to belong to and feel part of the group but what is easy to forget is that just because we are a part of a group does not mean that we are meant to be there. We try and make ourselves fit in to people we do not like that have ideas that go against what we believe just to fit in but we never really fit in, we always feel like we are out.

I believe almost everyone wants to do good in the world and wants to help others and that is a blessing and a curse. At times it helps us do amazing things but then it can make us believe that investing our valuable time into people that are not worth it is worth it. When I say this by no means and am I saying that people are useless but I am saying that some people do not deserve your time.

How often have you spent hours being frustrated with someone that did you wrong, pisses you off or tells you that you cannot do something? You are wasting your time on people that do not matter instead of investing it with people that do matter. We think about proving them wrong and making them hurt, getting even and making every move to spite them, when we do this, we are not winning, we are losing.

I have a problem of talking about things I have no control over and that I cannot change, every minute that I do this is a minute taken away from something else that I can control, that I can improve something where I can see the impact I have created.

We need to be ruthless with our time and how we spend it and who we spend it on. Life is too short for us to just give our time away, our mind away and our energy away. We need to consciously focus our efforts on the things that matter and the people that matter. It is the only way that we can truly get anything done. If we keep wasting our time on people and things that do not matter it takes away from the things that do. It not only takes away our time but it takes away our energy, how many times have you thought to yourself “I just do not have the energy” I believe that this happens because we focus too much on the things that do not matter and it drains us.

I am not implying that we do not do what it is hard. I believe doing what is hard, different or causes us pain is a great thing, if we do it for the right reasons. We need to focus your energy on what matters and on who matters. If we do this, we can grow so much more and take on so much more that matters

Failure by Default

How many times have you thought about doing something only to tell yourself all the reasons why it could not possibly happen, where you would fail and all that could possibly go wrong? You dismiss the opportunity and try to forget all about it. I say try to forget because you never really forget about it, just give up on it, believing that never trying is better than failing. Unfortunately this line of thinking seems to be accepted in the world that we live in. We suffer from a symptom that I call “Failure by default”

The funny part of it all is the thing that we fear the most, FAILURE happens right away when we choose to not go after what we want or to go past our current boundaries because of the fear that we are not good enough, smart enough, rich enough or whatever you want to insert here to get what we want. We do not even give the idea a chance to have life, a chance to grow, we just dismiss it because we are afraid of being a little successful and then failing and instead we choose to fail with no success.

In the end, hard work, grit and dedication pay off and that is hard to believe when you are looking at a big idea that will change the world or at least change your life or something that willjust be different. It is easy to let the voices get to you that tell you not to take that chance, to not be adventurous and to be okay with not doing what you really want. In the end when we choose that path, we know what the results will be if you do not take the chance, it will never happen.

Sometimes we are blind to the fact that we are still failing if we never started on the journey. How can it possibly be a failure if we never tried it, it is a failure not because something went wrong but because you never gave it a chance, give a chance, work hard and see what happens.

Start taking those chances you fear and start believing that you have what it takes. In the end it begins with the choice on if you will try or not. If you try you can fail but if you do not try you will fail. It does not have to be a big move by any means; in fact you can start off small. Even the smallest choices can be hard to make but they are worth it.

So undeserving

One of my favorite things to do is to watch inspiring stories of amazing individuals on Ellen. One day while browsing through there was a segment about a young lady that would be receiving money. In the interview Ellen mentioned that the young lady had to give up cable to be able to feed her children, this stopped me in my tracks.

I was mad, frustrated and upset. How could giving up your cable be considered like such a big deal. I live with cable and I am able to survive. There are plenty of people out there that live with so much less and in my opinion are so much more deserving. Then it hit me like a bag of bricks, very rarely do we ever get what we truly deserve and more importantly the idea that we have the right to judge the worthiness of anyone is wrong.

There will always be someone who wants it more, deserves it more and has suffered more. Yet for some reason that cannot be explained we get so much more than we deserve. I for one can say with absolute certainty that if I was given everything that I deserve, I would not be where I am today.
Far too often in my own life, I have held back kindness, words of encouragement or praise for someone because I did not believe they deserved it. I did not believe that they had done enough to earn what I could give them and what could potentially change their life and the true misery of it all is I lost far more when I did not share than I would have lost or potentially lost with sharing it, all because I did not think they were deserving.

The problem I faced and still face at times is the belief that I have the right and the need to base my actions on how deserving an individual is. I understand the fact that we need to choose who we spend our time with and make sure we spend our time with those that bring us up. This is a different concept. It is not about whom you spend your time with; it is about a simple action to choose kindness and to choose to give the best version of yourself every single second of your life.
In life we always have two options, to give the best version of ourselves or to settle for something less. When we settle, we do more of a disservice to ourselves than to anyone else. When we choose to not give the best version of ourselves we not only impact our current situation in a negative way but our future as well. Every decision we make brings us closer or further away to our goals and to becoming an even better version of ourselves.

It is the people that have chosen to constantly give the best version of themselves with blatant disregard to what was happening around them that stick out in our mind. Think of Anne Frank, and everything that she dealt with in her lifetime. Martin Luther King who lived in a time where it would have been easy to embrace violence, decided to give the best version of himself and inspire a nation. In my own life I think of two individuals who keep me going every single day and have inspired me beyond words, while I have many of these people in my life, this mother and son stick out. Their names are Annika and Bo Johnson.

Bo was diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia at the age of 12 and sadly his life ended far too soon on September 28, 2012. While the news is devastating I do not think I am doing him proper justice by just focusing on the battle he had to endure, the real story of inspiration is the life he lived inspire of it all. Bo’s message is simple, Love each other, help each other, have your neighbor's back. If you see someone in need- even a stranger- reaches out and helps. This world can be a better place if we care and help each other. When he was sent home to spend his last remaining days with his family and friends, he did not focus on being negative because of the situation he was in but instead he decided to give the best version of himself and to change the world and the lives of the people around him. Then you have Annika, the mother of Bo, a women who had the most important and precious thing in her life taken away from her. To most this would be the start to living the rest of your life full of hate and seeing all the evil in the world. This is not Annika; she gives the best version of herself and continues to change the world around her. She cheers on every patient battling cancer with the hope that no one will ever have to go through losing someone they love like she did. I imagine a world where they both made the decision to simply not give the best version of themselves, it certainly would have been understandable, they certainly would have been deserving to do so but they decided not to, and instead of hiding from the world, they went out and changed it.

There are two messages I want you to get from this post. The first I hope is clear, stop judging people, yourself and your actions based on what is “deserved” and simply give the best version of yourself. The second is that I want you to realize that the only way you can change the world is by giving the best version of yourself. You do not need some giant plan, you just need to be yourself.

Life is too short...

We often use the saying “life is too short” or some variation of it to help us deal with an issue, put things into perspective or motivate us. While the saying has a lot of sentiment, we need to stop using it as a source of motivation and as an excuse. It puts us at odds with trying to do everything before we die. Here are some examples of that prove my point.

We often use “life is too short” as a mantra to no longer put up with negative people in our life. First let me say that I do not think anyone should waste any time with someone who brings them down. It is unhealthy and you deserve better. It does not matter if it is a relationship, friendship or someone you work with. Spend as little time with these people as you can and if you can get them out of your life, do it. If you lived to be 100 or 200 or even 500, would it be okay to spend your time with people that bring you down? The fact of the matter is, you could live forever and you should never spend a moment with someone who makes you feel bad about yourself.

“Life is too short to not take chances”, puts us in a place that we constantly need to worry that if we do not take a chance today or right now, there will never be another one. That we are somehow limited on the chances and opportunities that we have and we need to be sure we never miss one. While I am all for taking chances and making the most out of every opportunity, if we need to compare it to how long we could live, we miss the point. We should not take chances because of the limited time we have on this earth, we should take chances because it is something that we want to do and something we feel called to do. If you take a chance just because of limited time, you are more likely than not, wasting time. In fact the whole idea of chance is absurd to me, yes there will be chances of opportunity for you in your life that come along unexpectedly but we need to be in the mindset that every damn day is an opportunity to live the life you want.

My whole issue with the “life is too short” mentality is that it stops a lot more opportunities than we think. For some, life is too short to follow their dreams. Their dreams will take a great amount of time, and we never know when we could die. Following our dreams mean giving up things that we love and that hurts. Some dreams are long-term and pretty damn ambitious and so for those dreams, we could say life is too short. Life is too short to go and chase all of it, to spend countless hours working on a project and to not even know if it will all work out. Life is too short to not be “happy” and have the easy life. Some dreams mean letting go of other dreams, to stop being comfortable and to be scared at times. The real issue with telling people that life is too short is it makes them judge what they want to do based off of them dying and not based on what they really want to do and where they will have an impact. It is better to be in pursuit of your dreams and die then to not chase your dreams at all because there was not enough time.

We need to focus on the fact that there is so much opportunity. Opportunity is all around us. Fill your life with taking chances and following your dreams because you could live for 50 more years not because you could die tomorrow.

There is something that you need to know.

As I turned 29 I was flooded with birthday love and one message that kept coming across was that I was a source of inspiration for many people, while I appreciate the kind words, I think many times it is lost on people that I am no different than all the rest of the world. I am just one person who decided to take some chances, have some fun and live outside of my comfort zone.

Why I bring this up is that overall I see an issue and a mental barrier to those that we look to for inspiration. The problems is that we see those people at a different level than us, we see all the great things that they are doing and how “perfect” of a life they lead. When we start to see them in that light, we lose faith that we too can be that great and that we can be just as inspiring. We lose faith because we start to think of all the times we have failed and all of the “flaws” we have, so I want to share my story.

Here is the truth. I am stubborn, rude, mean and at times arrogant. I have failed more times than I can count. I am at times afraid, negative and dislike the world. I struggle and my life and my choices are nowhere near perfect. In fact many times in my life, I have had no idea where I was headed or what I would be doing. Far too often I let my anger run my how I think, feel and act. I am at times very unworthy of all the praise and compliments I receive. This is not me feeling bad about myself, it is just the truth.

We look at everything that is wrong with us and we see them as barriers to us being successful. We see them as things we need to hide, dirty little secrets that we cannot share, because who could possibly be worse than us? The voice inside our head, tells us that if we tell anyone these secrets we will become a fraud and unloved.

The truth is it is because of these things not in spite of them that our story can become so great, so powerful and so inspiring. These are the characteristics that we must overcome to become the best version of ourselves. It would be absurdly easy to live a perfect life, where nothing went wrong and you always got your way but it would be an uninspiring one. There would be no story, there would be no hope and there would be no greatness within you.

To me it seems that many times when we talk about accepting ourselves and loving ourselves, we only choose to love and accept the good parts. While I know everyone has an amazing gift and should celebrate how great they are, this type of thinking is flawed. It is flawed because it makes us hide and not love who we really are, with this thinking we only love ourselves when we are perfect and yet we never are.

The choice to embrace and accept our flaws is when we are truly set free, it is then and only then that we can deal with these issues and work on them. If we constantly ignore them, they will not go away but they will become bigger and bigger and take more control over your life.

I want everyone to realize how great they already are and that they need to share it with the world. It is easy for us to talk about all the good times but what really shapes us and creates us for who we are today is the times that we have struggled and where we fell short. We need to start talking about these times more often. We should stop being afraid to admit that we are not perfect, that we struggle and that we are normal with extraordinary gifts.  When we choose to no longer be afraid that is when we truly can be inspiring and embrace how great we truly are.