I saw this post from a colleague this morning and needed to share.

This is a great symbol of how obstacles can hold you back or propel you forward. Mr. Thorpe could have freaked out and given up. Without his shoes, how could he stand to run/compete?

Instead he found a solution and went on to win gold… TWICE!

What obstacles can you overcome in order to propel yourself forward?

For more, here is a chapter from my book Purposely Positive: How to Live an Intentional and Inspired Life available on Amazon.

Constant Change

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”

—Harold Wilson

“The great tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.”

—Benjamin E. Mays

Change is the only constant in life. A smart man named Heraclitus said something quite similar to that a few years back (somewhere between 535 B.C. and 475 B.C.). “There is nothing permanent, except change.” Things have changed quite a bit since the B.C. years (see what I did there?), but the truth remains: almost everything is changing, all around us, constantly. Just notice the different seasons (unless you live along the equator where the seasons are pretty much the same, then you might not have a concept of what I am talking about). As time passes, everything on this Earth is transforming. The grass you stand on today is not the same grass you stood on last year. The air you are breathing today is different than what you breathed yesterday. I hope what you’re having for lunch is different than what you’ve had every day for the past few months. You are not who you were last year, let alone thirty years ago. So don’t let your past define your future. You couldn’t really do that even if you tried.

Living off your accomplishments from the past may get you a bit ahead in the here and now, but not for very long. And hiding who you can become due to some mistakes you might have made in the past is just as idiotic and worthless. Pride and regret are the parents of lethargy. If you want to have a pulse, you’re going to need to accept that change is happening, and it’s happening at this very moment.

Take your amazing body, for example. Red blood cells have about a four-month lifespan. The cells that line your trachea live for about one to two months; the lining of your small intestine for two to four days. The lining of your stomach for two to nine days. Your fat cells…eight years (I know. I was hoping we could kill those guys off a bit quicker). All these cells inside your body are constantly changing and reforming, over and over again. One other interesting thing about this short list you just read… the more possible “trauma” to the cells, usually the faster the turnaround and the faster the growth. Isn’t that interesting?

Growth is necessary for survival. If you aren’t expanding your horizons, you’re slowly dying. Growth happens quicker the more trauma you feel and the more you experience challenges. So don’t shy away from opportunities to grow. Challenges are usually doors to a brighter future. Now I’m not saying go “traumatize” yourself on purpose. Diving head first into a pool without water will definitely cause some challenges, but not the kind I’m thinking of. I’m saying the true masterminds, the successes, the outliers and the high performers in life, have learned to look for the opportunities hidden inside the challenges. They don’t just “roll with the punches” of change. They use those punches to propel them into something greater.

If you are willing to accept from the evidence previously presented (just re-read a couple paragraphs higher on the page for a refresher)—that change is always happening—then you must realize these changes can be perceived as positive or negative. You’re going to experience troubles and exhilarations, that is the plain and simple truth. When the victories come, celebrate, and plan on the next one. When the knock downs happen, don’t let them keep you there. Realize that within these traumas lies the opportunity to grow at an even faster rate. You learn more from episodes viewed as losses than from the “wins.” So when you are getting your butt kicked in life, take a moment to just think: “OK, so this is crappy. But I know from the science of intestinal cell turnover that I will grow from this experience quicker than I would have had I not gone through this crap-storm.”

So, what are you going to learn from this change? How can you let this experience propel you more toward the person you want to be?”

On the other side of the “what’s going on in your life” coin—things could be fantastic. I truly hope things are the best they’ve ever been in your life. Truly, I do. But it’s my job to tell you this… things won’t always be that way.

I’m not saying eventually the other shoe will drop (I never really understood the significance of that phrase… why in the hell would anyone be fearful of a shoe falling? Where would it be falling from? And why do they have only one shoe currently?). What I am saying is that things will indeed change. No matter where things are right now, it’s an absolute certainty that they won’t always be this way. They may be better, they may be worse, but they won’t just BE. Complacency guarantees a down-hill slide. Always playing it safe is the exact same as not playing at all. Complacency breeds boredom. Boredom is the enemy of inspiration.

A positive, vibrant, inspiring life cannot be attained through complacency. Such a life requires evolution.

Lou Holtz, a wildly successful former Notre Dame Football coach, has been quoted as saying “If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.” Due to the inarguable certainty that things will not always be as they are right now, you cannot rest on past accomplishments. By the very nature of nature itself, unless you are progressing, you are failing. I’m not saying you need to stockpile success after success (that isn’t the way the world works, either), but if you are sedentary in your aims, if you rest for too long, if you don’t accept that you need to evolve along with the world, you will go absolutely nowhere (but at least you will travel with caution), and the trophies you’ve earned up until this moment will look great in your cabinet but will wither and become rusted relics with time.

Don’t give up trying, even if you think you’ve “made it.” There really isn’t a difference between the person who never begins and the person who sits back on their past successes: both people are still just sitting. As Will Rodgers put it: “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

Learn. Explore. Try. Experiment. Veer. Attempt. Dabble. Break habits. Form new ones. You might just like the person you become even more than who you were before…

Purposely Positive Exercise: Whatcha Wanna Do?

Grab your notebook and do the following:

• Write down something that you’d love to improve on
• Have you ever wanted to learn to play the Ukulele?
• Wondered how to crochet?
• Desired to dabble in Japanese Calligraphy?
• Do you want to improve your tiramisu-baking game?
• Consider: What is a “hobby” you’ve always thought “looks interesting,” but you’ve never looked into it more than that? (I can almost guarantee there’s an app for that.)
• Research how you can improve in that area. Library book? Wikipedia? YouTube? Take a class at the local community college?
• Go do the thing you wrote down—give yourself the gift of change. In today’s world, there are countless ways to learn something new, or to improve a skill you have a hankering to be better at.