The Search For Truth!

Finishing up the single best book I have ever read! (outside of the scriptures) It's called L.I.F.E. Living Intentionally For Excellence by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady.

It is designed to make you think and man is it ever working! I've been reading it for several weeks now and literally every day, it gets me looking at my life from another direction and asking myself some significant questions.

Today it's got me thinking about how adverse we are sometimes to wanting to know and learn to apply truth in our lives!

I don't think that's even what I was specifically reading about but you know how one thought leads to another...

Why is it that we are so unwilling to listen to truth at times?

Usually because it upsets our carefully constructed little "comfort zone". Or as Orrin and Chris say, it's not really a "comfort" zone as much as it is a "familiar" zone because it usually isn't really all that comfortable, just familiar!

It really has more to do with our innate resistance to the principle of change than almost anything else!

That, for most people is probably the need to feel "right" about what we think in our own little inner sphere of who we are.

We are attacked so often from the outside world telling us that we are making mistakes or beating us down for one reason or another that we feel compelled to jealously guard our own little inner self image of who we are. That image is largely created out of our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.

After all, how many of us just naturally think that everything we believe is wrong? Naahh...I don't think so!

So how does that play into the search for truth? Why can't we just operate from our current perception of things and be just fine?

The glaringly simple answer to that is...because there is truth in this world in all it's many different facets.

Isn't this obsession we have with "victim-hood" (and complaining about everything under the sun) in our world today a classic example of being unwilling to accept truth and adjust our actions to deal with it properly?

How many of us are looking around us and listening to the news and deploring the current state of affairs but are doing nothing but talking about it?

Isn't that exactly the same thing as any other form of "victim-hood" that we see in the world today?

Another example; here in Idaho (and many other places too) one of our favorite pastimes is complaining about the weather! Isn't that another form of "victim-hood"?

If we would really embrace a full picture of the truth...Don't like the weather? Then quit being a victim and...move to somewhere you do like it!!!

I know, I'm as guilty as the next person! I think I'll work on that one!

Let's explore another example. Suppose I was born with the genes to become 7'10" tall. Remember that the standard door height all across America is 6'8". So all of my life I would be required to duck my head every time I walked through a door or walk around with a permanent bruise on it!

At this point I can either accept the truth and learn to use it to propel myself forward and upward with my unique gift or I can continually proclaim my "victim-hood" and spend the rest of my life complaining about the unfairness and mistreatment I am required to endure because millions of thoughtless people refuse to change their doorways to accommodate me.

I can become a martyr to my cause by refusing to accept the truth of the situation around me . I can proudly refuse to duck my head when attempting to negotiate conventional doorways. I can proclaim my bruised forehead as a symbol of the injustices of the rest of the human race against me. I can seek to legally make the entire rest of the world conform to my particular set of circumstances.

OR...

I can accept truth! I was blessed with my own unique set of talents, abilities and circumstances from which to build my life. I can use my uniqueness to bless the rest of the world by my contributions to it. I can build on the truths I've been given and make my life a continual search for more and more truth to build upon!

When we learn to build with building blocks of truth, our walls will never crumble because of the cracks of imperfections in them.

The quality of our lives has a direct correlation to our willingness to seek out, recognize and act upon complete truths in the world around us.

Our lives and the world around us are full of partial truths that hamper our ability to excel in every important area of our lives.

Many of our problems arise from partial truths or even outright untruths in our view of the world around us.

Many of those mistaken ideas come from some of the most seemingly benign places. Our peers, our education, our family or ethnic or cultural traditions, our political or even our religious backgrounds can all be sources of some partial truths that are maybe even almost right...but not quite.

If you build an entire castle of belief and action on a foundation that has an occasional faulty block in it, can you begin to see how the integrity of the entire structure can be at risk of failure?

I challenge each of us to become avid seekers after real truth.

Learn to apply the same standard across the board to all of your beliefs. Often we hold different beliefs about different subjects that if we were to stack them up side by side we would find that we were applying an entirely different and sometimes even opposite set of standards to come to our conclusions!

Those are the hidden places that cause us problems in our lives!

You've got a left foot and a right foot that are similar yet different. It's like trying to run a marathon with a nice comfortable running shoe (truth) on the one foot and a fancy, 4 inch, spiked heeled, formal, dress shoe (partial truth, it's still a shoe) on the other!

It's going to cause you a lot of pain and discomfort because of the lack of wisdom in applying complete truth in both cases!

So here's the reality! Until we begin pulling the weeds of untruth out of our own lives and begin banding together as a community of people all dedicated to the pursuit of truth and right, we will never be able to fix our society today!

As long as the forces of untruth can keep us divided and grumbling among ourselves while they shout their untruths in organized unison long enough, they will win. It's that simple.

We need to be united in our pursuit of personal excellence based on truth.

Striving for excellence in every area of our lives is what allows us to begin avoiding the pain that comes from taking action on a faulty assumption.

Excellence in ourselves builds excellence in our families, which builds excellence in our communities, which builds excellence in our states, which leads to excellence in our country, which...I think you get the picture!

Learn more about the LIFE book by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady on our Products page!

Have an awesome day!

Life Lessons From My "Career" In Sports!

This recent focus of mine to run 1000 miles in a year has had me thinking a lot about my "career" in sports!

I've often pondered some of the great life lessons that I've learned from all of my years of playing sports competitively and for fun.

I thought it would be fun to share a series of posts here on some of my personal victories and defeats and some of the principles that they have driven home to me over the years!

It could sound like a lot of boasting (and honestly there is probably a little bit of that) but I hope you will listen for the lessons I've learned and forgive an old guy a few trips down memory lane for the sake of a teaching moment!

First of all, I'm well aware that I'm no Michael Jordan or Jerry Rice etc! I was probably only a little above average as a high school kid and I never did make the college sports scene.

I grew up loving football and in elementary school I was introduced to track and field and did pretty well at it. I never was any good at baseball and eventually found that basketball neatly filled the empty time in the winter between my other two favorites.

I was good enough to letter in 3 sports for 3 or 4 years in high school and to start on the football and basketball teams 3 of those years but that's about it. There were lots of personal victories and defeats along the way and those are what I want to share with you and see if I can convey what they have taught me.

I'll start with what I have always considered my greatest personal victory in sports.
Interestingly, it came in a team event in what is normally a sport dedicated to individual performances.

I've won many ribbons, medals and awards over the years including a medal at the state track meet, but the one that has always stood out to me happened in 8th grade in a tiny little town called Bowie, Az. Why, because I learned more about myself in one minute there than maybe at any other time in my life!

It was towards the end of my first year in a new school. We had a track meet at our neighboring rivals with 5 or 6 different schools there. I actually had a good day there, I think I won 4 blue ribbons in all now that I think about it. But I don't have any memories of the other events.

One of those blue ribbons though still occupies an honored place in my office even today.

One of the last events of the day was the 4 X 440 yd relay. It's a race where a team of 4 guys each runs a full lap around the 1/4 mile track before handing off the baton to the next teammate. First team to complete 4 laps wins!

I think I was the only one of the four on our team who had much experience running this race. The other guys were more accustomed to the shorter sprints or other events. So I was the one whose job it was to run the final, or anchor leg.

Normally, in high school, the 440 is almost an all-out sprint for the entire lap and is strategically a very difficult race. However in junior high it requires an even more disciplined approach. You have to figure out how to run as hard as you can but still have enough energy left to finish at a full sprint. Finding that balance is the real challenge!

I had the opportunity to run a lot of relays through the years with some really talented athletes. But this one taught me a personal lesson about "how bad do you want it"!

My teammates performed admirably, but when my turn came to take the baton for the final lap, there was one team that had pulled ahead of us by some 10-15 yards.

Now that doesn't seem like a lot until you realize that you only have one lap to make it up in and you are trying to do it against the other school's best runner who has his heart set on maintaining that lead for his team.

On top of that it just happened to be our arch rivals who we had to catch!

As my teammate was racing towards me, I realized that I had a split second decision to make. I could either run my normal race strategy and hope for the best at the end, which would probably result in a second place finish or I had to think of something quickly!

With a lead like they had, nobody was going to be angry at me if I couldn't overcome it. But it's at times like that when you need to learn to ask yourself one of life's defining questions...

What If?

Are you willing to "leave it all on the field" for the chance at a victory? Or will you allow yourself to be content with second place?

I knew second place was in the bag, but...What If...I could catch him???

The chances of having enough gas left to overtake him at the finish line were slim and risky at best.

So I made the decision that if we had any chance at all at winning, I had to catch him right now and hope to out-last him to the finish line.

With a successful hand-off from my teammates who had given it their all to put us in a position to have any chance at all...I took off at a dead sprint as hard as I could go!

I actually caught him at about the 100 yard mark and in my young junior high mind, I thought I had him beat! I thought that when he saw me catch him so fast, it would be so demoralizing that he would just give up and I'd breeze right on by to a victory!

But I had forgotten to count on his own intense competitive spirit! There was no give in this guy! He wanted to win as badly as I did!

So rather than settle into a nice easy reserved pace until the final 100 yard sprint for the finish, he took my challenge! It immediately escalated into an all-out sprint with over 300 yards still to go!

This was the part that I hadn't counted on! I had not prepared myself for this obstacle! I had thought that my initial sprint from a fresh start would assure me a victory.

Isn't that how life usually works? We sprint off after a new victory, thinking that we will get it done in the initial rush of effort, only to find that almost anything worth while requires real time, effort and perseverance!

Back to the race. I now found myself locked in one of the defining battles of my life!

We were both good sprinters so nobody could gain any significant advantage for the next 250+ yards. It really settled down to a contest of who could hold on to this killing pace for the longest.

You're running all-out, lungs screaming for air, legs beginning to turn to rubber, brain telling you to STOP torturing yourself, it's only a stupid junior high track meet for heaven's sake! Can I keep going longer than him? Is he going to give up first or am I?

But something deep down in the human spirit is programmed to win! To become the best we possibly can! To give our all to something we deem worthy of our efforts! Can we endure to the end? Can we win at what's important to us no matter what the naysayers and competition may throw at us?

On that day I learned that if I could hold on long enough, if I wanted it bad enough, if I could keep going even when it seemed impossible, I could win at what was important to me!

We came into the final 100 yard straight-a-way neck and neck, then somewhere about the 50 yard mark, I saw him begin to fade. Somehow I had been blessed with a little bit more stamina or a little bit more adrenalin that allowed me to keep going just a little bit longer than my challenger!

I don't know how much we won by that day because that was not what was important. The victory was what was important for our team. I don't know if any of my teammates or my opponents even remember that day because in the grand scheme of things it was really almost irrelevant.

It was an obscure little junior high track meet at an out-of-the-way little school somewhere in the Arizona desert. But for me it was a day that will probably live forever in my memory, not necessarily for the victory in the race, but definitely for the lessons that I'm reminded of every time I see that little blue ribbon on the wall in my office!

I can win! I can persevere even when it's extremely difficult! You have to keep going UNTIL IT'S DONE! If it's worthy of your time, never, never, never give up!

Final Update - 1000 Miles!!! & Life Lessons

It's June 1, 2011 and one of the biggest physical goals of my life is in the bag!

I ended my running year yesterday with a nice easy 5 miles to finish off the past year with a grand total of 1016 miles! Mission accomplished!

The real crowning victory came on Monday May 16,2011 when I put myself over the 1000 mile mark with my 2nd ever full marathon! It was pretty pathetic as marathons go because I hadn't done a full training program to prepare for it. But I got it done and even beat my previous time by over 7 minutes!

The feeling of passing that 1000 mile mark at mile #21 was exhilarating! I've known for a couple of weeks that I was going to make it. But still, you never know what might come up that could stop you. So actually being able to cross that finish line left me with a huge sense of accomplishment!

Be sure to read the series of posts immediately following this one for the full story.

As I've mentioned elsewhere the most important thing about this personal victory is not even the physical accomplishment itself, but the incredible life lessons that I have learned in the process!

I have to add one more important piece of the puzzle that I learned just this last week! That is, that one important piece of the goal setting process is that you MUST give yourself the reward that you promised yourself at the end.

Lest you think that this is my own personal wisdom, relax, it's not! I learned this important principle from a gentleman named Dan Hawkins.

If you set a goal and attached a reward to it for when you actually achieve it, absolutely do not deny yourself that reward for any reason.

Even if it sounds honorable, (i.e. we really can't afford to do that right now and besides the goal got done anyway...etc) the reality is that ultimately, you will have lied to yourself!

More importantly, you will have lied to your subconscious self.

The problem is that your subconscious will have gone out of it's way to help you achieve the goal only to ultimately find out that you tricked it.

The next time you go to set another big goal, a big part of you will be reluctant to get involved and push for it because, after all we really don't like being lied to, right!

Sounds crazy, but this is a powerful point! Build your own inner honor and integrity so that all parts of you will be in harmony and willing to give 100% to whatever it is that you deem worthy of your efforts!

For me it was a brand new pair of nice running shoes! That ended up being the perfect exclamation point to a great personal achievement!

It has left me now looking forward to the next big life changing personal goal!

After all, I've heard it said over and over that the real glory of reaching a goal is not what you accomplish so much as it is who you become along the way! Amen to that!

Running 1000 miles, while it has been good for me, is not nearly so important as the life lessons that I have learned along the way and that will impact everything that I do for the rest of my life!

What's on your "Bucket List"? What great life lessons can you learn from the pursuit of your dreams?

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