Today we have a guest post provided by Tom
TB Wright is the creator of The One Penny Millionaire!™ web based seminar series, and the author of Be BAD! Do Good! How To Get What You Want In Spite Of Yourself! which is available at onepennymillionaire. “It’s your abundance. Get used to it!”©
It was my daughter’s bike trip down the Virginia Creeper Trail, and I was arriving just as the
seventeen mile journey was starting. I had to be late in order to accommodate attending my son’s field trip the previous sleepover night of camping, so there wasn’t time to go over all the details. Everybody was busy running around adjusting seats and filling up their tires with some last minute air. All I knew was that we were to start at one point, and then end up in a town at a location everyone else had already been to. Easy, I thought. Point A to point B. I should be able to do that, no problem.
That was, until I got separated from the group. Seventeen miles is a long stretch for a bike ride, and with only thirty-five bikers on the trip and most of that pack having sped on ahead, I was soon alone. Eventually I was to find out that they arrived at the final destination almost an hour earlier than us seven stragglers. In an effort to catch up to my daughter, the other six bikers were left way behind me, too far to wait for them. So I pedaled along without seeing a single soul for a long, long, time. Or at least, the time certainly seemed to pass that way with nothing to see but gorgeous scenery, the cascading river, and the rising mountains all around me.
At one point I biked through a town that could have been the final destination, maybe, maybe not. But having never seen the supply depot point, I didn’t know whether to stay where I was or keep on riding. With no one there who could answer a thing in response to my questions, I decided
to speed down the path in an attempt to reach where I hoped was the correct destination. After about five miles of riding alone, with no one still in sight, and no picture of where it was I was supposed to arrive at, I began to worry. A lot.
That’s when the value of certainty when attempting to accomplish a goal really hit me. In the arms, and in the legs, literally. The moment I began to doubt whether the town I had passed through was my real destination, my legs began to get tired. When I fantasized about turning back, the few miles I had already gone seemed to multiply. I asked myself more than once, “Should I turn back, or should I forge on ahead?” Without a clear destination in mind, doubts of my ability to reach my daughter and her classmates all began to wear on me. What had begun as a fun ride, rapidly became a fearful nightmare.
I don’t know if you have ever been in a totally hopeless situation, pedaling along with no idea of where you were, in the middle of the woods with eight miles ahead of you, and eight miles behind, unsure of whether to go forward or back, but I’m certain you get the picture. The whole trip became a metaphor for what we do when trying to accomplish goals. Especially with the incredible beauty that so surrounded me, just like most of life that surrounds us is so wonderful, and it’s our heads alone that interpret what happens as if we are in the middle of some dark, medieval forest, circled by malevolent possibilities, when nothing could be further from the truth. All I had to do to know that, was to look up at the dappled sunlight coming down through the trees that lined the clear running stream the path followed. Yet that’s not where my attention was.
It was a quick realization that had I been certain of where I was heading, I would not have gotten tired at all. My inspiration for the ride would have been buoyant, because I would have known that food, family, friends, and comfort awaited me at the end of my journey. But without certainty, and without a guarantee of anything but more hard work, should I have had to go back uphill to reach the town I had recently passed through, my mind took over my body. And what my mind said was unless I have a guarantee for getting the reward, I don’t want to go on. For us, that reward is usually some certainty that for all the work we do, the goals we are heading toward will be accomplished. Don’t even begin to fool yourself that we relate to our goals in any other way; winning the object of our desires feels good. Success brings more success, and there’s nothing like success to further us along our paths with buoyancy and increased energy.
“How many times have we tired ourselves out,” I thought, “pursuing g
oals that were dear to us, and yet following actions without the faith and certainty that all we were doing would actually work to have them come to a satisfying conclusion?” That would be like riding along the Creeper Trail, without knowing if I was actually going to reach Damascus, which only after going fifteen miles I recalled was our rendezvous. At the point along the trail where I finally saw a road sign that said ‘Damascus One Mile’ my legs suddenly got stronger, and I pedaled faster. But as soon as I saw a second sign, after what seemed like quite a while later, that also read ‘Damascus One Mile’ I thought my mind had been playing tricks on me, and again, I got tired. But I kept pedaling, and that’s the point. To keep on keeping on, no matter what. And with as much enthusiasm as you can muster too. After a while of further steady pedaling, I saw one last ‘Damascus One Mile’ sign, but by that point I had the certainty that I was at least heading in the right direction. Sometimes knowing that through hope is the only means we have to keep our faith up, but that’s alright. It doesn’t matter much what our means for staying inspired are, as long as they work with integrity.
Despite the three separate mileage signs that could not have been in any way accurate, knowing that I was heading in the right direction was what kept me going. Knowing that was more important than necessarily knowing when I was going to even get there. There have been many trips I’ve taken through life that had as their destination the completion of the trip, and that alone was the reward. Yet had I been anything less than satisfied along the way, I certainly would not have been satisfied at their completion. We spend most of our lives living in what I call the great middle, so we had better appreciate that time, or we will appreciate none of our time. And time, is all we have.
In our lives, what gives us that kind of certainty, especially when the goals we pursue don’t necessarily even have signs at all, let alone ones that tell us how far we have to go? That would be the second component of our personal toolbo
x that needs to be employed in order for us to carry on: Faith. Faith that everything we are doing is going to lead us to where we want to go. And sometimes where we want to go is to feel good about where we’re going! Sounds like faith to me! Yet not an easy thing to do when our destinations can be so nebulous.
That’s where the value of faith comes in yet again. The one most crucial characteristic of faith, of what really amounts to trusting that we are on the right course, is to know that no matter what the action we are currently carrying out, it is exactly what needs to be done in order to have our goals come to fruition. For instance, I have a goal of selling three million copies of Be BAD! Do Good! How To Get What You Want In Spite Of Yourself! within a two year period. How is this going to happen? I haven’t the foggiest idea. Nor do I have to. What I have instead, is faith. How does this faith thing look? What it looks like is when I get up in the morning and make myself waffles, I know that doing so will somehow contribute to selling three million copies in two years. Then, when I take my shower, somehow I generate the trust it takes to know that doing that will also contribute somehow, to the selling of three million copies within two years. And then? I towel off and begin dressing, knowing that even the pulling on of my socks, will somehow work its way into being the next exact and right thing necessary to my success. Were I to pedal through this journey in any other way, my legs would get tired, and my enthusiasm would wane. Once that happens for any length of time, you can see where the rest of that road leads to.
Not this time! Not with faith, and with the certainty that faith generates. And who is it up to, to generate that faith? Me. Only me, and that’s exactly how it should be. Now does having faith and the concomitant certainty such faith generates, mean that when book sales slump, I ignore how I feel about that? Not hardly! I feel what I feel, and then immediately keep on keeping on, with whatever actions it’s going to take to accomplish my goals. This isn’t about trying to smile when someone throws a rock at you, it’s instead, about the truth.
Be whatever way you need to be in order to feel authentic, and then with faith, keep on keeping on in your chosen direction. In that way, the certainty you need and the successes that are so nurturing will come. Not through magic, but through inspired action. Inspired actions are those taken when you are pedaling in your chosen direction, knowing that for all the hard work you are doing, you are definitely going to get to where you set out to go. No matter what work that takes, or how long it takes to get there. Even, if you are facing having to possibly backtrack in order to arrive at a place you’ve already passed by! No matter. What has us keep on keeping on is faith, and the certainty having it generates. So have a little faith! Or a lot! Go for it, because after all, it is your life!
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