Think As Inc

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

September 5, 2009 on 2:21 am | In life coaching | No Comments

A Dateline Survival Story featured a young hiker, caught in a blizzard, who survived for days with only his lunch and water bottle.  (He didn’t sleep to prevent freezing to death and used the snow to refill his water bottle, first warming the bottle with his hands.)  The story illustrates an important point:  when you want something that badly, you will find a way.

This man wanted to live.  When he spoke about his ordeal, his strategy was to stay alive and give himself a chance to be rescued.  He couldn’t do everything on his own (i.e., rescue himself from the mountain), so he focused only on what he could do:  stay alive – not alive for a certain time, not alive with all his belongings, just alive.

So it should be with our goals.  When we have the same life/death clarity, goal or no goal, we focus on what we can do.  However, sometimes we pick a goal and assign extraneous conditions to it.  We don’t just want to be a successful actor; we want to be a successful actor by a certain time (typically a short time).  We don’t just want a fulfilling career and family; we want them both now and moving in lockstep each and every day.  

Goals are often messier than that.  Goals push our mental, physical and emotional limits.  Goals conflict with other things that we want – when we go after them, we may not have as much time to sleep or money to spend on other things. 

You need life and death clarity about your goals.  If the goal is as meaningful to you as staying alive was to that hiker, then keep scrambling.  You just may be rescued and have your dreams come true.