Epic!

It’s all mental…

I ran 28 miles in a typhoon with a calf muscle strain last weekend.  A sane person would have stopped.  Quit. Given up. Packed it in. Sat down.

I decided to go all in.  Push the chips to the center of the table.  Mortgage the house.

Fuck it. Tape it up and let’s go.

Why do we put ourselves into these situations?  I’ll never be a Navy SEAL, but SEAL training is epic.  Days and nights of physical endurance.  Days and nights of sleeplessness and exhaustion.  Days of mental stress.  Why do they give up?  Is it because they aren’t physically strong enough? No, it’s because they aren’t mentally strong enough.

That’s why we do it. We want to find out about ourselves.  We want to have our measure taken and see if we measure up.

I don’t know anyone in this world who thinks they have it all figured out.  Everyone you know is faking it.  Every executive, CEO and doctor you meet is asking the questions in his or her head “Why are they trusting me with this?  I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not  tough enough to be here.”

The higher the stakes the more we doubt our abilities.

And…That’s why we do it. We do it to come to that moment when we are forced to decide.  Do I go on? Or do I quit?  Do I take the hard way and figure it out, or do I take the easy way and let someone else do it?

We create these crucibles (or hide from them) to see how we decide.  How we choose.

Once we make the decision it becomes about us and our character on a much deeper level.

In these situations it has nothing to do with our competencies and skills.  It has to do with our grit.  Can we keep moving? Can we quiet the voices of chaos and turn the hopelessness into hope?

Stop what you are doing right now and plan an adventure.  An epic adventure.  One that will force you out of your comfort zone.  One that will have you standing naked and afraid in the pale light of a foreign dawn.

Do it now.  Don’t think about the cost.  Don’t ask for advice. Schedule it.  Buy the plane ticket.  Register for the event.  Cast the die and break the mold so there is no place to retreat to.  Burn your boats and break your cooking pots.

Expect to fail.  Expect to be scared.  Expect to suffer.  For that is the good stuff in life.  Where the constructs of ‘civilization’ are stripped bare and we are alone with no barricade against fate.  We either do, or do not.

How did they survive the Bataan death march?  How did they survive the Hanoi Hilton? How did Hillary make it to the top?  How did Shackleton get his men out alive? They did it because they had to. They had no choice.  Circumstance gave them a situation and they chose to live.

Maybe only one more day.  Maybe only one more step. Maybe only one more breath but they chose it and took it and beat the beast back with the human will to live.

We, modern moist robots don’t get many opportunities to exercise our grit.  Our true free will.  We have to manufacture the situations that allow us to find that grit.  We have to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.  We have to attend executive boot camps.  We have to put ourselves in constructed situations.

Where is our grit?

It is inside each and every one of us.  Waiting to be found.  You are stronger than you know.  Your body and your mind can do things that you can’t even imagine in your wettest of dreams.

But you need to put yourself in that place to find this strength.  This strength is found in the epic event and the epic adventure.

It comes to you when the weather turns and things go badly.  When one after another the crutches of society are knocked out from underneath your limbs and you flail, helplessly like a toddler in the depths of unknown trials.  That my friend is where you find yourself.

The greatest generation were great because they went to that place and came back with the strength of knowing.  Knowing that pool of inner strength and resilience that we all have.

It’s dammed up and it’s up to you to pull the keystone from the dyke and release the torrent of strength.

Pick up the phone and make that call. Schedule your next adventure.

What is it?  I can’t tell you.  Your epic adventuer is yours to find. But I can tell you you won’t find it sitting at your desk or munching at your dinner table…it’s out there.

Life it too short to hide under the bed and assume you don’t have that strength.  You have it.  You just need to find it.  It is the common man who swings the axe against tyranny.  It is the castoff who ventures to a new land and founds a new world.

Kick the windows out and live my friends.

This is your time.

Have an epic adventure.