In the 1980’s, Dunkin Donuts had some great commercials where they show the head baker constantly having to get up in the middle of the night because he had to get to the store and make the donuts. They’d show him waking to the alarm clock, still dark outside, hair messed up and he would say “time to make the donuts’. The commercial implied that if you want to get a great donut you had to get up early, you have to be committed and persistent. To make your customer happy they have to be able to depend on you and you have to be willing to do what it takes. Well my friend it’s time to make the donuts.
It’s January 2nd, the day where we all jump back into the saddle. We had some holiday cheer but it’s time to go back to work. For many it means the first day you begin to strive for new goals and aspirations and for others it means it’s the first day you start to make excuses why you couldn’t start today.
If you’re the “I quit already person” there might be no hope for you. However, most people start today with vigor, passion, tenacity and a desire to win. The desire to turn over a new leaf. This time is going to be different.
Today all over the world fitness centers will be packed, sign ups through roof, crowds on every piece of equipment. By January 25th the crowd size is back to the usual suspects. You know the ones, the people who were there on December 29th, 30th and 31st. They are the ones who give you that look. That condescending I know you won’t be here in a few weeks look telling you to quit now.
Everyone has good intentions but life steps in and in many cases you return to old habits that keep you exactly where were the year before.
Before you panic I want you to know this year can be different.
On New Year’s Eve I wrote 5 Steps To Hit Your Goals Every Year. How you should really focus on making goals that are absolutely achievable this year and to only set them if you want them with everything in your being. If you didn’t read it check it out here. But if you read it you were able to see that setting goals is important but setting goals just for the sake of setting them sets you up for failure. Everyone wants to lose weight but if your weight doesn’t really bother you it’s not going to be enough of a motivator to make you do something about it for the next 12 months.
Desire if a magical thing when you know how to use it. When I was around 12 years old, I was in boy scouts. I came up from Cub Scouts, to Webelos, to Boy Scouts. Scouting is a phenomenal training ground for teaching young boys how to conduct themselves in all different environments. On this particular spring weekend, my father and I were camping with our troop and there was a Saturday canoe trip on the calendar. The canoe trip was on the Wolf River in Wisconsin which is typically a fairly lazy river with a few rapids here and there which are typically less than a class 2 and mostly just a few spots with a high class 1. So the chances of anything bad happening was fairly slim. However spring in Wisconsin, after a heavy snow fall of winter, means lots and lots of moving water. So the rapid areas of the rivers were extremely treacherous this particular year. There were even signs recommending to portage at some of the areas because they were just too dangerous for the inexperienced, like us.
My father, the Marine that he is, obeyed the signs against my wishes. However, there was one set of rapids that looked fairly fun and I begged him to take them on. So he decided to go, after all what’s the worst that could happen?
I can still picture the scene. As we descended there were canoes and people littered on all sides of the downward slope of rapids but if we kept to the smooth areas we would be fine. Then it happened. The back end of the canoe began to swing around and now we were no longer in control. My dad was shouting to me to row on the left to try and right the ship but I was about 70 pound soaking wet at the time so my muscles were not much of a challenge to the rapids. As you can imagine it wasn’t long until we were upside down and everything we brought with us was floating downstream including my dad. I on the other hand stayed with the canoe and as I and the canoe raced downstream we were fortunate enough to smash head on into a giant stone. I was pinned between the canoe and the stone at dead center of the river and dead center of the rapids and the water was too strong for me to push the canoe off. The passenger side of the canoe was in the rapids and the bottom was pushing against me so hard that I was getting ready to pass out. The weight of the canoe was so much my dad knew I was in trouble. Dad knew he was the only one who could help me but he was about 100 yards downstream. He was using everything he could to push his way back up stream. I could barely see him out of the corner of my eye. He was fighting to get to me and was slowly but surely ascending the rapids for what seemed to be about two hours. He finally reached me and freed me. I was fine but we lost most of our stuff. Shoes, back pack, lunch. We didn’t lose all of our shoes, we found one of mine.
They say at times of great distress you can obtain super human strength and I think that is what happened with my dad that day. I have no way of knowing. The lesson here is that there was no chance my dad was giving up until he got to me no matter what. There was no quitting, no excuses and no time off.
When you want something that bad you will get it. When you want something so bad that you won’t quit, you won’t give up, you won’t take any time off and you won’t have any excuses, then you will have it. Life will throw rapids at you and sometimes they might be a class 4 but if you want it bad enough the rapids are just a small obstacle on your way to success.
Make it happen.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney