Wednesday 7/9/2008

Tonight I climbed the stairs in a different type of building than ever before-a baseball stadium! My girlfriend, AJ bought me tickets to see my hometown Colorado Rockies take on the Milwaukee Brewers at beautiful Miller Park! It was a great game but the highlight of the evening (other than hanging with my girl of course) was this 100% real life scene shot straight out of reality in Milwaukee, WI:



Hilarious! So if you think I’m making up this stuff about how we’re all programmed to take shortcuts. Think again.
One way to know identify places in your life that you can be more disciplined is to watch what everybody else is doing and then do the opposite. It’s very rare that the masses get behind a cause or do an activity that is difficult. By simply looking at the real life picture above you can see that it’s very easy to identify the path less traveled by.

What are you going to do today that is different than anyone else? What kind of commitments are you making to start you on the path of the more disciplined life?

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Sunday 7/6/2008

Finishing our trip out in Destin, FL for the long 4th of July weekend I figured that I probably should get a stair climb in just so I can add a new city to the growing list of buildings I’ve stepped. But the voice inside of me screamed “but I’m on vacation!” Have you ever heard that voice? I’m sure you probably have. We all do. One of the most common questions people ask me as “the discipline stairs guy” is when in their life do they get to stop being disciplined? When do they get to go on vacation?

My answer: is never. We never get to stop being disciplined. It’s a perpetual growth process that we go through and each time we do something we didn’t want to do we add that much more power to our life until eventually we can one day do anything we want because we know that we’ll do whatever it takes to get there (like climb some tall buildings around the world). Just because we never get to stop being disciplined though, doesn’t mean our whole life is going to be one giant bummer trip to the gym.

You see, discipline is a pendulum that swings back and forth. And just when you are being disciplined about working so much you have to be disciplined about taking some time off (3 days for me in Destin). And once you’ve developed the discipline to get out of debt and be smart about spending your money you need to reward yourself with a prize. That is how we have balance in our lives. If you are standing on a balance beam you have never reached a state of unending balance. It is a process of little tiny tweaks and adjustments (changes in your discipline).

Oh, and by the way the view from the top of the 24th floor at the Ariel Dunes Resort resort was amazing!

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Thursday 7/3/2008

This afternoon I made my way down to Destin, FL to prepare for a 3 day 4th of July weekend. In our condo was something I’d never seen before called a “skim board”. We brought it to the beach and eventually the group I was with started challenging one another about who was going to try it. A skim board is like a small and very thin surf board. You throw it down the shoreline right where the water washes up on the beach and then you run to catch up to it and jump on it and try to ride it skimming right along the surface of the shallow water. Being a totally inept skateboarder, a rookie snowboarder, and a failed surfer this was not something I wanted to do. So naturally once the alarm went off in my head that I didn’t want to do this; I had to try it.

On the beach I found an instructor. His name was Connor and this guy had some seriously sick skim boarding technique. He could ride the board down the shore then right into an oncoming wave and do all sorts of kicks and twists in the air. I asked Connor to teach me. So me, my 15 year old instructor, and a slowly gathering group of curious people on the beach huddled around to watch me challenge the skim board. How’d it go? Painful to say the least. The board cracked my back left ankle, I back flipped one time and landed on my neck, did a face plant into a hard oncoming wave, and hyper-extended my knee on the 2nd to last run which ended my time. Although the crowd of drunken hecklers on the beach had a ball of a time watching me!

What’s the point? I don’t know that I have one this time, I’m too embarrassed. But what I do know is that making a commitment to Take The stairs is much less painful then some other commitments we could be making. Skim boarding for one.

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Thursday 6/19/2008

Chicago, IL. This was my first stint in Chicago since my decision to start the Take The Stairs World Tour. I was visiting our Success Starts Now! sales team that is living in Wrigleyville and after a tiring day of selling and leading I figured I should take advantage of adding a new city to the growing list of places where I’ve climbed some tall buildings. I did however lack the energy to take the 35 minute train ride to downtown where the real exciting staircases are (isn’t that funny that certain staircases are really exciting to me?) so I instead chose the 17 floored – Golden Estates Living Center in Wrigleyville. They had security but quickly printed me a pass and I was in.

This staircase was unique though. I’ve noticed that most staircases average about 11-13 steps in a floor and sometimes do 1 “wrap” on the way to the next level. While this one did have 12 steps in a floor it “wrapped” 4 times, forming a kind of perfect square, on the way up to the next floor. The impact was that my climbing rhythm was “3 steps, and turn. 3 steps, and turn.” as opposed to “12 more. Then 12 more.” What I noticed is that it was somehow mentally easier for me to climb that way because as I got tired it was just “3 more steps” instead of “12 more steps”.

The same is true in our lives when it comes to any goal. It’s so much easier to break things into small manageable pieces. And there is a certain satisfaction that comes from accomplishing the little things even if they are far from us accomplishing our giant overall goal. Success Starts Now! calls this concept “crystallizing” your goal or breaking it down into smaller more “bite size” pieces. What goals are you pursuing right now in your life? As you pursue them think about dividing them into small chunks in order that you may get that certain sense of gratification that keeps you going to the next step.

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Sunday 6/15/2008 Real mission. Real sacrifice.

Being at home in Longmont for a weekend presented a new but simple challenge for the Take The Stairs World Tour; finding a building that actually had a lot of stairs I could climb. LOL. Longmont, which is a Denver suburb has no really tall buildings. In fact as I was driving through town I didn’t see one that even looked higher than 10 floors. (Things you never notice until your perspective changes by doing something weird like climbing the 10 tallest buildings in the world.) So I headed over to the 6 story Longmont United Hospital thinking that maybe they would let me in the stairs as supporters of good health.

Upon arriving I went to the front desk to request permission and I found a real legitimate example of discipline and of sacrifice. I met Claire and Stan Davies who were behind the welcome counter. They were glad to let me do whatever I wanted in the stairs but the real lesson here came from learning about them. Claire and Stan sat behind the counter smiling for no apparent reason; other than just being happy about life. Their lightly grayed hair and soft skin was overpowered by an exuding spirit of service and warmth. Claire and Stan have sat in those same seats virtually every single Saturday since 1987. They’ve sat there without pay and have worked throughout the hospital tirelessly at least once per week for over 20 years. I’d be willing to bet that their presence often times goes overlooked and unnoticed by the average person that walks into that hospital. Sadly, I probably would’ve overlooked them myself on a regular non-stair climbing training day.

And with all of the other possible ways to spend a Saturday, with all the other activities that could bring one couple recognition, and all the other more relaxing options, Stan and Claire choose sacrifice. They choose discipline. They choose serving others before serving themselves. They are an inspiration to me and a reminder that there really are people out there who have real missions and make real sacrifices.

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