Small Bites of Motivation

I want to continue with some of the comments made by Jeff Rahill of Kauai that I shared in last week’s post. These were from a letter to me that we jokingly called a “book report” dealing with specific parts of my book, How to Ignite Your Passion for Living, that he thought were particularly helpful.

Here’s some of what he wrote from different sections of the book:

On the subject of “The Bite-Size Miracle” Jeff said, “I definitely believe in achieving your goals, be it long range or the immediate task at hand, by taking it one bite at a time. I remember in the last half of the marathon at Ironman, telling myself that I just had to make it to the next aid station, which were one mile apart. Then I saw the handmade signs on the side of the road: ‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’ Like you said, ‘Action is the key … keep moving.’”

That section of the book dealt with how to accomplish a goal by breaking it down into small goals so that, step by step, you would get accomplish that end goal. This can be used in almost any circumstances where the accomplishment seems too huge to tackle. In the book I used an example of a man who survived and literally dragged himself back from certain death by seeing each few feet he needed to cover to get to his base camp as one small goal. If you can just block out that overwhelming, seemingly impossible picture of the big goal by putting all your focus on the small goal, you can, one tiny goal after another, get yourself to that finish line.

I also really enjoyed Jeff’s comments on ‘The Surefire Way to Stick with Every Goal’ The secret is to know your benefits, reasons and motivations, and write them down.  Jeff adds a bit about his experience in how this relates to keeping fit. He wrote “I’m with you on the subject of fasting.  I’ve been fasting one day a week for over 40 years. It’s part of my health plan. Another part is being a vegetarian for that same period.”  By the way, Jeff looked to be in terrific physical shape and certainly seemed well aware of the benefits and reasons for his fasting choice.

Jeff had a few more choice comments I want to share and reflect on with you but we’ll save them for next time. These two lessons are big ideas that can make all the difference in reaching your goals. If you can just take and apply these to the things you are working towards right now, I bet you’ll see a big difference in just the one week between this post and the next one. Let’s see if that’s true!