The Success Trip

Church Sign

mike — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 02:49:44 +0000

Today I saw this on a church sign:
“Don’t lose hope. Moses started out as a basket case.”

More coming soon.

Hold the Thought Firmly

mike — Tue, 29 May 2007 16:22:51 +0000

“Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.”

—Elbert Hubbard

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life

mike — Tue, 22 May 2007 14:46:50 +0000

# Stop taking so much notice of how you feel.

# Let go of worrying.

# Ease up on the internal life commentary.

# Take no notice of your inner critic.

# Give up on feeling guilty.

# Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you.

# Stop keeping score.

# Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned.

# Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions.

# Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one.

Seeing the Target - Revisited

mike — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 20:51:12 +0000

A few months back I wrote that to hit a target you have to see the target. In the post I advocated creating a collage of images of what you want to be, do, or have. Today I found a similar post on the web site D*I*Y Planner. Have a look:

Moving on Upwards: Making a Motivation Collage

A New Start

mike — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:03:06 +0000

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”

—Carl Bard

To One Person You May Be the World

mike — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:33:08 +0000

Quiet Time

mike — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:47:25 +0000

“We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly… spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.”

— Susan Taylor

Todd Henry over at The Accidental Creative talks about taking quiet time in his post 5 Ways To Immediately FEEL More Organized.

More on quiet time in my next post. I’m going to take some quiet time. Someday.

Limited Time

mike — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:21:12 +0000

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

— Steve Jobs

Miracles Can Happen

mike — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:18:45 +0000

“When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen.”

—Arland Gilbert

The World’s Strongest Dad

mike — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:09:30 +0000

Every Sunday morning, I get up before the kids and wife and head to my church, Bellevue Community Church, for a men’s group called Men’s Fraternity. I won’t go into what Men’s Fraternity is, other than it is great. If you want to be a more effective, successful man/husband/father go the web site and find a local group that is presenting Men’s Fraternity and check it out.

Yesterday we started a section on “What Every Dad Needs to Know.” at the end of the “presentation” there was a short video clip, at the end of which, there was not a dry eye in the room. Here’s the story:

By: Rick Reilly

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.

Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old.

“Put him in an institution.”

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate.

“No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.”

“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered.

They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate.

First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried.

“Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?

“Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own?” “No way,” he says.

Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 — only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”

Now watch the video that we watched on Sunday:
Team Hoyt