How do you run 26.2 miles if you have trouble making it around the block? With good coaching, discipline, and lots of group support, as NOVA shows when it follows 13 generally sedentary people through a training regimen designed to prepare them for an ultimate test of stamina and endurance.

Source: PBS.org

The team of people featured ranged from 22 to 60 years old, were not athletic, and in fact were mostly in poor health (I recall them mentioning at one point in the show that almost all of them were technically obese). Members of the group included a smoker, a heart attack victim and someone living with HIV.  Within 9 months, all but one ran and finished all 26.2 miles of the marathon.

For me, it was a real life story about achievement against the odds and was pretty amazing. Now I am not advocating that we all need to run a marathon. However, it got me to thinking that nothing extraordinary happens or gets accomplished without some kind of compelling reason. Every one of the runners had a compelling reason to sign up for what I am sure seemed like a daunting task (I get tired running up the stairs, so running a marathon within 9 months seems pretty wild to me). The reasons we will attempt big things are usually emotionally charged and I think are usually matters of the heart. I also figure that the bigger the reason, the more extraordinary the outcome.

In a way, this is all in the same spirit as good old fashioned goal setting, and also consistent with Tim Ferriss’ dreamlining. We have all heard the cliches: you can’t get from A to B if you don’t know what B is, etc, etc. Yet why do so few of us actually set big, extraordinary goals? Why do so many of us find excuses to put off doing that which we think we would truly love to be doing? Ferriss suggests:

In part, it’s laziness…the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision making necessary to create a life of enjoyment…

Source: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss.

Is it laziness? Maybe, if we are honest, it is because deep down inside we know we don’t even have any big ideas, or worse, there is really no emotionally compelling reason behind our lives to want to achieve them. Stepping up to the plate of living life on purpose would cause us to admit that maybe we are kind of empty and void of a reason. Maybe we would have to admit we are actually small and unimportant. Or maybe not:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Source: Paraphrased from A Return To Love by Marianne Williamson.

Deep and I feel at least somewhat true - some people simply exude possibility and I find simply being in their company liberates me from my way of being for a time (by the way, for all you etymologists out there, exude is from the latin exsudare, from ex- + sudare, literally to sweat). So are we afraid because we think we cannot be great, or because we actually know we can be extraordinary?

Dreamline

While we are on the topic of dreamlining, Jared over at Technotheory has created a dreamline worksheet available for download. Besides this really nice implementation of the dreamline procedure, the Technotheory blog also has a great Four Hour Workweek category with lots of related material. Jared is also working on a solution called AwayFind that promises to be very compelling for those on the 4-Hour Workweek quest.

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