Probabilities and Possibilities

I finish my speeches by saying, “What are the chances that someone like me was going to make it to the Olympics? I wasn’t a great athlete, I didn’t get started until I was 21 years old, and to top it off I live in hot and humid Houston and I chose to compete in the luge for Pete’s sake! What are the chances? One in a million? One in ten million? I probably had a better chance to win the lottery!”

“I was just an ordinary kid with an extraordinary dream. I wasn’t a big shot. I was just a little shot that kept on shooting. And that’s something you can do too. If you make a decision to become a little shot who keeps on shooting, the world is yours.”

Believe it or not, the secret to creating an extraordinary life is right in those words.

Most people look at their dreams and start calculating the odds of them ever happening. They can tell you the probabilities and that number keeps them from even getting started.

They don’t understand that the probability at any one time has nothing to do with success. Because if you don’t even get started, the probability of success is zero, zilch, nada.

They don’t realize that they can change the probabilities.

Every time you take action in the pursuit of your dream, you’re increasing the probabilities of reaching it. It’s all up to you. You have control over the probabilities.

Once you buy into that, it’s easier to make a decision to take massive action.  Understanding that makes it easier to commit to your dream. Once you commit to your dream, burn the bridges, and make a decision to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes, the probability of success increases dramatically. Why? Because 99% of the people will NEVER do whatever it takes!

When I called the people in Lake Placid to ask for help in getting started in the luge, the guy on the phone laughed at me. He said I was way too old to get started. He said, “If you want to do it at your age and in only four years it will be brutal. Nine out of ten people quit!” When I heard that, I got excited. I got excited because I could see the opportunity. And I simply decided that quitting would not be an option for me.

Once I made that decision, all I had to do was to outlast everyone else! The guy on the phone saw my probability as one out of ten. But I saw it as 100% (as long as I was willing to outlast everyone else). Four years and a few broken bones later, I was competing in the Olympics (it wasn’t quite that simple, but focusing on the possibility got me to do what I needed to do to become an Olympian).

Stop focusing on the probabilities. Focus on the possibility. Ask yourself, “What is my dream? Is it a dream that takes my breath away? Is it something that excites me and gives meaning to my life?” And if it is, ask yourself, “If it is possible, then why not me?”

Don’t focus on the probabilities. Focusing on the probabilities will kill your confidence. Once you lose your confidence, it’s easy to quit. And stop hanging around people that talk about being realistic. Realistic people are mediocre. They live lukewarm lives and NEVER do ANYTHING with their lives.

Start hanging around winners. Hang around achievers. I have NEVER heard a real winner talk about being realistic. Realistic stinks! Think about three people you truly admire. I guarantee you that they did not get where they are by being realistic!

Focus on your dream, listen to your gut feeling, and follow your heart wholeheartedly. Ask yourself, “Why not me? Why not now?” and, “What can I do right now to get me closer to my dream?”

When you ask yourself the right questions, focus on the possibilities, and hang around like-minded people, your confidence will soar and you’ll be on the road to realizing your dream.  

Do that, and at the end of your life you will be able to look back and say, “I lived a magnificent life!”

The Power of a Mentor

Have you ever had someone tell you that you were destined to do great things in life? Did you buy into their belief in you? Sometimes we have to rely on someone else’s belief until our own belief kicks in.

When Bob Mathias was young, he was an anemic, sickly kid. His love for sports drove him to get involved in track and field in high school. Over time Bob developed into a solid all around athlete but he was not national level in any one event.

Four months before the 1948 Olympic Games his track coach Virgil Thomas believed in Bob so much that he told him, “Bob, you have four years. If you got started right away, you could possibly make the 1952 Olympics in the decathlon.”

Coach Thomas’ belief in Mathias was incredible because Mathias had never run the 1500 meters, he had never pole-vaulted, he’d never thrown a javelin, and he had never even heard of the decathlon. To top it off, Mathias was only 17 years old!

Coach Thomas belief was so strong, that Mathias bought into it and started training right away. One month after he started training, Mathias competed in his first decathlon. Incredibly, he won first place! Two weeks later he entered the U.S. Decathlon National Championship. He won again! Six weeks later, he was competing in the 1948 Summer Olympic Games. He had beaten his coach’s prediction by four years!

Now Mathias was competing against much older and seasoned decathletes. The best in the world. Mathias amazed the world by becoming the youngest Decathlon Olympic Champion at the age of 17!

Mathias went on to win his second Olympic Decathlon in 1952. None of this would have been possible if his coach, his mentor, had not seen his greatness, believed in him, and encouraged him to pursue his dream.

When somebody compliments you, they have just seen a glimpse of your greatness. They have seen something about you that sticks out like a sore thumb. But it’s so natural to you that you discount it.

Next time someone compliments you, thank them, and start using your outstanding gift to reach your dream. Surround yourself with winners, find a mentor who believes in you, and win the Olympic Gold in your personal and professional life!

The Power to Choose

“I am the master of my fate. I am the Captain of my soul.”
       - William Henley

In his book “Roots,” Alex Haley tells about something unexpected that happened right after slavery was abolished. The newly freed slaves did not know how to be free. All their lives they had had others make their decisions for them, consequently, they had never learned how to make choices. You could say their “choice-making muscles” needed developing. Many of the slaves actually stayed with their masters and worked for them for the rest of their lives.

In the movie “The Shawshank Redemption,” when Brooks, the prison librarian, who’s been an inmate for 50 years, is set free, he does not know how to be a free man. He does not know how to use his power to choose. All his life he has been told what to do. For Brooks, life as a free man is so overwhelming, that he ends up committing suicide (life’s worst choice).

Most people’s “choice-making muscles” could use a little strengthening. After all, when we are young, our parents and our teachers tell us what to do. Then we get a job and our boss tells us what to do. Then we get married and… (whoops… I won’t go there!).

We start drifting through life instead of designing our future. We start existing instead of living. And we end up using a fraction of our gifts. We forget that we have the power to choose who we want to be, what we want to accomplish, where we want to live, etc. We stop taking responsibility for our results, and start living as a victim, instead of as a victor.

You and I have the power to choose what we do with our lives. You are where you are because of the choices you’ve made. If you don’t like where you are, you need to start making different choices. I’ve been in sales all my life. Whenever I’ve ever had a slow sales month, I could always trace it to lack of activity a few months back.

Likewise, whenever my pants start feeling tight around the waist, I can always trace it to having been overeating recently. It’s not rocket science.

My Dad always told me, “It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you handle it!” He also said to me, “You have the power to choose your destiny.” It wasn’t until I started acting like I believed those things that my life started getting interesting.

I have a little secret for you. There is a magical moment between your circumstances and your results. That moment is called CHOICE. When something happens to you, when circumstances happen to you, when things that seem unfair happen to you, don’t whine and complain. The instant you start blaming your circumstances is the instant you become a victim. Once you do that, you can kiss your future goodbye. Remember, you can choose your response to those circumstances. Make a wise CHOICE, handle it properly, and watch your results improve tremendously. What kind of life do you want? The good news is that you have the power to create it.

Once you stop making excuses and start taking responsibility for your results, your life will start getting really exciting. It did for me.

Have you been making excuses? Don’t you realize that EVERYONE has challenges? Don’t you realize that making excuses is what losers do?

Stop making excuses. Whenever a winner hears you making an excuse, they want to get as far away from you as possible. Resolve to do something right now about what’s holding you back. Resolve to become an inspiration to others who share your challenges.

Focus, You Won’t Succeed Without It

Being focused is not an option if you are serious about realizing your dreams. Being focused on your dream is critical to making it become a reality.

Back in 1984, when I made a decision to take up the sport of luge and make a run at the Olympics, I took an 8×10 photo of a luge racer and hung it up across from my bed.

The first thing I saw every morning was “The Luge Man”. He reminded me to work out, eat right and surround myself with winners.

The last thing I saw every night before I turned off the lights was “The Luge Man”. All night long I would dream about the luge and about the Olympics.

I never met “The Luge Man”, but he is one of my heroes. He helped keep me focused on my objective. And he was a factor that helped make my dream come true.

Your ability to single-mindedly focus on your top priorities will determine how much you accomplish.

I just read the story of someone else whose dream was focused by a photograph…

The Great Depression was not kind to (legendary Hotelier) Conrad Hilton. After the crash of 1929, people weren’t traveling, and if they were, they weren’t staying in the hotels Hilton had acquired during the boom years of the 1920s.

By 1931, his creditors were threatening to foreclose, his laundry was in hock, and he was borrowing money from a bellboy so he could eat. That year, Hilton came across a photograph of the Waldorf Hotel with its six kitchens, 200 cooks, 500 waiters, 2000 rooms, and its private hospital and private railroad siding in the basement. Hilton clipped the photograph out of the magazine and wrote across it, “The Greatest of Them All.”

The year 1931 was “a presumptuous, an outrageous time to dream,” Hilton later wrote. But he put the photo of the Waldorf in his wallet, and when he had a desk again, slipped the picture under the glass top. From then on it was always in front of him. As he worked his way back up and acquired new bigger desks, he would slip the cherished photo under the glass. Eighteen years later, in October 1949, Conrad Hilton acquired the Waldorf.

That picture gave Hilton’s dream shape and substance. There was something for his mind to focus upon. It became a cue for his behavior.

How focused are you on achieving your goal? Is it an obsession?

Do you write your goal every day? You need to. Writing your goal daily is an act of commitment that slowly turns you into a guided missile that can’t miss.

Do you surround yourself with pictures of your goal? If your goal is to drive a Maserati, do you regularly test-drive Maseratis? Do you subscribe to Maserati Magazine? You need to.

Don’t Second-Guess Yourself

 

It’s easy to look back and see where you might have done something differently. As long as you are looking for ways to improve your performance, it’s OK to look back. But don’t waste time second-guessing yourself. Your past results are based on your past experience. If things don’t work out, use your new experience to get better results next time.

At the end of every luge run we pick up a walkie-talkie and get feedback from Coach. The feedback is rarely fun to listen to but it’s hugely important. In a few seconds Coach tells us how we can be faster next time. And in the evening after dinner, we watch videos of our runs to see for ourselves what we did and how we can improve.

We don’t dwell on our mistakes. We look to the future and have a plan for the future. That’s how you can have constant improvement.