Voices From the Rut

I spent a fortune
On a trampoline,
A stationary bike
And a rowing machine
Complete with gadgets
To read my pulse,
And gadgets to prove
My progress results,
And others to show
The miles I've charted'
But they left off the gadget
To get me started!

How often is it that we get started on the ‘road to victory’ and then fall right back into the same old bad habits? These ‘ways of thinking and living’ pull us back into the same rut we are so desperately trying to climb up and out of...leaving us frustrated and crying out from a furrow of lost desires. It doesn't take long for the voices of the past to decry the implementation of change. There’s one thing for sure, it’s hard to feel groovy in a rut! Like some unfolding Broadway drama, these voices dramatically present their case on why the rut is better than change.  As a matter of fact, some voices are so strong, the excitement of the 'new' year (all but two months ago) has already become an echo down the hallway of procrastination. Clearly, there must be something stronger than those calls to quit that motivates you to move forward in this challenge to leave ‘normal’ behind. The "I will start tomorrows" either have gotten old or will get old, and the next thing you know, another 'new' year will be here with a new set of resolutions. If you are truly going to meet the challenge of change, there comes a time when you MUST command your body to follow your will.

One of my favorite inspiring stories is the one of Sir Edmund Hillary. He was the first man ever to climb Mt. Everest. Yet most do not know he failed at his first attempt to climb the mighty mountain. Even though his first attempt had failed, the English government wanted to honor him. On the stage where Edmund Hillary was to ascend, a huge picture of Mt Everest was on display. Its picturesque presence loomed over the stage and the audience with its own mighty audacity! As Edmund Hillary climbed up the stairs and walked upon the stage, he turned and looked up at the towering picture of Mt Everest and said, "You defeated me But you won't defeat me again Because you have grown all you can grow.... but I am still growing" And he took that same inner fire and passion with him, and the very next year, Edmund Hillary became the first man to conquer the mighty Mt. Everest!

The word 'motivation' is a noun which means, "the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior." Many times the question is asked..."What motivates you?" What is it that lights your fire? What is your driving purpose? Is it your family? Is it a desire for more money? What arouses your inner fire to push forward into the day? And the questions could go on... but something does motivate each and everyone of us.

Stephen R. Covey said, "Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly." The fire must be from within! There must be a burning desire within you that pushes you toward a mark or a goal! If you are pushed, prodded, and prompted to go forward, you may go forward, but those kind of fires fizzle out in a very short time.

History is littered with the passion of men and women like Edmund Hillary. Who no doubt battled the same voices from the rut, but refused to give up even when they probably had a right reason to quit! Men of renown...

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.

Colonel Sanders had the construction of a new road put him out of business in 1967. He went to over 1,000 places trying to sell his chicken recipe before he found a buyer interested in his 11 herbs and spices. Seven years later, at the age of 75, Colonel Sanders sold his fried chicken company for a finger-lickin' $15 million!

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn't read until he was seven. His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams." He was expelled and refused admittance to Zurich Polytechnic School. The University of Bern turned down his Ph.D. dissertation as being irrelevant and fanciful.

Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. Five years later by 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.

Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone with the Wind was rejected by more than twenty-five publishers.

When the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book was completed, it was turned down by thirty-three publishers in New York and another ninety at the American Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim, California, before Health Communications, Inc., finally agreed to publish it. The major New York publishers said, "It is too nicey-nice" and "Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories." Since that time more than 8 million copies of the original Chicken Soup for the Soul book have been sold. The series, which has grown to thirty-two titles, in thirty-one languages, has sold more than 53 million copies.

In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance. He told Presley, "You ain't goin' nowhere… son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck." Elvis Presley went on to become the 'The King of Rock and Roll'!

What motivates YOU? What is your deepest desire? What turns your wheels and cranks your shaft? Only you can discover it and only you can light that fire? YOU have to find your passion...YOU have to tap into your chief motivation...search out the ‘why’s’ of your heart and when you find them...don’t ever let the voices of the rut call you back to it’s slippery ways!  Besides, don't you think its time, once and for all, to keep your fire burning? Truly, how has life in the rut benefited you anyway?