and never give up is that once you stop giving credence to your excuses, once you carve out doing three simple things for 21 days, your life is now moving in the direction you spoke into existence. You are now capable of replicating the experience of doing what you said you would do. Nineteen days is not enough. Twenty days and “I am good” will not be sustainable. Transform your life in twenty-one days. And that is very powerful.
Facing Fear Challenge
The second trial I recommend to honoring your word is to deal openly with fear. Fear is a crippling emotion. Fear is designed to prevent the weak, inexperienced you from engaging the thing that makes you afraid. When fear is present, its effect works 100 percent of the time. Fear stops you.
Ironically, fear can always be overcome by experience and action. But you must act in the face of fear by doing what you are afraid of doing. You must cast off what you think about fear and face it. There is no other way.
Take for instance the most common fears: fear of public speaking, fear of rejection, fear of getting hurt, fear of failure. The fear of public speaking prevents a great many people from succeeding in business. Fear of rejection prevents many of us from asking the question or trying something new. Fear of getting hurt prevents pretty much everyone from venturing off the normal paths we are on in health or in business or in relationships. Fear of failure stops people from even trying something new or hard.
Fear keeps us where we are: doing the same thing over and over and over again.
The method to overcome and openly deal with fear is practical and important to learn. I have taken hundreds of people through this simple lesson in fear and have seen the same result. The result of dealing with fear is action. Through action, all things become available.
I have noticed that once you learn the lesson of dealing with one fear, you can easily apply that same method to dealing with any fear you might have. The most visceral fear to overcome is the fear of falling. I ask you to overcome your fear of heights by rappelling and climbing a 100-foot cliff.
Obviously get a professional climber who is certified to teach and safely take you through the climbing experience. We insist on the safety mechanisms you must have to climb. Still, you must still face your fear and do the climb. Mitigating risk doesn’t alleviate fear prior to taking action and doing the thing you are afraid of doing. I can tell you a thousand times how to rappel and climb and even show you, but in that last moment before you actually get to it, you have to overcome your personal fears. You have to hook up and step off. You have to take the action. You have to look down and overcome your fear. You have to climb back up and feel your hands about to slip off. You have to face the possible experience of slipping and falling a short distance and then trying again.
In that moment, or all moments of being gripped by fear but taking action anyway, what happens to fear? Fear disappears once you take action. It literally stops.
What would your life be like if you learned to take action in all the things you are afraid of doing?
24-Hour Challenge
The third iteration, and the most important method of honoring your word and never giving up, is the 24-hour challenge. During the 24-hour challenge, you simply walk at whatever speed you want for 24 hours. The impact is profound. The simple act of just walking for 24 hours forces you to either honor your word and walk or honor every outside circumstance pressuring you and quit. The act of eating and drinking and taking care of yourself and even resting is not easy. You have to feel each step. You have to feel yourself be tired and maybe nauseated. You have to listen to your reasons and excuses and, if you do it in a group, hear other’s excuses as well. I call this “the battle against the demons within.”
Honoring your word to keep moving will become increasingly difficult because of the lack of experience most of us have in overcoming our internal demons. The rules are simple:
1 Walk for 24 hours.
2 Rest no more than 10 minutes before walking again.
3 Eat and drink as much as you can.
Following these simple rules for 24 hours is a profound experience. I have conducted dozens of 24-hour challenges. Through rain, cold, dry, hot, blisters, and whatever the world throws at us, I show people the method of honoring your word for 24 hours.
Why on earth would I suggest 24 hours? The answer may shock you. Because with freedom and abundance comes decay. The human condition in America, due to abundance, has lost the skill of physical and mental endurance. I am not talking running endurance or high-level athleticism. I am talking the ability to endure the battle within against our excuses for a long time. We, as a nation, have succumbed to excusing ourselves because this inner voice, which we have had no real experience with, now runs the show. It says stop; we stop. It says cheat; we cheat. It suggests fear; we disengage. The internal dialogue, this battle with your demons, has all but vanished in American society. Without this battle being waged and won, we are left with blame, entitlement, and a fragmentation of our souls in the form of sexism and racism and business failure.
In 24 hours, all that ceases. You quiet your storm, you stop blaming, you stop thinking you are due something you didn’t work for and, most graciously, you stop seeking differences in others. By actually doing the 24-hour challenge, your ability to see how honoring your word and never giving up causes a shift in you.
Having completed multiple 24-hour challenges with committed clients willing to experience their own self-imposed limits, a few points regarding limitations and foundational principles have emerged. Many of my preconceived notions of what actually stops people from achieving their own goals have been shattered, while some new ideas expose the realities of the human potential to succeed. Each 24-hour challenge pushes my limits and endears me to those willing to press past their own stopping points.
The first attempt went as well as you might expect. I walked it solo. I talked myself out of it when the weather got cold. And I drove home trying to form a story as to why I just couldn’t complete it. And trust me, the story was an ingenious fabrication of what happened and didn’t happen in order to convince my family it wasn’t possible. And my wife, Stacy, after hearing my grand tale said, “So you didn’t prepare and take the right clothing and you quit.” After a short tantrum on my part, I learned the first two lessons of the 24-hour challenge. These two lessons when translated into everyday life change outcomes immediately.
Lessons one and two are:
We underprepare for a hard life.
We can construct an elaborated story around quitting to convince anyone the thing we tried wasn’t possible.
On the second attempt I once again went solo and began the walk with a fever. I was resolute to complete it in spite of the fever. But at the 20-hour mark, I could hardly stand up without falling . . . and I quit once again.
Enter lesson three: Don’t do hard things alone. Isolation destroys humans.
The third attempt I finally completed. Four of us started it, and at the end I was the only one to walk the last four hours. I certainly didn’t want to, because it seemed stupid. I could have quit, because it was painful. I had forgotten to drink enough and was paying the price for the stupidity of that excuse. And my friends who started were really not supportive.
Lesson four crystallized: The last few steps or last moments of attaining a goal make no sense, are stupid and the mind is thoroughly convinced completing it makes no difference.
