Create positive momentum towards change

How to achieve great things

Perhaps a cliché, but there is truth in the saying: “If you can conceive it you can achieve it”.

Recognising what holds you back from achieving your goals gives you the insight and tools required to get to where you want to be!

It is true that those that believe something is possible can at times against all odds make something possible.

At one point all humans on the face of the earth believed the earth was flat and if you travelled out too far to sea you would fall off the end, until someone chose to believe differently.

Up until the time Roger Bannister completed the mile in under 4 minutes Doctors had said it was physically impossible, but once he proved the world differently it wasn’t long before many followed in his footsteps. In fact, Australian John Landy bettered the record only the following month with a time of 3 minutes 57.9 seconds, but Bannister will always be remembered as the man who ran the “miracle mile”.

Here are two inspirational stories that make you realise how possible it is for us humans to achieve great things, even in the face of adversity.

Dick & Rick Hoyt

This is the story of Dick & Rick Hoyt, the most inspirational father and son team to race in an Ironman.

Larenzo’s oil

This is a story you may already be aware of as it was adapted and made into a film in 1992.

It is the story of Lorenzo, a young boy who was diagnosed with a very rare disease.

Lorenzo’s parents in failing to find a doctor capable of treating their young son set out on their own mission to find a treatment to save their child.

In their quest, Lorenzo’s parents clashed with doctors, scientists, and support groups, who were skeptical that anything could be done about ALD, much less by laypeople. But they persisted, setting up camp in medical libraries, reviewing animal experiments, badgering researchers, questioning top doctors all over the world, and even organizing an international symposium about the disease.

Despite dead ends of research, the horror of watching their son’s health decline, and being surrounded by skeptics (including the coordinators of the support group they attended), they persisted until they finally hit upon a therapy involving adding a certain kind of oil (actually an oil containing two specific long chain fatty acids, both isolated from olive oil) to their son’s diet. They contacted over 100 firms around the world until they found an elderly British chemist who was willing to take on the challenge of distilling the proper formula. It proved successful in normalizing the accumulation of the very long chain fatty acids in the brain that had been causing their son’s steady decline, thereby halting the progression of the disease. There was still a great deal of neurological damage remaining which could not be reversed until new treatments were found to regenerate the myelin sheath (a lipid insulator) around the nerves.

However this is a great example of two people who regardless of being told they ‘could not’ by some of the best medical brains on the planet chose to believe they could. Lorenzo lived until he was 30 years of age.

What made them different?

These are both examples of a powerful cause creating powerful beliefs that such things can be achieved. Each of these stories are truly inspirational and they are only two of millions of others out there like it.

So what made these people different?

• They had two options- Dick, Rick and Lorenzo’s parents were in a situation that caused them pain. Each of them could have accepted where they were in life: Lorenzo’s parents could have listened to the doctors that told them ‘’no cure could be found, and Dick Hoyt could have believed that his handicap son would never be able to participate and enjoy different athletic challenges in his lifetime.
• But among all these limiting beliefs they chose to think different and they did this because they wanted to take themselves and their child out of the emotion of pain into a state of pleasure and joy. Something each and every one of us would like for ourselves.
• In Lorenzo’s case his parents wanted to find a cure to his terminal illness and Dick wanted his son to experience joy and happiness in completing athletic challenges together.
• So they each went for option 2 and when people told them you can’t or shouldn’t or but it dangerous or but the medical profession know best they did not believe that to be true and carried on in their pursuit to achieve their goals.
• They did not accept that where they were today was where they would end up. Rather, what they realised was that the actions of today shapes the future of tomorrow, a week from now or a month from now. And that dreaming big dreams can and does bring big rewards- They got there’s!!

Videos on YoueTube for Lorenzo’s oil can be found here.

Health and Fitness Goals

Examples like these sit around us all day every day we don’t have to search too far to find someone who has achieved a goal.

In relation to health and fitness goals when people have achieved something they are proud of they will tell you… whether it’s the race time they achieved at a recent 10k, or that they haven’t eaten one biscuit from the office tin in over 2 weeks, that they are now walking to and from work, or have increased their weekly exercise levels.

In all of these cases that person has not settled for option 1, what I call the stagnated approach, rather they have seen a different future for themselves and gone for option 2, what I call positive momentum towards long lasting change.

Perhaps it’s time to create some powerful goals of your own?