Mountains of Arizona
Sunny 80 Degrees
3:15 p.m.
So yesterday, as fate would have it, I went for a nice “easy” mountain bike ride with this guy in the picture, Simon Bosman.
Now “easy” was his word, but it would definitely be the wrong word for ME to use. Technically, it was my first real mountain bike ride…like EVER. And as I was sucking wind looking at Simon and his wife (and my son) ride up the side of a mountain easier than a pack of mountain goats, I got to that nice mental state where your mind turns itself off because it thinks it’s about to die.
It’s a nice place to be. Granted, this mental state was induced by pain, but whatever…
Mountain biking, as I found out, is not like running. I know what it feels like to run 10 miles at a time. I was pretty good at running.
But I’ve never run 10 miles of intervals where every other minute is a 30 second sprint where it feels like you might just combust from the inside out.
That’s what mountain biking is like around here.
There’s a lesson to be had here, me thinks 🙂
For some reason, the business world is addicted to finding the lazy man’s fast track to riches. That is actually applauded. Any faster and easier way to GET THERE SOONER is what MUST be done.
Just give me the shortcut so I can get on with it!
What you end up with is a bunch of “successful” people who have no idea how they got there. I’ve known people like this. And they are TIRED. Their adrenal glands are shot and they are headed for disaster on multiple levels. Sometimes even the worst kind of disaster: that’s the one on the inside that only they know exists.
The biggest drawback with easy, of course, is that you learn absolutely nothing.
Yesterday, I learned a ton. Probably more in one hour than I have in quite some time.
So which is better, “getting there” or learning something?
What if learning something IS getting there?
The real question is whether or not you want to be more valuable tomorrow than you are today.
Because there’s only one way to do that. And it’s called LEARNING.