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Kilimanjaro, Here I Come...
It Pays to Write Down Your Goals...
By Alan Davidson
http://www.ThroughYourBody.com
© Alan Davidson- All Rights reserved
I gimped along, pain shooting down my right leg. Nursing an injured knee I jogged through Houston’s historic Heights. Elegant Bayland Street was deathly quiet at 5:30 AM (shocking, I know). Even the few dogs awake this early ignored me. Sweat trickled down my body as the August morning felt humid but gratefully “mild;” that’s 81 degrees as opposed to the afternoon’s full 101. In a fit of fitness…or is that insanity…I joined the Soaring Ibis running club. I’m training to run The Houston Half Marathon in January and Austin’s Half Marathon on February 15th (Happy Valentine’s Day, Jim).
You see, I have one goal; to have fun climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. And to that end I’m “getting” myself back in shape for the challenge… and the sheer delight of this dream come true. There’s something to be said for writing down your goals…
Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, and the Masai warriors first touched my soul back in the summer of 1994while reading Richard Strozzi Heckler’s In Search of the Warrior Spirit. Richard tells the tale of trekking the Mzombe River in the heart of the shrinking Masai territory. His stories of Coye, the magnificently simple Masai chief, are heart moving and set against the Tanzanian government’s bureaucratic invasion of the Masai’s traditional way of life; a way of life deeply at odds with the countries march into the Twentieth Century. I thought to myself, “It’d be cool to walk with the Masai and why not climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, too while I’m there.”
That great idea never got written down and so never became an actual goal. It’s in the writing…in declaring to the world, “I want to, I will do this, my hearts desire. The importance of writing “it” down first came to me from the I Ching. This forty-five-hundred-year old Chinese system of “divining the future” says that everything in life is in the process of continuous change, rising and falling in progressive synchronicity. To consult the I Ching is to seek where in the cycle of change I am; what are the patterns of energy and movement at work in my life. Before casting the coins and finding the mystic text, key to each consult is clearly writing down my question. Writing my question down focuses my attention. The more focused my question the more direct my answer from the I Ching.
The importance of clearly setting your goals and writing them down is found in an often told study… (Perhaps too often, but it was suprising to me).
A Harvard business school study in 1979 asked the graduates of their MBA program “Have you set clear, written goals, for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Only 3% of the graduates had written goals and plans. 13% had goals that they had not written down and 84% had no specific goals at all.
Ten years later, the researchers interviewed the class again. They found that the 13% who had goals that were not in writing were earning on average twice as much as the 84% of students who had no goals at all. But to their amazement the 3% who had clear, written goals and plans to achieve them were earning on average 10 times as much as the other 97% of graduates all together!
I finally got around to writing my Kilimanjaro dream down at a one-day Introduction to Integral Theory class. Barrett Brown and Cindy Lou Golin broke the ice for our Integral journey by asking us to share one special--and unreasonable-- goal we had for our lives. As the Rocky Mountains touched the October skies near Boulder, CO., deep from my unconscious mind (and a jolt to my conscious mind), I chose climbing Kilimanjaro. Our directions were simple—fold the little piece of paper we’d written our dream/goal on and slip it into the back flap of the name tag dangling around our necks. When we passed each other through the day--and on into our five-day Integral Spiritual Practice seminar--remember the “silent dream” tucked into the backside of the nametag and send a boost of energy to help the person manifest their dream in real life. Simple enough really…
Kilimanjaro fell and rose on my list of good ideas and silent dreams over the years, never quite making it to the top—of my list or to Kibo peak for that matter. And then this Spring I heard the amazing story of Werner Berger. Two months shy of his 70th birthday he climbed the peak of Mt. Everest. Not only did he become the second oldest North American to climb Everest he fulfilled his own dream of climbing the highest peaks on each of our seven continents. Whew! If Werner could climb Everest at 69-plus years, surely I can make it to the “roof of Africa.” My lofty dream soared to the top of my bucket list (you know, the list of things I want to do before I kick the bucket).
Werner Berger in the Himilayan foothills...
Life has a funny way of sorting things out. In April I went to Salt Lake City for a book writing and marketing workshop. Werner Berger, now 70 years old, was modestly there learning how to write and market his book about his adventures. I eagerly introduced myself, my words tumbled about the impact he’d already had on my dreams for hiking Tanzania’s national treasure. Without missing a beat he smiled widely and said, “Why don’t you come with us? We’re going back.” Missing only one beat I said, “Sure; absolutely.”
Werner, his fiancé, Heshie, and I got to know and love each other over the next three days. Before we left they asked me to join the planning committee for “Peace Summit Kilimanjaro.” Come January 2010 they are hosting a Leadership and Peace conference for kids and teenagers from warring cultures and continents on the Serengeti Plain below the mountain. Later that week 100 teenagers and guides will climb the mountain and fly peace kites together. Kites know no boundaries or manmade borders. How could I resist. I get to achieve my personal dream of climbing Africa’s highest peak and meet my Life’s Vision and Mission, too—
I tell simple stories that bring genuine wisdom and understanding to everybody and create health, happiness, and prosperity for our world.
On the final day of our workshop I spoke to the group about Body Brilliance and showed the flash movie I had made to launch my book. Afterwards, in an audacious feat of accountability, Werner came up to me and asked to mentor me with my own body. In the Body Brilliance movie he had seen my beautiful vision for how the wisdom of our bodies can guide us to our own perfect health, happiness, and prosperity. In my presence he had seen my dark secret—the elephant in the room I deemed to ignore—the incongruence between my own body; fat and out of shape—and the exquisite models in my book. He dared to speak the obvious. I am grateful and relieved.
In our recent interview Werner made the important distinction between suffering all the way to the top of a mountain versus enjoying the climb. I fully intend to have “Big Fun” climbing Kilimanjaro. So I find myself training a year out from our trek; running in the wee morning heat to find my own body’s brilliance. After the half marathon this winter I’ll tackle the MS-150, a two-day and a 179 mile bike ride from Houston to Austin. Come late spring I’ll satisfy another dream; to compete in my first sprint triathlon—an endurance test with a ½ mile swim, a 12.4 mile bike ride, and a 3.1 mile run. By next summer I’ll be ready for some fun (and serious) hiking like Texas’s Big Bend country, or Washington state’s Mt. Rainier, and Oregon’s Mt. Hood.
Physical Intelligence has always been my weakest IQ. I’m much more proficient with Spiritual IQ, Moral IQ and Mental IQ. I do good enough with aspects of Emotional IQ (remember conscious eating is part of the Five IQ system. All in all I’m feeling great about bringing my own Physical IQ on track with my emotional, mental, moral, and spiritual IQs.
There’s something to writing down your goals and letting the universe handle the details…What’s your hearts desire? What’s on your bucket list? I invite you to write them down…put your list someplace so you can see it from time to time… like your wallet, your purse, the visor of your car, a desk drawer; and when you come across it, gently send some potent attention and energy to living your dream. You never know who you’ll meet along the way to help you live your dreams in the most spectacular way. Remember you are brilliant.
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