You CAN do anything when you know WHY
Most of us struggle with goals that underwhelm us, keep us constantly frustrated and frankly offer few psychic (or other) rewards if we were to achieve them.
And we can’t figure out why we can’t keep our enthusiasm at a sufficient level to achieve the success we crave.
The reason is almost always in the “WHY.” Why do you want to achieve it? Why is it important to you? Why will you give up your time, your treasure, your fear and most things you hold dear? When you can answer the WHY, you’ve got a strong goal.
My friend Bill Cobb sent me this story of what you CAN do when you know WHY. Turn your speakers on and watch the video with a box of tissue close by…
Stumble it!
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August 20th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Hi! Here’s the story that goes along with the AWESOME video you sent out….
Strongest Dad in the World
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I stink.
Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.
Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”
But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.”
“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”
That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”
How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time’? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care)and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every > weekend, including this Father’s Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”
August 20th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Wow, what a story. More tissues please.
August 21st, 2006 at 5:47 pm
What a heartwarming story….the great heros of our time! Tears…
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:55 am
Wow!…………..”I can only imagine”. It’s stories like this that make my problems seem so insignificant. This is another one of God’s treats that shakes us and reminds us to be thankful for all that He has blessed us with.
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:37 pm
A true lesson in selflessness and love. What an amazing story! I can only hope to be half the father someday that Dick is today.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:05 am
Hey, I’ve met these guys a number of times. They do the CAF tri every single year. It’s the charity race that I also do every year (except last year)…the half ironman that starts and finishes at La Jolla cove. It’s a great race and a great charity that supports these guys and others like them all around the world. I’m so glad you came across this. Do that triathlon once and your life will also be changed forever! This year it is November 5.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Awesome and heart touching. This is the kind of fatherly love we need all around the world.
November 1st, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Living is for another. Living is giving and by giving we live. This is the lesson I learned from this father and son story, “You can do anything when you know why”, this is the understanding.
This explains the meaning of covenant, God made covenants with his people, in giving, God gets us back in return. Give and be given back to. Not give and take or Take then give.
Give and receive.
Dominic
November 21st, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Video won’t play. Disappointed but still love your site.Thankyou for your work in making people ralise their potential.:)