Transcript:
Three years ago this summer, we went on an adventure. My friend Hobbit and Erich, we got together and we took our four teenagers and we flew to Seattle, Washington with our bicycles and we unpacked our bicycles on the front lawn of our friend, Jason and Jorji’s house, and we assembled them and we rode 4,000 miles in two months across the United States back to Portland, Maine.
It was such a powerful and memorable adventure to experience this with good friends and with our 16 year old son. We even wrote a book about it. It was so much fun and we tell stories about that experience to people. We can talk about crossing the Cascades and the Rocky Mountains and the blast furnace of eastern South Dakota, and what that experience was like or crossing the Cheyenne River Reservation. But often, people will ask us what was the hardest part? What was the most difficult thing about doing it?
The answer to that question is starting, beginning, initiating the whole thing, convincing ourselves, our kids, our friends, our wives, our colleagues, our community that we could and we should do this. That’s the hardest part. The actual doing of it was like any other day. You wake up and you find something to eat, like a diner, and you look at the map and you figure out where you’re going to go and you meet people along the way and have adventures.
Now, many of you, of course, may not be planning on cycling across the United States, but I bet you do have a big project or a big endeavor that you want to take on. Maybe it’s you want to write a book or start a business or quit job or start a job, but whatever it is, the most important thing to do is to start, is to initiate it, to begin. Because when you begin, people around you will see what you’re doing and they’ll connect you with others who are like-minded and can help you on your journey. Remember, you cannot think your way into a new way of acting. You can only act your way into a new way of thinking. Go get ’em.
