The Narrow Road

A storm impacts.

It either damages, floods, and ruins, or it nourishes soil, washes away filth, and hydrates us humans.

Similar to storms, we are made of substance and spirit, earthly matter and soul, physical order and emotional chaos.

What is the optimal way to live?

How do we channel what's inside of us to impact others outside of us?

What road should we take?

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Here are 12 actions to consider:

1. Know our values
2. Set clear goals
3. Stay emotionally fit
4. Pursue energizing relationships
5. Believe in possibilities
6. Discipline over distractions
7. Maintain healthy habits
8. Prize our attention
9. Follow role models
10. Lead by example
11. Serve others lovingly
12. Walk With God

(1) Our values are the puzzle pieces that make up our identities. For example, a person who values health, faith, family, loyalty, and work that serves others could identify as a spiritually-driven leader, lover, or entrepreneur who commits to causes greater than himself/herself.

(2) Vagueness breeds anxiety. Complexity is the enemy of execution. Uncertainty creates confusion. On the other hand, clarity of vision provides persistent, intrinsic motivation. When it comes to targets we desire to hit in life: the more specific, the more terrific. The best at what they do repeatedly aim ambitiously, appropriately, and aspirationally.

The quickest yet most important task during any adventure is selection of destination. Entering a location on a GPS or writing down a goal takes seconds, however, it determines the minutes, hours, days, months, or sometimes years ahead. Discerning where we truly want to go requires heart-and-head alignment so we feel secure in our decision and think through necessary alternatives.

(3) As deeply sentient beings, our hearts lead the way, whether we like it or not. World-renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Antonio Damasio, popularized the role emotions play in decision-making through his groundbreaking research around the “Somatic Marker Hypothesis.” Put simply, our feelings guide our reasoning. We cannot separate emotion from logic. Moreover, a human’s emotions put his or her energies in motion at a far greater degree than thoughtful rationale.

Our emotions are like waves of an ocean. Can we stop them? No. Can we hold them back? No, not without them flooding us. Would it make sense to stand in their way, attempting to oppose and suppress them, for a long time? No, their consistent crashing would cause us to crash out. We could duck underneath the harsh ones… letting them pass. We should ride with the happy ones… for short periods of time. We might want to surf some, to float in others, and to cool down inside of many… so long as we remember: we cannot control our emotions. We can channel, harness, and manage our emotions by how we talk to ourselves and others.

Abracadabra: as we speak, so we create

(4) To take on life’s calm and rough seas, we must sail the right [relation]ships. Do we like who we are in the presence of certain individuals? Whose absence do we feel when he or she is not around? Which person(s) do we hold in high regard, with deep respect? Contempt crushes connections; esteem glues two or more beings together.

“Women want to be adored and men want to be admired.” — Arthur Brooks

In a similar way to people being interested in those who are interested… great relationships are built upon a foundation of trust and like-interests. The deeper the interests, the deeper the relationships. Intimacy comes from the adoration derived from seeing the world similarly. We tend to welcome those who say, “Me, too.” With whatever and whoever we want out of us and away from us, we say, “Achoo!” Here’s an important question to frequently ponder, “Which relationships are worth pursuing?”

(5) Seven times more receptive to negativity than positivity, it’s natural for us to see obstacles instead of opportunities. Training our minds to seek possibilities, and to believe in them, remains an essential prerequisite to peak performance. If we do not look for benefits, what’s good and true… we become chained down by the weights of doubt, fear, and pessimism. Anyone who has made a significant positive contribution to our planet has done one key verb on a consistent basis: believe in possibilities.

In the motivating manuscript titled, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing vividly describes the power of unwavering belief. Sir Ernest Shackleton, amidst extreme adversity and brutal conditions, leads a crew of 27 men to survival because he never let probabilities matter more than possibilities. Every single member who took part in the excursion to cross the Antarctic continent went from stranded to saved because Shackleton embodied a level of contagious belief galvanizing his crew with hope through every discouraging hardship. The greatest relief in any motif is belief.

(6 & 7) “No” is a powerful one-word sentence. High performers set boundaries. They make promises to themselves and they keep them. In a world desperately attempting to distract us, we must prioritize well, concentrate on wellness, and hold the line willfully.

Daily disciplines determine destiny.

Discipline in one domain catalyzes discipline in all domains.

Accomplish appointments and discipline disappointments.

What’s healthy is anything that promotes wholeness. The opposite of health includes terms like break-up, divide, divorce, fracture, rupture, separate, shatter, split… Cultivating healthy habits starts with intention, continues via discipline, and endures through environments of eudaemonia.

The healthy ones tend to have discipline and the disciplined ones tend to be healthy.

(8) Where focus goes, energy flows. Focus is like a flashlight… it illuminates what we zero in on. Concentration is like a battery within a flashlight… it controls the strength, potency, and duration of illumination. “Focus is a choice; concentration is a skill. (Dr. Amisha Jha)” We get to choose the direction our light aims. We get to train the might of our light. How? By prizing our attention, the most valuable internal resource we possess.

Intelligence remains relatively fixed and static. Attention is dynamic. It’s ever-evolving. It stretches or shrinks depending on the settings we put ourselves in, the technologies we use or abstain from, as well as the people we strive to imitate.

Like money, attention is currency. When we allocate it appropriately, invest it diligently, and treasure it daily… we build a fortune.

(9) Who we look up to says a lot about who we perceive ourselves to be. “The level of our role models reflects the level of our ambition (James Clear).” Modeling behavior is a normal practice beginning in adolescence and lasting throughout our adult lives. Who should we look up to? Those with similar values at currently higher summits.

As a freshman in high school, I aimed to emulate individuals who were a few-to-several years ahead of me — by doing so, I adopted routines bolstering me to become an All-State student-athlete. As a freshman in college, I copied the rituals of professional athletes — by doing so, I earned All-American status by the time I graduated from Yale. As a rookie at the professional level, I followed the footsteps of veterans, all-stars, and Olympians — by doing so, I found staying power to and through 11 seasons so far. Many of the guests on Grateful and Full of Greatness, including coaches and sport psychologists, mentored me to heights I previously thought were improbable. We are required to imitate role models to one day become one.

(10) Leaders disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. Disturbing the comfortable includes raising the standard, increasing work ethic, and embodying excellence. Comforting the disturbed includes holding space and giving grace to teammates and loved ones — it involves asking questions and actively listening. All human beings want to be heard, helped, or hugged.

Individuals in positions of leadership possess power, which could be used to manipulatively control or intentionally lead.

Leadership = Influence

One of the greatest captains I have ever studied was Richie McCaw of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. His story is mentioned in the book, Legacy, and expounded upon in the documentary, “Chasing Great.” Verbally quiet yet nonverbally loud, McCaw led by example. Over the course of two decades, he consistently put himself in harm’s way to inspire, protect, and empower all members of his team, including fans, as well as people like me who barely knew or watched the sport of rugby. McCaw understood and epitomized a core doctrine of leadership: “we can only lead insofar as we go before (M. Scott Peck).”

(11) Love means to make better. Love means to will the good of the other as other (Thomas Aquinas). Love means to want what’s best for the best parts of those around us. In order to truly want that, we must serve.

It’s not a surprise the root of the word “hero” is “servant.” When we think about the heroes in our own lives, each and every one of them puts others before themselves — to do so takes exorbitant amounts of awareness, patience, and spirituality.

Who needs me? How can I add value? Where could I give more of me to help us? These questions lead to better quests.

Call to Action: meditate on the kind of community you would love to serve. Research, seek out, and make contact with someone in a community that serves a great cause, one near and dear to your heart. Build, work on, and maintain a relationship with them… repeatedly helping that community at a frequency that’s viable and sustainable for you.

(12) In the Bible, there’s an emphasis on taking the narrow road. Many paths pave the way toward iniquity. Few routes result in success. The narrow road, which remains divinely-inspired, leads to metaphorical heaven on earth. How do we know when we are deviating far from the narrow road? We know. We can feel it. We experience tensions, feelings, and instincts viscerally whispering to us we are morally off track. Each time we choose the hard right instead of the easy wrong, such as a deep breath rather than a shout back, we take another glorified step along the narrow road, away from hell and towards peace.

To Walk With God (WWG) is to do as Noah did in the Old Testament when the flood was coming... to prepare, to pray, and to persist with passion. When we WWG, we attract like-minded friends and avoid malevolent foes. The intentional choice to WWG opens doors to our dreams while simultaneously closing the wide gate to gross gestures presented by the devil. To WWG is to do as Jesus did in the New Testament when betrayal, hate, and pain arrived.... to fully forgive what's been done, to completely accept current conditions, and to honestly strive towards what is most beautiful, good, and true

Like AA, a book exists called 12 Steps for Everyone.

Like OT, living optimally only happens over time.

Like He, we absolutely can impact others in this world positively.