Have you ever wondered why some people always seem blessed with an inordinate supply of initiative? Do you ever wonder why some of these people are then able to stay on track while so many others fail?

I have found that many of those who are willing to undertake new challenges and then persevere all the way through to the winner's circle have been able to engineer some kind of performance box into their efforts. They begin by burning the bridges of retreat. Then they fabricate little rewards along the way until they achieve the greater reward they are striving for. In the words ahead, I will use the example of my bike rides across America to show you the success principle these people utilize to help you fully commit to your ride and break free from the ties that may have before kept you bound.

The way that I got my first bike ride across America going back in 1979, when very few did such a thing, especially after a long hospitalization and rehabilitation, was to tell key people what I intended to do. I made sure to advise those I knew who would not let me forget, even those who I knew would laugh at me if I didn't 'walk my talk'.

And as I talked about the dream of biking across the US, there were those who made a point to ignore such talk. While others, laughed, some just took a look  at my weak body and smiled. They were saying the same thing as those few friends or family members who  cautioned me against doing such a thing.

It was the inspirational dissatisfaction from these important naysayers that forced me to take my next step. In order to more fully commit to the dream I had threatened to fulfill, I traded my motorcycle (even though I could hardly ride it after I had more fully recovered, I still kept it around erroneously thinking it imparted some kind of strength to me) for a better bicycle, one I could use for the many hours of training I would need for a 4000 mile bike ride. And then after I had convinced most everyone who knew me that I had gone crazy, I sold my car. This was so that I could make the last few rent payments before I would leave as well as help me buy the rest of the gear I had begun to learn I would need. Selling it would also pay for the lodging and food I would need once I actually did hit the open road.

Because of these two actions, I was in a performance box. All of a sudden, I had to cycle everywhere I went. The sacrifices I found myself having to make soon became a part of my new lifestyle. Quickly I found myself less attractive to the opposite sex (remember that was the late '70's, I find that not having a car now makes me somewhat curious to at least those members of the female population who have some depth and are interested in being fit). Because dating was virtually eliminated as a result, at night I read about bicycles and what little I could find about bicycle touring. And I went to bed early. Such self imposed solitude not only prepared my mind for the next day's riding but it also readied me for the many nights I would spend in my tent with little more than my journal and a candle lantern for company.

In other preparations for the TransAmerican road, I pretended that my bicycle was my employer and I made sure that we got on the road everyday at seven in the morning with the work crowd. Every day began with a destination in mind, that once reached, I had to cycle back from -- another Performance Box.

In preparing for those domestic chores that I knew would greet me on the road, I didn't let myself use the laundry machines at my apartment complex but made more trips to the laundromat at the bottom of the hill with less clothes. Instead of doing my grocery shopping once a week, I bought smaller quantities of food on a daily basis. More Performance Boxes.

As the miles got bigger, the months passed, and as the seasons changed, because I had no other way to turn, I began to feel my goal as more and more possible. When the weather was nice, me and my bicycle visualized the mountains, the prairies and the fields of grain that lay ahead of us.

When the weather changed we knew we were being toughened up for some of the steep ascents and other unknowns of the transcontinental road. When darkness and the cold and rains of winter fell upon our efforts, I kept telling myself that what I was moving through was nothing compared to the proverbial bicycle road that would connect us with the east coast. Using Performance Boxes to build my life around my bike in this way prepared me for the next stage of my ride -- breaking free of my ties.

Breaking Free

In order to say good bye to friends and family, familiar faces and the ease of knowing my way around my own home town, I burned even more bridges of retreat. In order to minimize my storage needs, I started selling my household items. I placed ads on bulletin boards and in newspapers, I held garage sales, I took things to the flea market and either gave away or sold even more things to people I knew.

The first thing to go was my waterbed. Seeing it go made me cringe, as selling it meant I would have to sleep on the floor. Letting it go, however strengthened my visualization as it toughened me up for the many nights in the middle of nowhere that I knew were ahead of me. Doing so also reminded me of the dream I was buying for myself.

Selling my bed was symbolic for me. It initiated the process of letting go. It made it easier and easier to release the rest of my things. Soon, the rest of my furniture followed a blender, toaster, lawnmower and countless other items that all had memories attached to them as they trickled out the door.

Everything that I disposed of in this way made it easier for me to say good bye. It made me look forward to the day when I could just get started. By getting rid of my comforts, I also left myself with no way to turn but toward the fulfillment of my goal.

A few words about faith and the way I now know the Universe to work are in order here.

In liquidating many of my possessions, I also had to place my trust in the Universe to take care of me once my dream had been actualized. Fortunately for me, four or five years before, I had given myself the college graduation present of going to Europe. To pay for that three month journey, I had sold much of what I owned that time as well. Even though I then returned to very little, I found myself replacing everything I had before owned with usually better and newer items in a much faster and easier way.

In the metaphysical realms there is a spiritual axiom that the universe abhors a vacuum, it is always trying to fill a void. With regard to all the “stuff” we have in our lives, this truth could never be more true. For example. if you've ever moved into a bigger house or apartment thinking you had plenty of room only to discover in a very short time that you felt cramped for space, then you will know what I mean. If you've owned certain things before, it is much easier to have similar things come back to you because they are already familiar to you; a part of your energy. So in letting things go, I had already trained myself not to worry about what would happen to my life after I had completed my ride.

On the Road Performance Boxes

Returning to the TransAmerica journey I had proposed for myself, then, when I had built a big enough cash reserve, I bought a one way train ticket to Portland, OR, 900 miles away. This achieved two things for me. First, it set a departure date (as discussed in the chapter entitled “Undecided”, in hindsight, I feel that the most important thing you can do NOW is to set a departure date) for me. And second, it made it a lot harder for me to just turn around and come back home, once I was actually on the bicycle road east, when things got difficult.

So, as you can see, just getting my ride started, which is always the hardest part about undertaking any large project, was a series of performance boxes. So many good intentions and wonderful dreams never become fulfilled because many people don't know how to overcome the inertia that stands between them and their goals. Dr. Robert Schuller speaks to this in his classic book, "Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking", when he says, "Beginning is Half Done" as does a friend who says, "It's Easier to Steer a Car that's in Motion".

By the time I finally began cycling the eastern road, then, I asked myself over and over again what was so hard about this. What had I been deliberating about? The only daily performance boxes that remained for me were the towns along the way where I could get the water and food I would need to sustain my efforts. This was so until I completed what had once only been a dream in Washington, DC.

The seven years that preceded my second TransAm crossing gave me time to think about how I could improve upon my first one. As a result, the performance boxes I was able to create for myself grew in sophistication. I learned how to make games out of them.

One of the ways that I made myself get a fair amount of miles in my legs before all the cars and trucks found their way on to the road was to not let myself have anything to eat until I had ridden fifteen miles. Upon awakening in the morning, this made me move quicker. It kept me from lounging around and taking my time breaking down my tent and packing my campsite back on to my bike.

Once I had gotten my mileage, I would then stop and eat the orange slices and sandwiches I had made sure to prepare the night before. I also made them easily accessible so my breakfast break wouldn't be too long -- another performance box. To keep pushing myself when I was out in the middle of nowhere, of which there is a lot on a bike ride across the US, I used the mile markers that accompanied most of my riding on desolate roads.

If I was thirsty, I would pretend I was out in the middle of the Australian outback. I told myself that once I reached the next mile marker that I could have two squirts from my water bottle. If I was hungry, I would give myself a handful of granola or a bite from a peanut butter and honey sandwich when I reached every other such indicator.

Even if the boxes I put myself in sounded harsh, I took comfort in knowing that I set the rules. I knew also that the quiet pain of not having lived my dreams would have been there to haunt me for a lifetime. Making the sacrifices I had to make, then, seemed small in comparison to the bigger picture, the rewards I knew would issue forth from the successful actualization of my goal. I became a believer in the adage which pervades much Eastern thought, that short term pain often brings long term gain instead of the instant gratification that so diseases the Western world.

Commitment

If you don't feel motivated to lock even the smallest part of yourself up in the ways I am describing, maybe you have a problem with commitment. Maybe you know you can make whatever is in front of you happen and you know how to keep yourself rewarded to do so, but you can't seem to find anything that is worthy of such consolidated effort.

It very well could be that you enjoy so many things that you think that committing yourself to one project might be doing so at the expense of those things you may have had to before fight to master. Even if they came easily, you still don't want to let any of the skills or abilities associated with them go to waste.

When you give your all to a project, however, you don't lose a thing, instead you gain. Everything that you've ever done with your life comes into all of your moments of commitment. Your special talents, the people you know and the knowledge you will have acquired from other fields of endeavor, all find their way into helping you move any of your focused such projects along.

Let's use the example of my bike rides to help you understand what I mean. On my first ride, I overcame much inexperience as a cycle tourist by using every thing life had ever taught me.

I used memories of the unending torture I experienced in therapy to power over innumerable mountain passes. I called upon my college party days to win my way into the hearts and homes of the people of the Midwest. My experience as a waiter showed me the correct amount of humility I would need in finding out about the best roads and camping from the locals.

Mechanical problems didn't intimidate me because of all the hours I had spent trying to prove my manliness under the hoods of my sports cars. I knew how to calm down the rough motorcycle gang that had overrun my campsite in Idaho because my years on such machines helped me to know the right kind of tough talk they would need.

By the time I committed to making my second ride, I had a much greater wealth of resources to pull from because I also had a lot more to "lose" by most people's standards. But as the saying goes, "you never lose, you always win".

In the seven years between rides, I had learned a lot about sales, writing and computers, and had begun to enjoy recumbent bicycles and channeling and none of this was lost or left behind.

In order to ride the bike of my dreams on the journey of my dreams across the US, I had to sell the vision I had in mind both to the media and to the bicycle industry. Within my committed state of existence, I was unstoppable. In attracting sponsors I discovered that they needed detailed P&L's for what I was endeavoring to do. For them I put my long lost accounting skills back to work.

This reinforced for me, as it did for many other areas of my ride, the fact that some of the skills and abilities one may have may lay dormant for a while but they are always there for you to call upon. It is within this sense that the aphorism that you never waste time is also true.

I used my computer to design brochures and circulated them everywhere I went. I used the story of my rehabilitation and first TransAm ride to convince sponsors that I could pedal a 13-foot long trailer towing, state-of-the-art recumbent bicycle across the US in the spectacular way I was prognosticating. In a relatively short period of time, by committing, I procured all the gear, money and the bike I needed to do the ride.

When I then hit the road I was able to use even more of my computer and writing skills. On the small briefcase computer (a Radio Shack TRS 80 lap top sized word processor, one of the first of its kind), that I brought with me, I was able to write articles from the road for the national magazine that sponsored some of my ride. It happened to be the magazine that my brother worked for. Called "Trucks", they took me up on my idea for a couple stories that would compare my travels to those of the long haul truck driver. "Trucks" as well, was caught up in the excitement of my commitment

To get me through the loneliness of the desert, I listened to spiritual channeling tapes where I was also able to become friends with myself. The spiritual wisdom theses tapes imparted, helped me with my many speeches, the first of which took place in Houston. I was able to see all the talks that followed as successful because I had won many awards doing so going all the way back to grade school.

I even used the people skills I had fine tuned at the many garage sales I used to go to back when I was rehabilitating, to win an unprecedented amount of publicity for the National Head Injury Foundation. All because I committed.

I used the following words before I did this last TransAm bike ride to keep me on the track of Commitment. You have seen me talk about them before:

UNTIL ONE IS COMMITTED, THERE IS HESITANCY

THE CHANCE TO DRAW BACK, ALWAYS INEFFECTIVENESS.

CONCERNING ALL ACTS OF INITIATIVE AND CREATION, THERE IS ONE ELEMENTARY TRUTH, THE IGNORANCE OF WHICH KILLS COUNTLESS IDEAS AND PLANS:

THAT THE MOMENT ONE DEFINITELY COMMITS ONESELF, THEN PROVIDENCE MOVES TOO.

ALL SORTS OF THINGS OCCUR TO HELP ONE THAT  WOULD OTHERWISE NEVER HAVE OCCURRED.

A WHOLE STREAM OF EVENTS ISSUES FROM THE DECISION,

RAISING IN ONE'S FAVOR ALL MANNER OF UNFORESEEN INCIDENTS

AND

MEETINGS AND MATERIAL ASSISTANCE, WHICH NO MAN COULD HAVE DREAMT WOULD HAVE COME HIS WAY.

                            RR Murray

and

WHATEVER

YOU

CAN DO, OR DREAM YOU CAN,

BEGIN IT.

BOLDNESS HAS GENIUS,

POWER

and

MAGIC

IN IT.

                          Johann Goethe

I placed them at the foot of my bed where I could see them every day. And as I contemplated the words, I asked myself over and over again, if I was making them a part of my life.

Are you committed to your Ride? Is it a part of your life? Yet?

I have given you many tools you can use right now, the most important of which is this the Performance Box. Used properly, you can use it to take effective charge of the future that will get you to the Winner's Circle of wherever it is that you are trying to get. With such an implement, you can even turn all those days between then and now, and not just your Ride, into a grand masterpiece of unequaled splendor.

Thanks for letting me share this information with you -- I love you!