Daily Gratitude: “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become.”

The same applies when you don’t accomplish your goals. Often you learn more from not achieving something. The challenges you come up against teach you great problem solving along with resilience.

If you could just make a wish (list a goal) and have it come to fruition, what would you have learned? How would that have prepared you for what’s to come in the future?

You become more courageous when you go after something you really want. Fear seems to take a back seat when there’s something in your life that lights you up! The enthusiasm and energy propels you forward, often making you forget that you need sleep and food. When I see that in someone I get excited and when it happens to me, it’s ecstasy.

It’s those things, the excitement, enthusiasm and energy, that makes you a better person and teaches you so much about life. It’s possible that you may not realize it at the time, but at some point, you’ll understand how much you’ve changed.

Look back and see the events in your life that have produced change in you.

Daily Gratitude: “Every setback carries a message.”

I can attest to the truth of this statement. Let’s just talk about my training for Vol State this year (2026), not the race itself. I had so many setbacks that it was hard to just keep training and not get discouraged.

So what messages did I get?

I have to keep remembering the compound effect and that I have to be persistent and consistent.

This involves patience and my bank account for patience is not overflowing. Ha. That’s an understatement. But the patience is required when you think of the compound effect. Little by little my body (and mind) are getting tweaks with each day of training. This applies to mental preparation too.

That’s an even more important message – the mental aspect of this race is frequently more important than the physical. I learned that in my debacle last year. But that experience taught me so much.

Another message is that my brain is extremely powerful (as is yours). What i see its power in, however, is in creating physical symptoms that are neuroplastic (neural circuit disorders). I’ve had to work very hard to identify them and then overcome them. That, in itself, has reminded me that I should be able to deal with whatever develops during the race.

Of course the big test is going to be my left knee and leg and that’s where I’ll have to use whatever mental toughness I can muster.

These are only some of the messages and lessons from this one setback.

Can you look back at your life and see messages you’ve received from one or more setbacks?

Daily Gratitude: “Most real failures are due to limitations which men set up in their own minds.”

The key here is “real” in front of failure. We could also talk about perceived failures and I think they are due to unreasonable expectations which humans set for themselves.

I think Napoleon Hill is talking about actually failing at something. And he’s saying that we have limits on our talents and abilities already decided in our minds. “I’m not good enough to x,y,z” or the “you’ll never make it very far in life” message parents or teachers install in our brains like an app. My father told me I’d never be any good with money. So do you think I can even balance my checkbook or make a budget? heck no. That’s a limitation that my brain has as part of its operating system.

When someone does something that hits up against that limitation (limiting belief), their brain says “OK, we’ve done all we can. We have to stop now.” And it just stops even when the thing/project isn’t completed. Then it’s a failure and you know what? The brain sees that “failure” and strengthens the neural circuit grooves and so the next time that person tries the same or something similar, the exact same thing happens. Failure.

This is why we need to examine our core beliefs and identify the ones that are limiting. Then we need to replace the limiting ones with the expanding ones. Visualization and affirmations help with that too.

Examine your past to see things that have been REAL failures and see if you can see this pattern there.