"Smile when its raining and when you're going through hell, keep going." -BG
Want to make a million dollars, be beautiful, and save the world? Want to discover the drive of your ambitions, and use it to achieve almost anything you can imagine? Start by
asking yourself two questions:
What was the deep injustice of your youth?
What achievement or behavior in your life would fulfill, justify, or abolish that injustice for good?
Oh yeah, I went there.
It is no secret. I am a Bear Grylls fan. If you don’t know
him, he is best known for his six seasons of Man vs. Wild, a TV show where he
shows you how to get out alive in the most hellish conditions you can imagine.
He was born and raised in the United Kingdom, where he is coincidentally least
well known. The show there is called Born Survivor.
His real name first name is Edward. Bear is a nickname that
his sister gave him when he was just a baby. It stuck.
He is a businessman and a TV star. He is the husband Shara
Grylls and the father of three boys (Jesse, Marmaduke, and Huckleberry).
Now, maybe I am a sucker for survival experts, or just British
accents. Regardless, this guy is objectively the whole package. He is a former
British special forces operative, chief scout (of Britain’s Boy Scout
equivalent), has climbed mount Everest, and has now made millions from teaching
survival on television and writing best selling books.
He is humble, honest, and kind. He has earned millions of
dollars for charities that he supports. He has loved and married one woman, and
loves his kids beyond measure. He is a
man’s man, worthy of the admiration that others and I liberally throw his way.
Through studying his life, I have a found a few things …
mind boggling, for lack of better words. From what I can calculate from a
non-psychiatric standpoint, his great achievements have been made on the basis
overcoming a nagging sense of SELF DOUBT. It has troubled him in the past and
troubles him now, but it has been the source of motivation for all of the
before mentioned achievements.
Bear was born, as one noble soul may say, with a silver
spoon in his mouth. He was the product of a wealthy family. He never explicitly
mentions this in his autobiography, but it is true. His lineage is peppered
with adventurers, military generals, political figures, and legends of
prestige. In other words, the stakes were high for Bear.
The happiest moments of his childhood were that of climbing
and exploring with his father. His father trained him at a very young age to a
high proficiency in climbing. He is now a renowned climber. A lot of this
climbing comes out in his television series, not to mention that it is
demonstrated in scaling the world’s tallest mountain.
His parents would eventually send him off to boarding
school. This experience characterized perhaps the difficult turning point in
his life. Bear struggled at boarding school. No more adventures with dad. No
more family time. He was stuck in an academia, a place which he had no talent.
He was thrust into an unfair world. This world required that
he live up a high standard of unyielding expectations. Settled under an
umbrella of ancestral lore, Bear would have to make a move. He must claim his
place in the long line of achievers, or die trying.
He would have to earn the love of his parents. Since he had
no propensity for academics, he would have to find another way. In boarding
school, he worked diligently to achieve a second-degree black belt in karate.
This achievement would be the first of make ground in this effort.
Fast forward. At the university, Bear kind of sucked. Again,
academics was not his strong point. He needed some other way to prove to his
parents that he was worthy of their love. He never put it this way. He never
said this, but its true. He aimed to achieve the prestige of SAS (Special Air
Services, aka British special forces). The details are grueling, as recounted
in his book. He failed. However, SAS invited him back for a second attempt. He
passed.
During his service with SAS, Bear broke his back in
parachuting accident. He should have died, at least never walked again. Rather,
he would fully recover. Shattered by his mistakes at the parachuting accident,
Bear would set out again to earn his parents love.
Everest. He climbed Everest.
After Everest, Bear entered into that typical “washed up-ness”
that we all enter into at one point or another. He got fat and lazy, having passed
his greatest hour. Not embracing his decline, he started training again and
giving effectual talks and motivational speeches centered on Everest.
Subsequently, a television director came after Bear to pilot
a TV show called Man vs. Wild. The rest is his rise to fame.
The thing that impressed me most about Bear was his
willingness to express his own self doubt. He has no qualms with it. Anywhere
from public speaking to his popularity with fans, he has doubts to his own self
worth. However, he never expresses the source of that doubt.
I tend to think that his parents loved him dearly, while
putting tremendous expectations on him. In other word, the condition of their
love was that he did not disappoint the successful heritage of his family. He
loved his parents back, and he was ready to meet the condition of their love,
at any cost.
This is where we learn our most important lesson from Bear. Bear
nearly lost his life well over fifty times in the various expeditions, military
campaigns, and TV shows that he did.
I knew a man whose father left him. He is the most involved
father to be seen.
I know a woman had nothing growing up. She wants the world.
The reoccurring theme is that, whatever we did not have when
we were younger, we want today, ferociously.
It is about conditions. IF we only had that one thing as a
child, then we would have been fully loved. Therefore, we must provide that one
thing to our children. Whatever was the condition of our parents love is the
premise of ours.
It is less a question of what we have and do not have. It is
more of a question of what condition is enough to keep up from loving another
person. If you were deprived of quality time growing up, lack of quality time
may be enough for you to take your affections off of another.
We digress…Let me ask you this. If your parents raised you
to believe that success was a condition of their love for you, would you
attempt succeed? Bear did. It consumed him. He has nearly died many times
towards this end.
Another question…If your parents taught you that you only
need to be happy to earn their approval, would you attempt to be happy? Of
course you would. And what about those times when you are not happy and you
can’t help it? You would feel like shit…plus one piece.
My point is that the conditions of love that we are nurtured
to and taught about will often determine the jugular choices that we make in life,
like what career to pursue.
My further point is that, that deep burning fire within us
that drives us to greater achievement may not be as virtuous in nature as we
once hoped. It may be the result of a deep injustice that we perceive occurred in
our upbringing. Every subsequent achievement may be us gaining ground on fulfilling, justifying, or obliterating that event.
Think on these two questions deeply and generically:
What was the deep injustice of your youth?
What achievement or behavior in your life would fulfill, justify, or abolish that injustice for good?
Get to work.
-Strength of GIF
