For the first time in my life, I feel I have a true purpose and truly clean slate. I’m one of those guys that doesn’t compete if there isn’t a score and if nobody is watching. So this year I’m deciding to share all my goals and keeping track.

I’ve discovered that I love to push myself to new heights, based against my previous performance to see how I‘ve progressed. When I hit a wall and fall back, I’m all the more excited to have found something stronger than me - a challenge. It allows me to test my ability, my determination, my guts. Most importantly I grow from the experience and develop my character. As Randy Pausch said during his last speech, “Brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.” I’ve seen all the treasures that are available to me while on this Earth but what I didn’t see were the lies I had been believing all my life. “Those treasures are for other people, not me,” “There’s no way I’ll have those things, I’m just average” and the most crippling one of all - “I can’t” Believing I can’t, cut me off at the knees. It stole my hope.

Will Smith is a man whom I admire and all the more after reading his interview with Readers Digest. He had just finished the film The Pursuit of Happyness, which I recommend. When asked if he would ever go back to a formal education Smith responded “I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class.” Readers Digest then commented, “They put physics in a book, but I know I could never be a physicist.” Smith retorts, “The first step is you have to say that you can.”

Later in the interview Will Smith is asked about his father being a taskmaster, Smith tells his story, “Oh, yeah, he was very serious about things being a certain way. When my father got out of the Air Force, he started his own refrigeration business. I might have been 12 and my brother 9 when one day he decided he wanted a new front wall at his shop. He tore the old one down--it was probably 16 feet high and 40 feet long. And he told us that this was going to be our gig over the summer. We were standing there thinking, There will never, ever, be a wall here again. We went brick by brick for the entire summer and into winter and then back into spring. One day there was a wall there again. I know my dad had been planning this for a long time. He said, “Now, don’t you all ever tell me there’s something you can’t do.” And he walked into the shop. The thing I connected to is: I do not have to build a perfect wall today. I just have to lay a perfect brick, just lay one brick, dude.”

Here are just three of my goals:

1. Earn $20,000 - That’s $4,736 more than I would earn full time at minimum wage, gross. Certainly a challenge.


2. Tell my mother I love her every day - Also a challenge


3. Run at least 3 miles at least 3 days a week. - This last story will explain this goal.

At the end of Will Smith’s interview, Readers Digest asks “Has your success surprised you?”
Smith: “For a long time now, I have been beyond anything that I ever dreamed. I just put my head down and run hard. And I am almost always surprised when I look up and see where I am.”
Reader’s Digest: “ So getting to where you are is all just about running hard?”
Smith: “Most people you are going to be in competition with are not gonna give 100 percent. If you catch a bad day, you are going to run up against somebody willing to do 87 percent. You’re still going to win. In one of my songs, I write, “The key to life is on a treadmill. I’ll just watch and learn while your chest burns. Because if you say you are going to run three miles and you only run two, I don’t ever have to worry about losing something to you.” When I say I am going to run three miles, I run five. With that mentality, it is actually difficult to lose.”
Readers Digest: “You work harder than the next guy?”
Smith: “ I consider myself to be of basically average talent, right? What I have that other people do not have is a sick, obsessive, raw animal drive.
Readers Digest: “Do you get tired of pushing?”
Smith: “Not yet. There is no pain worse than not achieving a dream when it is your fault. If God did not want you to have it, that is one thing. But if you do not get what you desire because you are lazy, there is no pain worse than that.
Readers Digest: “Have you always been a runner?”
Smith: I started about five years ago. Running introduces you to your worst enemy, to that person who tells you, “Ohh, our ankles hurt and we should stop. Why do we need to run five miles? Let us run three.” That is the same person who says to a man, “Hey, your wife will never find out if you sleep with her,” and the same person who tells the 16-year-old, “You are not gonna be cool if you do not smoke it.” If you start giving in to that person, you will never get to your goals.”

It is my hope and prayer that I become a better man for the goals I’ve set and that I achieve and surpass them with flying colors. I would appreciate any prayers you may send up as well. Thank you all for being here and listening, God bless!



All credit and props to Readers Digest and Meg Grant for the interview. I'd cite it but I only have the pages I ripped out. Pg.88-95