A short Heroic+1 podcast by Brian Johnson (April 2, 2023) encouraging listeners to make and keep promises to themselves instead of making excuses. Drawing on Stan Beacham’s etymological reading of “competition/contest” and Dr. George Sheehan’s idea that competition is seeking one’s best with others, the episode urges committing to do one’s best in daily ‘contests’ and using concrete promise-commitments to show up heroically each day.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last few plus ones, we've been spending some time with Stan Beacham. We talked about conquering fear, paid attention to Maslow's warning, and exorcised the curse of perfection. Today, I want to talk about making promises rather than excuses. Let's get straight to work. Stan is a bit of an etymology nerd like I am, and he redefines the word competition for us. As he tells us, and I quote, competition holds the promise to bring out the very best in us, and that's why we should seek it out. The word comes from the Latin root pato, which means to go out and seek. The prefix calm means with or together. Thus, competition is a social process that requires others. You can't do it by yourself. But what is it that we should seek during competition? Well, Dr. George Sheehan suggests that competition is simply each of us seeking our absolute best with the help of each other. Now, that's beautiful, and we can talk about it for a weekend, but that's not quite what I want to talk about today. This is closer. I quote, stan again, as we mentioned earlier, contest begins with the prefix con, which also means with. The second syllable test is the same root as the word testify. When we testify, we speak under oath. We make a promise. When we enter a contest, we should make a promise not only to ourselves, but to everyone present. Sheehan suggests that the promise should be to do our best. He continues by saying, whatever you do, make some promise or commitment to yourself. Promise yourself that you will not quit when it gets difficult. Promise yourself that you will not hold anything back. Let the contest be the most important thing in your life at that moment, and make sure you keep your promise to yourself. All of which leads us to this, which is what I want to focus on today. Stan again tells us people who don't make promises make excuses, get really good at making and keeping your promises so you won't have to make excuses. Now, next to that passage in my copy of the book, you will find a huge exclamation point in an equally large wow contest. The word literally means with a promise. Stan tells us to enter each contest by making a promise to do our best. He reminds us that we need to get really good at both making and keeping our promises to ourselves. So we don't have to make excuses. And that is today's plus one. Let's remember the fact that the ultimate contest of life is showing up as the best, most heroic version of ourselves. Have I mentioned that? Once or 300 times. The repetition is deliberate and let's get really good at both making and keeping our promises to ourselves so we don't have to make excuses. I know how I will strive to do it. I'll be tap tap tap committing to showing up as the most heroically energized, heroically productive and heroically connected version of myself and then target swiping 101 heroic targets in our app. Today. I made my AM promise commitment to myself before I entered the daily arena and I'll be hitting those promise commitment targets all day, every day, especially today. How about you? Day one all in. Let's go hero.
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