How To Do What No One Else In History Has Ever Done

Continuing our Spotlight on Success series. Who they are and how they did it. Let's take a look at Diana Nyad. She just completed the impossible swim between Key west and Havana. And this was her dream. Dreams are funny things in that you can't control them. A lot of times you don't know where they come from. A lot of times with your kids, you say, where did they get that idea? You know, I will tell you, be careful what you expose your kids to when they're young because they're picking up all kind of stuff. You can't ignore them. You can't ignore them, but they drive you nuts. They eat at you. Inside they're like something that has just got to come out. It keeps coming back to you. And in a sense, if you ignore them, then they torment you. But when you achieve them, it gives you. You get things. You're exhilarated, you did it, you convinced yourself for pride, accomplishment, experience, confidence. But the main thing is that you'll find that after you look at the advantage you got for yourself is others are inspired, motivated and provoked to do other great things. And so in life we really get motivation if we pay attention from people that are chasing the dreams and achieving them. So, so let's just take a look. This just happened before our eyes. And if you listen to the mainstream media, most of the time you miss it. You have to know yourself what's going on or pay close attention because most of these people are just reporting on the surface what happened, the facts. And if you look at just the facts, it might be awe inspiring, it may be boring to you, but other than the facts, it's like, what does this mean? What lesson can I draw from it? So what you have. She had this dream of going between keywords. That's Key West. Ever been to Key West? Way on down here's Miami. And then you go another thousand miles, now it's only about a hundred. And eventually you get to Key west and here is Havana. Or as our Spanish friends like to say, Habana. And so what this is, is 103 miles. Sharks. Jellyfish. Have you ever been stung by jellyfish? We won't talk about it too much, otherwise nobody will go in the water. But they're everywhere. Big sharks, big jellyfish. She just, her dream was to make this swim. In her life she's been a long distance swimmer. And some reason that was her dream and she couldn't get away from it. She started her first attempt when she was 28. I believe this is her fifth attempt. And she did it. Let's just look over here. Proof. There she is coming out of the water. And of course, now this is like 53 hours or something like that. She'd been stung to death by jellyfish. But at age 64, fifth try, she did it. And in the process, she inspired millions of people around the globe. When you do things like this, you touch people's lives everywhere. But there's lessons to be learned for you going forward. If you pay close attention. First thing to do is what happens when you do the great things. See, this is just something that was in Diane's nyad's head. And plus, she was a loser. She had tried it four times and failed. She was a failure. She was a loser just like Abraham Lincoln was a loser in about 20 different things in his life before he ran for president and then became, you know, an incredible, legendary icon of history. But it doesn't matter if you lost along the way. The thing is, how do you end up. And when you end up, all of a sudden, you attract the attention of the world. The. And here she is, ABC News Diane Sawyer telling about the story, reporting the basics. And at least ABC got the message right. It's about living your dreams and actually not living them. Achieving the thing that's telling is no one in history. Now, how many people, there's 7 billion people on the planet. How many people have lived? Well, no one in history has ever done what she did. Pretty big deal. But she failed, fail, failed, and only became newsworthy when she did it. You know, she couldn't take any consolation for trying. She didn't care. She was 64. She kept on going because guess what? Every time she tried and failed, she learned a little bit. She was able to fine tune her plan, fine tune her support team, get all the little adjustments to things that beat her before lined up to put the odds in her favor. She was not guaranteed success at age 64 when she set out Labor Day. But she had these four previous failures put the odds in her favor. Now to kind of recap with a big thing about it is five attempts, 52 hours, almost 53 hours. And again the 103, 103 miles, first in history, in spite of the fact that she was 64 years old. You think something legendary, the first time in history somebody does it, they're going to be a youngster in the peak of their career. She did not like the fact that she wasn't in the peak of her career. Hold her back. She kept on pursuing it and did it. Now when it's all over. She's talking with Gupta. They're talking. She said she had three messages. And these are three messages that always, you know, it's funny listening to sportscasters. Sportscasters totally missed the point of her achievement because they, they looked at it like a sporting event. I would have rather watched a soccer match. Well, Nobody said for 53 hours you're going to sit in front of the TV and watch her swim and dodge jellyfish. It was the, that recognizing the significance of something that had never been done in history by someone at the five attempts at such a distance, such an age. And you know, like she said, it was a triumph of the human spirit. That was the message as she got out of the water. She said, this is not about, this is not for fans of swimming, long distance swimming especially, and, or anybody who just follows me. So this is a story about the triumph of the human spirit and showing what you can do in your life in pursuit dreams and overcoming obstacles that come up. And she said the three lessons were never give up. See, this is why it's different hearing never give up from someone who's just done something like this and then just reading it out of a handbook somewhere. And she said, you are never too old to achieve your dreams. I get the idea if she hadn't done it this time, she would have been out there at 70, 75 years old, still swimming until she got it. And then the other thing was you have to have a team if you're going to do anything significant. It takes a team. You can't do things like this by yourself. But if you have these three principles to guide you, you can do amazing things. Now another lesson to take away from this, and this is the biggest lesson of this thing, is how do you handle tough moments when you have an overwhelming desire to quit? It's hopeless. In all of these 40 years almost of doing this, she had a thousand times that she could have quit where it just made sense. Why keep going? This is stupid. You're gonna be a laughingstock. You'll never do it. No one else has done it. It's a lost cause. She did it without a shark cage. She did it without a cage to keep the jellyfish. Jellyfish. She had to swim with this nasty anti jellyfish mask to keep them from killing her. Basically, while she was out there, she had to swim through swarms things. Nobody had ever done it. Yeah, like why do I want to subject myself to that? But she, here's what she said. She knew from doing this four times Kind of emotional things. You know, you hear winning at the highest level is a mental game. You know, they say it's 90% mental. Well, here's why. It's 90% mental. By the time you're going for the top stuff, you got the physical things, the technical things. And now it's just a matter of overcoming, keeping yourself on track to be mentally tough and not to quit. And so she developed over 40 years and five try or to get to her fifth try. She knew before she got in the water, she had to have a strategy that when things, whatever came up in there, you have these things, you're tired, you're exhausted, Surprising things go wrong. It's like, I got to get out of here. I got to quit. I got to get in the boat. I got to get out. But she said she adopted the strategy that she was going to. She was going to tell herself, find a way. And here's what she told Robin Roberts, I guess he interviewed on Good Morning America. And see, she had this. She didn't wait till she got in the middle of the battle, try and come up with something. She had this in her mind before she got out there. She knew how she was going to react. And she said this. If you are doing something important to you when it looks impossible and you're up against it, then just step back for a minute. In other words, give yourself a chance to back away from focusing and obsessing on the nightmare you're in. Back away mentally from it in your mind and ask yourself, is this really so overwhelming? Do I have any resolve left? Do I have the resolve to right now, give every nth degree of resolve to get through this? Can't I find away? Or do I have to give up? And you start now, shifting your mind from the disaster, the tragedy, to looking for a solution just to get you through one more stage, one more step just to get through this next thing. And she said, what happens is, if you'll step back from the situation, get your mind on, do I have the resolve to hang on and come up with a way to get through this deal? She said, you know what? Most of the time you do. And so if you focus on finding a way, you find most of the time you do. You do have the resolve, you can find a way to get through. And she said the end result of the lesson is people give up too quickly on their dreams. And the message of her swim, that she wanted to do a dream, you know, a dream swim, something that had driven her all her life. But she wanted it to count and make something that would make a difference to other people. And that's why her message is she got out of the water. She said she had three messages. Never give up, Never too old. It takes a team. But the other biggest message was when you get in those toughest moments in your overwhelmed desire to quit, tell yourself, find a way, find the resolve, find another drop to get you through. And if you do, most of the time you find that you come up with something, you come up with a little bit more energy, toughness, commitment, or some idea, something that'll help you make it through to the next stage. And when you do, you find out you can achieve your dreams rather than being beat by by the obstacles along the way. That's the lesson of Diana Nyad. 90% of the sportscasters, the media out there, they're working on a salary. They're just reporting the facts. They go to games, they're entertained by sporting things. They miss the point. Don't you miss it because there's a message in there that you can use to achieve your dreams? Sam.