Eliminate Your Safety Net

The Guide to Extraordinary Living - Part 4

The entire auditorium is holding it's breath. The only lights are shining almost too brightly on one figure, suspended high in the air between two poles. He takes a step. Another. Then he shifts, his body just slightly out of balance. The entire crowd has a sharp intake of breath. The tight-rope walker tries to move forward, but his previous missed step left him out of position. He attempts to correct, but ends up over-calculating and his arms fly out, wheeling helplessly as he totters over and falls.

The crowd watches in disbelief, every heart stopped.

Then the lights come up, and we see him land safely in the tightly-stretched safety net. He bounces a few times, then picks himself up and heads over to the base of the pole for another try. The Ringleader announces that he will be okay – but wait! What's this? The tight-rope walker is demanding that they lower the safety net. He animatedly speaks with the stage hands, who look to the Ringleader for permission.

Suddenly the net falls to the ground. The tight-rope walker has cut the net down! And he's climbing back up the pole. The stage hands are waving their arms, shouting at him not to do it, but he's ignoring them. Finally one stage hand starts climbing up to bring him back down, but he's too late. The tight-rope walker is already on the platform. Now he's stepping out. He's halfway across. He looks down.

He realizes there's no safety net.

He looks scared. He looks to both platforms, but they're both the same distance away from him. He hesitates one more split second, then a steely resolve comes over him. He turns to go forward, his face set like stone. He takes a step. Another. Then he shifts, his body just slightly out of balance. No one in the crowd is even daring to breathe. The stage hands are all being perfectly still.

He takes another step, again, slightly out of position. He attempts to correct. His arms flail.

But somehow he stays upright. He moves forward again, awkwardly, but with each step he takes he gains more balance back. He's walking easily now. He's going to make it! Finally, he steps onto the platform.

The crowd, remembering to breathe, erupts into cheers.

The fourth part of living an extraordinary life is the simplest to explain, but the hardest to actually do. It doesn't require lots of planning or foresight, it doesn't take a long time or demand lots of help. It just takes a lot of courage. The fourth step is simple: Eliminate your safety net.

If you've been tracking with this guide, you've learned that life is not about you, to dream like everything is possible (because it is), and finally to take some action that will get you closer to your dream.

So now you're on your way. You've hopefully taken some sort of action to start making your dream a reality, and your life has lost some of the dullness. It may even be downright exciting – I hope it is! But there's a trap waiting for you. It may catch you tomorrow, it may be a year from now, but it will catch you unless you do something about it first. The trap is your safety net.

What is your safety net? Your safety net is that thing that you have in the back of your mind that says “Hey, I'm off to a good start. Things are even looking positive. But even if my dream doesn't work out, I always have __________.” It could be a standing job offer, or a skill that you know will get you some work, or a rich relative, or a trust fund that will pay for you to go to school forever. Whatever it is, it's something that you know, something that's comfortable, something that's safe and warm and dull.

How in the world could that be a trap?

It's a trap because as soon as things get difficult or lose their dreamy quality, when the honeymoon wears off and you realize that dreaming is a lot of hard work, the safety net starts to look really easy. I mean really, really easy. Like falling off a log easy. So on one hand you have what feels like a complex task that will require a ton of work for very little immediate reward, and on the other hand you have a defined task that requires very little effort and has a pay check at the end of the week.

Which would you choose?

It's amazing how much the dull gray reality of mediocrity can look so appealing from the outside. But that is not the path for you – for us. We are the select few who want more. We are the elite who demand that life be full and beautiful. We are the extraordinary.

The only way to silence the siren call of the safety net is to eliminate it completely. Make sure it's not an option. Sometimes this requires action, like shredding your resume, or selling your tools, or moving to a completely different place. Other times it is simply a decision that has to be made – not once, but every day.

This is the part that takes the most courage. You don't get to know if your dream will work out before you let go of the part of your life that you know does work (even if you are completely bored and slowly dying in it). It requires a leap of faith. Courage isn't fearlessness, courage is action in spite of fear. In other words, even if you might pee your pants, you're still going for it.

Once your safety net is gone, it forces the best out of you. If there is no Plan B, then you get really creative Plan A. You see new ways of doing things that might not have been there before. You focus. When its do or die, you'll amaze yourself at what you can do. In a word: anything.

And once you've amazed yourself at what you can do, you get to help other people amaze themselves at what they can do, which is the next and final part of the Guide.

Do you have a safety net? Where do you find courage? Respond to this post with a comment of your own!

Jump Off the Edge

The Guide to Extraordinary Living - Part 3

So far, we've found out that life is not about doing what we can to make ourselves happy, and we've learned to dream like we couldn't fail. Hopefully by now you have a glimmering of what your extraordinary life could look like. You might just have a sniff of freedom and you're drooling imagining what it could taste like. Don't worry if you don't have a huge, detailed plan on how to attain that freedom. You don't need to have it all figured out to get a start on it. And don't worry if you do have a huge, detailed plan, because most of it will probably fail and you'll need to find new ways anyhow. The great part is that there's no certainty in adventure, so you can relax and enjoy the ride a little.

So now that you have this small, shiny beginning of a life that goes beyond ordinary, what do you do with it?

This is a dangerous area. What you do next can either make or break you. There are basically two things you can do with a dream (besides ignore it and settle for the ordinary – but if you're reading this far I'm assuming that's not you):

Option 1: You can hide away the dream in like a tiny pet that you're not really supposed to keep. It's home is a shiny journal with artistic illustrations about what your dream will look like when it finally comes, someday. You slip it some food when you think no one is looking, and at night when you're alone you think about what you will do when you finally get a shot at your dream. You show it to your close friends, sometimes, but don't let them touch it – they can see it just fine from there. What you don't know is that the little pet dream will grow into a big, nasty excuse if it's kept like this. Having the dream will allow you to label yourself as a “dreamer” and help you to maintain your great self-image without actually risking anything. You can adopt a superior and put-upon demeanor with anyone who doesn't have “vision” or an “open mind.” You can smack-talk all the little people who live their little lives. All the while still living in the safe, secure drabness that marks an ordinary life, fooling yourself into believing you are doing something.

Option 2: By far the best option. Start right away making it happen. And I mean RIGHT AWAY. Quit your job. Start a business. Move to that country. Join that group. Attend that school. Sell your car or your house or your stuff. Just take a first step toward making the dream a reality. Do something! Narrow it down to something you can do today to get you at least one step closer to living your dream.

Now, there's some stuff that will try to stop you. Mostly excuses, which are just fear in disguise, will attempt to stop you. A great excuse is “But I don't know how! I don't know where to start!” I'm sorry, that's just not true. What you really should say is “But I'm scared to start! I'm comfortable in this drabness and the colors look too bright!”*

Why do I say its an excuse not to know where to start? Because starting is simple. Think about what you want your life to look like, and think about how your life looks now. What's different? Make a list of the things that are different. Now, pick one difference, and think what it would take to go from where you are to where you want to be. And remember, you can't fail. If the first way doesn't work exactly how you thought, you'll be a lot closer to figuring out a way than you were. Just start moving.

Another thing that will try to stop you is the edge. What do I mean, the edge? I mean that sometimes you will have to do something that you can't undo. You'll have to commit fully to a path of action that you can't see to the end of. It may end great, it may end poorly. There's no way to know until you try it. I see this all the time when I work at the Ropes Course. The Giant Swing is a platform almost 30 feet in the air that you jump off of attached to nothing but a 3/8-inch cable. You can't tell if the cable will hold until it's too late to go back. If it doesn't hold, you hit the ground. If it does, you have the ride of your life. You don't get to know until it's too late to change your mind.

The edge for me came when I quit my well-paying job as a salesman. There was comfort and security in a job that I didn't like – hated, even. When I felt called to start something in Portland, there was no way to stay my job and start this Portland thing at the same time. I had to step off the edge and fully entrust myself to the hand of God. I quit my job, moved to Salem, and have been living by faith ever since.

It is definitely a wild ride. Sometimes I think I'm in over my head and everything is going to come crashing down around me, and other times I think that there can't possibly be more beauty and adventure until I'm surprised by more the next day. But no matter what comes, I feel free – absolutely free.

So what is it in your life? Where's the edge for you? It could be quitting a job. It could be starting that conversation. It could be making a phone call. It could be packing everything up and moving across the country, or the world. Whatever it looks like in your life, I highly encourage you to take that magical leap off the edge. You never know, you might just find out you know how to fly...

Of course, in the next part we'll talk about safety nets.

Talkin' Bout Revival! (Can I get an Amen?)

Christians like to talk about revival.

They talk about how they want to see spontaneous salvations. They talk about how they want to see people giving up the life they've been living and following God, going to church, worshiping, etc. They want a miraculous move of God to fall on the city or country that makes everyone, whether hardened atheist or life-long believers to be completely enthralled in the presence of Jesus.

In fact, Christians like to talk about lots of things that they want to happen.

I see them say things like “I want to just shine so much Jesus that the world can't help but wonder what I have.” “I want to live in such a way that people ask me what's different.” “Shine – make them wonder what you've got, make them wish that they were not on the outside looking in.”

And so on.

But I've began to wonder if it's not a slight deception. Maybe the Christians who pray for those things aren't quite sure what they want. I mean, think about it if we talked that way in other areas of life:

At the restaurant:

“I'm just going to have some quiet time with my menu, and really just connect with the thing I want, so much that I won't even have to tell the waitress what I want – she'll just see it all over me.”

At work:

“Instead of sales calls today, I'm just going to enjoy our product so much that complete strangers will walk up to me and ask me what I'm selling.”

At the grocery store:

“I'm going to be so focused on dinner tonight that the ingredients will practically jump off the shelf into my basket.”

At home:

“I want to be so into my family that we completely forget where we even live, and it doesn't matter what house we walk into just as long as we're together.”

At school:

“I want to study so well that the people around me can just feel my knowledge of the subject as I walk down the hall with them.”

It's ludicrous, right? We would never accept things like that in other areas of our life. Why do we in our spiritual walk? It's simple: we're creating an excuse. One big excuse after another.

See, by saying that you're going to be such a perfect example of a love relationship with Jesus that you will attract and draw people in, you've created a double-fault scenario. You can always win, because if – by some miracle - you do end up attracting a non-Christian and winning them over, you can feel all self-righteous and good about how spiritual you are. However, if you fail to attract a non-Christian, then the stupid non-Christian must not have been paying good enough attention or was just a REAL BIG sinner anyways.

The problem with this whole line of reasoning is that it alleviates the church of responsibility. When Jesus was calling us to be the salt of the earth, he wasn't telling us to evenly disperse ourselves and wait for the earth to be devoured. He was telling us to be active change-agents in our friendships, communities, cities, and countries. He even went on to talk about how salt that doesn't do anything is worthless and only fit to be thrown into the road.

I wonder how Jesus would feel about salt that expects the food surrounding it to be intrigued or jealous of the salt and spontaneously turn salty itself.

Anyways, there's a quote by Shane Claiborne that I love: “Most people today would be able to tell you what a Christian believes. But ask them how a Christian lives, and they're stumped.”

Dream Like Everything Is Possible

The Guide to Extraordinary Living - Part 2

Mr. Dream, a 235 lb. boxer, lost his only fight to Little Mac, 98 lbs.

Remember the first lesson, that everything is about others? Life is not about you. If you don't remember that, go back and read Part 1. Actually, find someone else who would benefit from reading Part 1 and have them read it, then you can read it for yourself.

I can hear you now: “It's cool. Life is not about trying to make myself happy. Check. Got it. Alright, I understand already. So, what should I do that's not designed to make me personally happy? Hmm..go buy a happy meal? Oh, wait, no, that's about me. Watch a movie? Oh, that's about me again. Make a sandwich? Hmm..this all seems to be about me. What should I do?”

Well, let me tell you. Start Dreaming. Go ahead – try it right now. Start dreaming about what you want your life to look like.




Okay, okay, stop. We're running into two problems. First of all, you're not sticking to the first principle, which is that things are not about yourself. These ideas are supposed to build on each other - like the beautiful and long lasting pyramids, not be stand-alone concepts – like the ugly and target-worthy Sphinx. Secondly, you're not dreaming big enough. You're dreaming like everything in your life just happened to go well, like you had the best day of your life or something. I don't want you to dream about winning the lottery, or scoring the perfect job, or marrying the perfect person. I don't even want you to dream about making the neighborhood you live in a nicer place (though that's a good start). I want you to dream WAY bigger than that. Dream like everything is possible.

What do I mean by that? Let me explain it this way: Suppose Bill Gates and Scrooge McDuck dropped by your house. They offered to fully fund whatever your dream was, for however long it took to accomplish it, and then said that if you somehow failed or came up short, they would supply the manpower that it would take to make sure it happened (or they would consult the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, which might have just the solution you need).

What would you dare to dream if you were guaranteed to be successful?

Now we can really start the dreaming. Poverty? Gone. Preventable diseases? Prevented. Human Trafficking? Eliminated. Corruption? Confronted.

See, right about now I'm losing some of you. You're totally checking out. You've heard this before, you think. I can imagine that voice in the back of your head, the one that keeps whispering “How? How would you get there? It just isn't practical.” I can imagine that voice quite well, since it's in the back of my head, too.

No matter what you dream, that voice will be there. Many times, it will actually come out of other people's mouths – the very people who are supposed to love and support you. It will constantly be telling you that it's ridiculous to dream like that, that one person can't make a difference, that it's a waste of time to give yourself to a cause that's doomed to fail from the beginning. But let's remember something: Without a dream, life is already a failure. Dull, lifeless – remember?

So, what do we do with the doubts and fears that have stopped many people ahead of us? How do we handle the voice that will confront us every step of the way, even in the very beginning of our dreaming stages?

It's easy. We act. We take a step. We start making the dream a reality. The voice hates that.

That's also the next part in the series...