Your Ticket To Life: “Admit One– No Guarantees”

Imag­ine the fol­low­ing pos­si­bil­ity (who knows if this is “so”, but just for fun, play along with me for a minute):

Sup­pose that prior to your birth, your soul got in the line where “life passes” were being handed out.  I know, this sounds crazy and I’m not sug­gest­ing this actu­ally hap­pens, but it’s an inter­est­ing metaphor to play with, so humor me just a bit longer.  “You” (as a soul) col­lected your life pass and on it was writ­ten: “Admit One– No guarantees”.

At that moment, you had to choose whether or not you were going to take the ride, and take what­ever came with it.  You chose “yes” (you’re here, right?) and with that, you got on board your life, fas­tened your seat belt, and the ride began.  And here you are, right where you are, with all the bells and whis­tles you’ve accu­mu­lated along the way.

How are you doing so far?  Are you lik­ing the ride?  Are there parts of the ride you’d just as soon didn’t hap­pen?  Do you have the brakes on, dread­ing what could lie ahead?  Or are your hands in the air and you’re whoop­ing and hol­ler­ing for more?

The ride you’ve got is the ride you’ve got.   It might rocky or bumpy.  It might make you dizzy or sick to your stom­ach, or just down­right sick.  But it’s your ride.  Are you fully present for the ride you’re on?  Given you choose it in the first place, are you bring­ing all you have to the jour­ney and squeez­ing every drop of oppor­tu­nity out of it?

If not, how come?  Are you envi­ous of your neighbor’s ride? Still look­ing for the “escape clause” in the con­tract so you can exit this ride and hope­fully get on a dif­fer­ent one?  What if, no mat­ter what your cir­cum­stances, you could make your ride a “joy” ride?  It clearly is not the cir­cum­stances that deter­mine what kind of ride you’ll have.

Recall Frank and Kris­ten Alioto, the cou­ple in Tony Robbin’s TV series.  Frank became a quad­ri­plegic on his wed­ding day when he jumped into a swim­ming pool at his wed­ding recep­tion and broke his neck.  With a lot of hard work and deter­mi­na­tion, Frank came through many chal­lenges and proved his met­tle.  He ended up sky div­ing and ful­fill­ing his life long dream of dri­ving his truck in the desert.

Recall Nick Vuji­cic, the man who was born with no arms and no legs and who today, trav­els the world giv­ing speeches to young peo­ple about courage and resilience and believ­ing in themselves.

Your chal­lenges might not be as daunt­ing as Frank’s or Nick’s but each of us has our own ver­sion of being up against our self-imposed lim­i­ta­tions and hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to go beyond.

Sup­pos­ing you came to take on the full ride of your life, no hold­ing back, no play­ing small.  Sup­pos­ing you came to go full tilt boo­gie with no guar­an­tees of the out­come.  I assert you did, and so did I.

Take a look at your “ticket”.  Notice any guar­an­tee clause?  Me either. So why not go for it any­way and, take the risk of win­ning instead of losing?

I’d love to hear your sto­ries of per­se­ver­ance and tri­umph.  Please feel free to share below how you’re mak­ing it through the ride.

Abun­dant Blessings.….…..

Tagged as: courage, Frank, Hospitality/Recreation, Human Interest, Kristen Alioto, Nick Vujicic, Risking, taking risks, Tony Robbin