Walk, Bike, Ski

You try to walk, but you fall down. You get back up and you take a few more steps, and you fall down. Repeat…repeat…repeat. And that is how you learn to walk.

You take the training wheels off your bike, you peddle a few rotations and you fall down. You get back up, get back on the bike and you make a few more rotations on the peddles and you fall down. You get back…and you repeat again and again. And that is how you learn to ride a bike.

My brother took me to a ski hill to teach me how to ski. He had the gear there waiting for me. He made sure everything fit just right and he took me to the bunny hill. I was 36 years old. I was at the top of the bunny hill looking down and he told me to point my skis downhill and I did and I began to move. And I fell down. I got back up and did it again…and I fell. I got back up and soon I progressed to the real hills. And two weeks later I was skiing in the Rocky Mountains in Utah. And that is how you learn to ski.

A person opens a business and he struggles and he has challenges. He gets up the next day and he goes back at it. And once again he has challenges…an employee quits, customers didn’t pay their invoices, the bank is calling because the accounts overdrawn, and there is any upset customer coming through the door. He goes home and the next morning he gets up with a positive attitude, knowing that today is going to be a great day. And yet he has challenges, he has issues to deal with, problems to solve…but he gets through the day and he goes home. The next morning he gets up again…knowing that today is going to be a great day. And yet he has challenges…but their easier now…he has problems but he knows the answers to them…and he realizes that it isn’t the circumstances surrounding him that should determine whether a day is good or bad it is the attitude that he chooses to approach those circumstances that will determine if it is a good day or not.

If we were to decide whether something is right or wrong for our lives based on our initial experiences…none of us would be walking, none of us would ride a bike, I wouldn’t know how to ski, and none of us would be successful in our given endeavors.

For some reason as we mature and grow a little older we somehow think that growth and learning in our lives should become automatic. We somehow expect that it should happen without the falls and the bumps and the bruises we experienced when we were younger. But for the most part it doesn’t. The majority of growth and learning will take place in the face of adversity. You learn to walk and ride a bike by learning how to deal with the adverse affects of gravity. You learn to ski by mastering the art of falling. Really…going down the mountain on a pair of narrow pieces of fiberglass is really just a controlled fall. (I give my brother credit for this explanation.) You learn how to conduct business effectively by mastering the art of dealing with numerous challenges all at the same time gracefully.

The effects of gravity never go away…yet we walk and ride our bikes without thinking of falling. The art of skiing never changes, it will always be a controlled fall down the side of the mountain, but you get to a point where you don’t think of it that way and you actually enjoy it. The challenge of running an effective business never changes, it is always there but you learn to enjoy the process of coming up with effective solutions.

Romans 5:3-4 – “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

Have a blessed day,

RodZ

© 2008 – Rodney Zimmerman – All rights reserved