“The Ultimate High-Five” – Business Inspiration

In October 2015 I began preparing for a physical adventure that was beyond my comfort zone. In order to accomplish what I hoped to achieve, I needed to train myself to push longer and harder than I had before. Every day the activity I was trying to perfect took more focus, a deeper commitment and more time on my calendar. Other things had to wait as I committed to this one new thing.

At the end of each day, I found myself literally “high fiving” myself as an ultimate act of acknowledging the accomplishment. Although it might have seemed funny to anyone who saw me do it, I learned the act of physically doing something to applaud myself worked. This positive action produced a giddy feeling that stayed with me the rest of the day and propelled me farther the next day.

Yesterday as I accomplished a new technical accomplishment I forced myself to attempt, I found myself once again needing the positive physical act of the high-five to celebrate the completion of the feat. Once again my hands clapped mid-air in a gesture of success for my eye, spirit and mind to record.

You might be thinking I’ve reached new levels of cabin fever working inside my office in a blinding snow storm for two days but I hope you take this visual as encouragement to push yourself to do something new instead of waiting for someone else to help you. It is easy to get comfortable doing the same thing for a long time or waiting for someone else to come to our rescue. What the high-five illustrates is the capability we each have to do something absolutely brand new by our own determination, grit and hard work. We have more brains, brawn and bravery buried inside of us than we give ourselves credit for.

Today consider what small or big task is standing in way of you moving forward in 2016 and then taking a brave step forward by pushing or teaching yourself instead of relying on someone else to instruct you. There are certainly times when we need other people’s assistance in reaching our goals but what the visual of the high-five can teach you is that you can take the bull by the horns sometimes and dig deep to train or teach yourself to do something new.