Category Archives: Goals

Seven Summits And Otsuchi’s Curtains of Love

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OK, it’s settled. After posting “Everest or Rust” – all about reinforcing a habit two (physical) steps at a time – my next project is to link this er, unusual habit, with serving a greater good.

Otsuchi, a small coastal town in North Eastern Japan, was badly damaged in the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, 2011. So much so, that just one public building, a community center on a hill, escaped destruction: and over 1,500 people took shelter there that night.

However, it was very cold and so parts of the stage curtains were cut into makeshift blankets for children and the elderly.

Now, just a year later, the world’s media has largely ignored the ‘post-disaster’ impact of ‘Japan’s earthquake and tsunami’ on the people of Tohoku.

Alas, Otsuchi’s residents and refugees cannot forget so easily, as evidence of destruction and displacement lies all around them. It’s not just the damaged buildings and vacant plots, once filled with life, laughter and livelihoods. It can also be found within hearts and minds –  in private spaces, where memories and half-remembered dreams paint painful pictures of how things were and should have been…

But they are a hardy lot, these people of the North East: and their desire to recover and restart is becoming stronger.

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances…” William Shakespeare; ‘As You Like It’

In Otsuchi, their hilltop community center has taken on added significance because local people need a place where some form of cultural activities and art can offer ‘escape’ and happiness, if only for a little while, from the world outside.

Unfortunately, those torn curtains are a constant and unpleasant reminder of terrible times… as this short video will explain.

Jeffrey Jousan uploaded the video so that others can learn of this project to replace the curtains on the stage (and upstairs too, from what I recall.) If  you can help financially in any way, then details of how to do so are below the video on YouTube.

You can also help to spread the message of this video’s existence by:

- Adding a ‘thumbs up’ to show you liked the video on YouTube.

- Emailing the link to your friends.

- Sharing the link on FaceBook and on Twitter (it’s easy to do from the YouTube Page.)

- Retweeting this post, clicking the Google+ icon, Stumbling it, or by FaceBook ‘Liking it’ .

The Seven Summits – No, Make that Eight…

My plan to help is by ‘stair-climbing’ the equivalent of the seven summits on a 28 meters high, nine-storey building, in Tokyo.

Technically, there should be just seven of these mountains – one for each continent. But when has that ever stopped humans from disagreeing about anything?

Take a look at this screenshot from the ‘seven summits’ Wikipedia page:

seven summits mountainsI’ll make it ‘easy’ on myself by ascending all eight peaks.

That works out to be 45,542 meters OR 1,627 times up the stairs.

The goal is to finish it by 31 March 2013 or sooner (starting on Monday 2 April; I’m in ‘training’ at the moment…)

All being well, and at 1 yen per meter, I plan on giving 45,542 Yen (about US $ 542, at today’s rate) to Otsuchi Community Center’s ‘Curtains of Love’ Project. Of course, they might have raised the money before I finish. If they do, well, I’ll find another project (through my contacts with volunteers on the ground) and help that one. However, their fundraising goal is an ambitious one – even though local craftsmen will provide labor for free; the amount of quality, curtain material required is quite large; and is therefore expensive.

If you’d like to donate ‘in step’ with me, please do so. Leave a comment here or contact me privately. Heck, do it anonymously, it’s the inner drive to help that really counts, not the world’s acknowledgement. I’ll post updates on this blog every time one of the seven er, eight, summits is completed.

Note for Bloggers and Other Publishers: I encourage you to repost this blog as long as the content remains unaltered, including all hyperlinks. If you translate it to another language, please include a link to this original post in English.

- Mark McClure

PS: (2012-04-07 Update: I’ll update the climb status – probably on a monthly basis – in the comments.)

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Everest or Rust

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‘Reinforcing a Habit Two Steps At A Time’, when the only way is up…

cumulative-meters-climbed-graph-mark-mcclure

'Everest or Bust'

You can find a number of posts here about building or changing habits. For example, here, here and here.

In my experience, creating new habits usually takes much longer than the twenty one continuous days sometimes mentioned by ‘self help’ books and speakers. Sure, willpower can get you started but turning that into a regular routine requires a workable system.

For example, one of the exercise goals I set last year was to strengthen my legs using just my own bodyweight. No going to gyms. No lifting weights.

Walking and running would help but not as much as I wanted. And I wasn’t aways in the mood to do circuit-type training. However, one asset close to hand was nine floors of stairs I could choose to walk up every time I entered the building.

This was the Start of a System

At the building entrance I’d walk past the elevators and climb the nine floors, two steps at a time (well, for at least 90% of the ascents) and then tick off that successful ‘ascent’ on the monthly calendar shown at the end of this post.

personal-everest-ascent-markmccluretoday

Personal Everest Ascent

The first couple of months were tough as my legs were not used to climbing through a vertical height of 28 meters (or 91.8 ft). However, I started to notice improvements in muscle tone, especially in the quadriceps, and I was also able to run up stairs more easily when trying to catch a train.

With these small successes it dawned on me that I could make this a ‘game’ (coaches love games) by aiming to complete a weekly number of ascents. On average, I planned for two ascents each day but was often inspired to knock out three or four. (Four ascents meant I’d climbed more than 100 meters in one day; a psychological goal of note.)

Everest or Rust

Some time in September  2011 I realized that at 3000 + meters, I’d almost ‘climbed’ the equivalent of Japan’s highest mountain, Mt. Fuji. (I took this photo of Fuji-san some years ago while running along a local lake.)

Fuji-san Japan

Fuji-san

From there it was but a thought to imagine standing on top of the world – albeit with none of the dangers of doing it for real.

The calculation was as follows: 8848 meters (Mt. Everest’s height) divided by 28 (the vertical height of this nine storey building in Tokyo). Giving me 316 ‘ascents’ to reach the goal.

Building a habit becomes easier if it also becomes part of who you are – in other words, the activity is seen as ‘expected behavior’. And that’s how ‘stair climbing’ became a tag with which I was identified. I was almost never seen in the elevator, only on the stairs.

Of course, I also continued to feel good physically about these exertions. So much so, that ‘Everest or Rust’ was a little wordplay I became attached to. (If my body’s still in working order at 51 I’m going to make d*mn sure to keep it oiled and running.)

The final piece to building this habit came from the subtle influence of a paper and pencil ritual.

Keep a Record of Your Efforts and Results

Take a look at the monthly record sheet I downloaded from the time and date web site.

personal Everest 2012 feb 29 leap year

 After each completed ascent I made a pencil mark on the calendar day because this was simpler and faster than using an electronic tracking tool. In the column on the right, ‘P’ was for planned ascents, and ‘A’ was for actual. Sometimes I would use this ‘tension’ to break a personal weekly ascent target but it wasn’t really that important to the overall success of the project because setting PRs every week was not what I signed up for.

The  monthly calendar (letter/A4 size) was pinned to a wall within my peripheral vision and in a way, became a ‘trusted’ but silent companion to the ‘Everest eejit’s ‘ exertions.

Not only was I training myself to ‘close out’ each ascent with a tick but I ended up feeling compelled to do so immediately because otherwise I’d forget and therefore have climbed 28 meters for NO REWARD.

The ‘reward’ nature of the ascent was delivered as much by a simple pencil mark as by any self-satisfaction gained from walking up nine flights of stairs, two at a time. Interestingly, though I valued my friends’ support, they were not really motivators for me to keep going. Sure, it would’ve been a wee bit embarrassing to quit and have to put with some friendly teasing. Not a show stopper, however.

‘Recording results’ seems to be one of those ‘psychological tidbits’ I get a high from and probably explains why I’ve kept running diaries since I was about 16 years old.

By the way, the ‘MW’ and ‘EW’ labels on the calendar refer to ‘morning walk’ and ‘evening walk’. By getting off the train a few stops before my normal station I get a good 20 to 30 minutes walk twice a day. This is another example of how recording the result is an essential part of completing the task and reinforcing the behavior.

What’s Next? The Seven Summits…

Well, I got such a kick out of ‘climbing Mt. Everest’ that I want to continue the activity as part of a regular day.
This time a few colleagues will join in and I’m interested to see if their participation will alter my motivation to complete the  goal.

At  the time of writing, the goal is to climb the equivalent of the so-called seven summits – one on each continent. There seems to be some debate about whether it is 7 or 8 mountains (see wikipedia) and we’ll decide that later. Either way, this time the ascent will be the equivalent of at least 40,000 meters – that’s 1429 ascents of this building’s nine floors… yikes!

More on that in a future post.

Here’s The Excel File Used to Track The ‘Everest or Rust’ Goal

If you’d like to download the Microsoft excel file I used then right-click this link: personal everest spreadsheet.
(File size is approx. 33 kBytes.)

And here’s a pdf version of the spreadsheet file: personal-everest.pdf right-click it to download and save).

- Mark ‘habit change‘ McClure

Share Your Christmas With Tohoku, Japan

I decided to donate 8,848 Yen (about $ 106) to people who are helping refugees and others affected by the Earthquake and Tsunami that badly damaged NE Japan (Tohoku area, in particular) on March 11th, 2011.

That’s 1 yen for each meter climbed.

They’ve blogged about their efforts in this post titled, “Gambare Iwate“.

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15af – Video 01 – Introduction

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Here’s the first YouTube video in the ’15 and forgiveness’ series mentioned in the ‘15af for career changers‘ post.

‘Just5Rules‘ is my YouTube channel for personal growth and career change material.
By clicking the YouTube ‘Like’ button you increase the chances that the video content will be seen by others.

Part One: 15 And Forgiveness – Introduction

Below is the embedded video, and underneath is the transcript.
Enjoy! (And please remember to tweet this post to help get the message out.)

15af – Introduction – Edited Transcript

Hello and welcome to markmccluretoday.com.

This is Mark McClure and I’ve got a special treat for you.

It’s an interview I did with Al Secunda, the author of ‘The 15-Second Principle‘.

I’ve called it ‘15 and forgiveness.’ (15af)

And when you download and listen to it, I think you’ll find out why.

But just before we start the interview, I’d like to introduce you to Al and his work,
and why it had such a big effect on me.

And how I think it can help career changers and people with major life changes, in
fact, make progress towards their dream goal or vision.

Some people dream of making big changes for the better in their life or career, yet create only ‘castles in the
air‘. Others set specific goals but avoid ever taking action.

One man who has faced all the above in his own life and finally decided to do something
about it, is motivational speaker, workshop leader coach, and author of ‘The 15-Second Principle’, Al Secunda.
(Al’s wonderful book is available on Amazon.com and really helped me keep going when I began my mid-life career change journey some years ago (2005).)

In fact, I found his approach so helpful in moving forward that I finally plucked up the courage
and asked him to do a telephone interview, my first; so you can imagine I was a little nervous.

(The interview’s) all about using the 15-second principle.

In just under two hours, Al Secunda shared freely from his experiences and knowledge, and we covered a lot of topics, and had a bit of fun too. I’m going to read out just five highlights from the first thirty minutes:

    • 1) Connecting fifteen and forgiveness with your dream goals.
      (This is probably the crux of the whole interview really.)
    • 2) The Zen-like answer to, “what can you do in fifteen seconds?”
    • 3) Why pleasure before precision helps learn a new skill.
    • 4) Discover how ‘faithing’ and ‘taking action’ go hand-in-hand.
    • (5), Getting comfortable with discomfort; what he calls the ‘inclusion factor’.

Now, there’s a whole lot more in the remaining hour or so, so you should (probably) get a pencil and a note pad out, if you’re wise, and take some notes.

(Because) It’s really valuable information.

As far as downloading the interview is concerned, I recommend if you have a cable broadband or faster internet connection, you should be able to download it no problem.

It’s a twenty five (25) megabyte file and it took me about five minutes to download the same (file) sitting here in Japan, with the file on a server in the US. So, if I can do it over (under?!) the Pacific, I think you should be able to do it with a cable broadband connection, if it’s reasonably reliable.

Now, before you start listening, I recommend that to get the very best from the interview, you first think of a big goal or dream you’ve been putting off starting for ages.

So, typically for career changers, it is in fact making progress on figuring out what they can change their career to, or moving on to something different.

Apply Al’s 15 and Forgiveness Approach Today

Have that in mind – what’s holding you up, what that dream is, then listen to the interview, and then right after it, as soon as the interview is finished, NOT the next day, not two hours later, but right away, apply Al’s 15 and forgiveness approach, and see what happens.

And if you want some support, or you want to let others know how you are getting on, just drop by my blog, at markmccluretoday dot com, and let me know. Leave a comment in one of the posts, the latest post, and i’ll see it. And if you’ve got something useful to share, I’ll make sure everybody else knows about it too.

Okay, let’s start the interview now. Enjoy.

- Mark McClure

PS: The Original 2 Hour MP3 Interview with Al Secunda

The original ‘15 and forgiveness‘ audio interview is available here:
http://www.markmccluretoday.com/fifteen-and-forgiveness.html

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15af for Career Changers

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This is the opening post in a series designed to highlight the wisdom and experience of motivational author, Al Secunda. I first wrote about Al over four years ago in this post titled, “15 and Forgiveness in Action“. His book, ‘The 15-Second Principle“, is one of my favorite personal growth books, partly because he’s been up close and personal with very successful A-list Hollywood stars, as their some time tennis coach.

Al’s counterintuitive approach to goal setting has as its premise a seeming contradiction.
I’m roughly paraphrasing here but “either you don’t really want this goal OR you’re scared to death of it.”

Career Change Faint Heart

There’s a lot of nonsense talked by so-called gurus and coaches who trumpet the “do what you love” mantra to often unhappy people looking for direction in their choice of vocation.

It’s nonsense because it appeals to people who dream of career change but would run a mile if they actually had to engage critical thinking skills, and then do it. Alas, some of them get caught in subtle co-dependency marketing webs spun by ‘teachers’ whose primary aim is to build their own streams of income, usually at their clients’ expense.

Far, far better for these “castles in the air” dreamers to discover by themselves, and mostly for free, that career change is probably NOT for them.

Al’s book is a guide to helping you ditch goals you thought you (or often, someone else in your life) wanted to achieve before much harm is done, or time and money ‘wasted’…

… leaving you freer and happier to pursue those goals that really DO scare you to death!

15 and Forgiveness now on YouTube

Although the original two-hour mp3 audio interview still gets downloaded, I want to present the content to a much bigger audience than this blog. I also want to add a transcript for people to skim through.

I will therefore be adding the interview to YouTube as a multi-media series with a link to each transcript on this site.

I encourage you to share these YouTube videos with your friends and followers using social media tools such as FaceBook, Twitter, Google Plus and others.

15af – Video 01 – Introduction

This video introduces Al Secunda and his book, The 15-Second Principle, setting the scene for the interview itself.
The video is 4m 47s and the transcript is around 700 words.
Click ‘15af – Video 01 – Introduction‘ to watch this video and read the transcript.

The Original 2 Hour MP3 Interview with Al Secunda

The original ‘15 and forgiveness‘ audio interview is available here:

http://www.markmccluretoday.com/fifteen-and-forgiveness.html

- Mark ‘scared-to-death goal setter‘ McClure

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Rediscovering Willpower, and the 63/37 Rule

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I came across the UK Guardian’s review of ‘Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength, by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney‘ and thought, “oh dear, here we go again. A new book just in time for those readers now wavering on New Year’s resolutions but a month old.”

Having read only the review, but not the book, what I have to say here concerns the building of (good) habits.

In my life, I’m sure that willpower had something to do with ingraining habitual behavior but I doubt it was the primary motivator.

Exercising The Willpower Muscle

That’s because the willpower muscle often wilts without a regular dose of ‘mental willagra’ (my new drug of choice!).

Fortunately, this is easy to administer…just set a goal that’s achieved almost imperceptibly.

For example, say you want to be able to do 50 push ups daily but can only manage 30 without collapsing in a crumpled heap.
What you do is start with 25 (say) in the morning, followed by another 25 at night.

There you go. You’re doing 50 per day, just not all at once.

Do that for one week, taking a day off to recover. (That would be Friday for me. When I was an active athlete we had Friday’s off and it really did add meaning to the ‘TGIF’ moniker.)

Week two would add just one rep to the morning set and reduce one rep from the evening set. That’s 26 before breakfast and 24 before sleep.

Week two would see a 27 / 23 split between morning and evening.

In just 23 weeks you’ll reach 50 in the morning and be rewarded with none at night!
And what’s next? Well, how about aiming for 60 by starting with a 30/30 split?

100 Push Ups a Day

Some months ago I started with a 50/50 split and a goal of 100 push ups.
I’m now at the 63/37 mark and pleased to say that this activity is gradually becoming habitual.

So much so, that I find it odd when I don’t do the exercise because of illness, late night socializing etc.

Willpower’s taking a back seat on this goal.

- Mark McClure

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