Good Monday morning!! (Again.) I’m back with another “lesson message” and today I’m talking about learning, which I feel is very appropriate to share in this collection of “lessons” that I have learned throughout the past 27-28 months of my challenge. As I’m sure many of you have seen, I have been on an incredible journey that has involved great learning about many things in my life, and life in general. These messages will probably be a little long winded: pressing print and reading them in a comfortable relaxed setting may be best. (Just a thought.) Enjoy and have a great day!
Learning
I am going to continue to build on my pervious messages, fully or in parts, and depending on how well I have thought out this 3-month collection of thoughts each message will build.
Today I want to share my experiences with learning, most directly relating to my cancer challenge, as it has been a great source of learning, but not exclusively. And I also believe that most everything I have talked, and talk, about in relation to my series is applicable in many life situations/challenges.
I remember during Game 1 I wrote to this group, though it was much smaller at that time, about the massive opportunity you all had: You were going to be party to the thoughts and feelings of a cancer patient without actually having to have cancer. Fortunately I was able to acknowledge early in my Series that the road ahead, with all its unknowns, would be an incredible opportunity to learn. At that time I wasn’t sure what about as much as I knew the opportunities were going to be there. And that is one of the main reasons, one of two reasons, why I started this email group.
I said in my challenge launch speech that “[V]ery early in my Series I felt that my experience was going to be an incredible learning opportunity, and I have never been more right about anything in my life.” I’m not sure I’ve ever had a more relevant, accurate thought about the future in my life. This cancer experience has been such a great opportunity to learn. And this 3-month long collection of thoughts that I began a couple of weeks ago is designed to highlight some of the many lessons I have learned.
Looking at my diagnosis, the time surrounding that experience, and all the time since, I can look back and see the growth that has occurred within me. Some say that I have changed, which I don’t like to agree with as I’m still very much the same person I was prior to November 6th, 1998. I prefer to say that I have been added to, which is exactly how I view my growth. I have attempted to put fertilizer on my loving compassionate parts, and used a Weed Eater on my fearful parts. The process has been challenging and rewarding, and I highly recommend it.
The component of learning that I want to share today involves learning when challenged. My experience has taught me that life requires effort, not necessarily physical exertion, but consistent effort at varying levels. I also believe that your effort, if focused in the appropriate direction, will provide great rewards. They are often not the rewards that you place on a shelf, they are far greater rewards. They are contained inside where many people can’t see them. These are the great rewards.
Challenges often require an increase in effort, emotional, physical, intellectual, or some combination of the three. And while we don’t often pursue life’s greatest Challenges, I feel that when presented with them they can be viewed as a great gift. I happen to think, and it is only recently (the last 12 months) that I’ve been able to verbalize this thought, but I think that challenge and opportunity are often the same thing. Many times the only difference between the words challenge, and opportunity, is that we call an experience a Challenge when it arrives at a time not ideally suited for us to tackle it. Yet if we are presented with an experience/situation that we are prepared to tackle, we often call it an opportunity. I feel the definition of challenge and opportunity has as much to do with the timing component of the experience as it does with the details of the situation. This thought doesn’t necessarily hold for all circumstances, but I hope you follow where it’s coming from.
During my first week in hospital I made several “adjustments of the bar,” as I called them, which were simply the adjustments of my perspective to my new situation. As I have said, I would never have chosen to fight the battle I have, but once presented with it I would have chosen no other course of action than to face it head-on, with all the love, heart and determination that was, and is, in my life. And a major part of that perspective came from my ability to view this journey ahead as one with great learning potential.
I remember being at an A&W convention in ‘93 as part of our family vacation. I was in grade 12 at the time, and very interested in business. I was extremely fortunate to have been given the opportunity to sit in on many of the sessions, and it was a real eye-opener for me for many reasons. For me, the highlight of the conference was the presentation of an extra special guest speaker, Rick Hansen. Rick talked about his experiences, and specifically the day that he was in the country fishing with his buddy. They hopped in the back of a pick-up truck hitchhiking, and shortly after, were thrown from that truck and Rick damaged his spinal cord. He was a teenager when that happened, if I remember correctly. And he addressed the crowd explaining that if he could go back and change the events of that day, and regain the use of his legs, he wouldn’t!
I sat there, as a 17-year old athlete, who loved the use of his legs, and said to myself, “No way!” I played with that notion for a long time, eventually forgetting about it, until my first week in hospital, when it jumped back into my memory. These words followed: “I understand.”
Life presents Challenges at every corner, they vary in significance, often according to our perspective. I feel they are present in our lives to teach us lessons, and it is our challenge to learn from those experiences. I have always said that if I learned something from an experience then I never regret it, and my goal is to learn something from every experience. This past 27-28 months has been the greatest learning experience of my life to date, and it continues. I hope it has been a learning experience for you, too.
The learning continues for me, and I have a feeling that it will never stop. I hope it never stops for you as well.
You’ll hear from me again next Monday, if not before. Have a great week!
Always…
Live Life. Love Life.
Geoff
