Less Than a Minute to Go

by Bill Thierfelder

  Dave knew the benefits that came with running these dunes firsthand. In preparation for the 1968 Olympics, he had run the Scituate dunes thousands of times and, if you weren’t already impressed, he had run them with a tire tied to his waist! As he was waiting for his event, the 400m hurdles, everyone in the holding area was anxious and nervous, but all Dave could think about was the dunes. He knew that no one else he was competing against had gone through the pain and sacrifice he had gone through while running them. He drew lane six for the finals. Since each runner must remain in his lane for the entire race, a staggered start is necessary to ensure that everyone runs the same distance. This meant that Dave, in lane six, would be on the outside of the track almost thirty-five yards ahead of the runner in lane one. There would be no way for him to see how fast the other competitors were running in relation to himself. He wouldn’t be able to see them until the final straightaway and if he was too far behind, it would be too late to do anything about it.

  Dave told me that when the gun went off, he ran for his life, and all he could think about were all the dunes he had run. From the sound of the gun he exploded out of the blocks and ran like a man possessed. He kept expecting to see the other runners come up alongside him but as he headed into the home stretch they never appeared.

  Dave won the race by the largest margin in Olympic history while setting a new world record in a time of 48.12 seconds. The photo finish tells the whole story. When I first saw it, I thought, “Where is Dave?” As I looked more carefully I realized that I had been looking to the left of the photo where all the other competitors were grouped together across the track. To the far right, looking like a man shot out of a cannon, was Dave Hemery crossing the finish line by a historic margin. He won because he had the talent and dedicated himself to developing it. His confidence came from knowing that he was well prepared and well able to run a time that could win Olympic gold. Unlike the tennis novice who sought to feel confident by saying words that were not based in reality, Dave was confident because in reality he could do what he said.”

  TAKE AWAY

  Your beliefs determine your emotions. If what you believe is true, then your emotions, behaviors, and words will usually be appropriate. However, if what you believe to be true is in fact false, your emotions, behaviors and words will be the wrong ones and lead you to make rash judgments about yourself and others.

  The next time you are confronted by a person who rubs you the wrong way ask yourself two questions. First, “Can this person read? Is he capable of responding appropriately in the given situation.” Secondly, “Do I want to be in this person’s shoes?” Are you attracted to his life and the way he lives it. If the answer to both questions is “No!” do what you can to help him, he needs it. And before you consider talking about him or any other person, ask yourself, “Is it true? Does it need to be said? And will it make a difference?” If the answer is “No” to any of them, keep it to yourself.

  Recognizing the truth, reality, about yourself and others is the basis for your beliefs. Your feelings and emotions are a product of what you actually believe not what you say you believe. Do your feelings match reality? “Know thyself,” if you don’t like the way you feel, it’s time to check to see if what you believe is true.

  CHAPTER 4

  DON’T JUST STAND THERE

  MOST of us don’t like change. We seem to like it even less if it means changing something about ourselves. We usually try to avoid it because it will cost us something: time, money, energy, comfort, or more. Even when you know it will be for your greater good you still cringe from it. Sometimes you’re not sure whether you should charge ahead or turn back. Everything says, “Go!” but another part of your mind is saying, “Go back this is a bad idea.” Understanding the process of change while strengthening your will to overcome your resistance to it might help you minimize the pain and eliminate the procrastination that stops you from changing something even when you know it is for the best.

  Almost everyone has jumped off a diving board at one time or another. Imagine that it is a beautiful, sunny, hot day and you’re at the pool, and you’ve never jumped off a diving board. You’re watching all these people jump and dive, and everyone seems to be having a great time. You finally bring yourself to say, “I’m gonna go do that, it looks like fun!” You walk over to the diving board. You climb up the ladder. You start to walk out on the board but as you do, you suddenly start to slow down. You come to the end of the diving board, and you stop. You look out. Two things are happening at that moment. Everything in you is saying, “Stop. Go back. This is a bad idea. You’re gonna sink like a rock. It’s going to hurt. Something bad is going to happen. Go back down that ladder!” Another part of your mind is saying, “No! I’ve seen people jump, this is fun! They’re splashing, they’re laughing, and I want to do this too!” Here you are at the pool, standing on the diving board. Everybody else is sitting around on their lounge chairs chatting and laughing, others are splashing and swimming in the water, and nobody knows at that moment there’s this battle going on inside your head.

  For most of us, we eventually bring ourselves to jump off. Some force themselves to run off, screaming with fear and anxiety as they jump. Others try keeping one foot on the board as they attempt to slowly lower themselves into the water with the other, to minimize the height they have to drop. But eventually we all seem to find our way into the water. We go in, come back up, think “I’m alive! I made it!” and swim or, in some cases, doggy paddle to the side. We climb out of the pool and then find ourselves climbing up the diving board ladder a second time. Although you just went off the board less than a minute ago, the old feeling starts to come back: “This is a bad idea, don’t do it.” But this time, you don’t hesitate as much because you realize that you were okay the last time. You ignore the growing feelings of fear or worry and you jump off again. By the fourteenth time around, the lifeguard is now telling you to stop running. You’re doing cannonballs and splits in the air. You’re jumping for distance. You’re jumping for height! And now you can’t even remember the first time you jumped or the feelings that had initially held you back.

  That is how change happens. It begins in your mind, your wonderful mind. Typically your mind is of a greater power than whatever problem it confronts but sometimes, especially in the case of psychological disorders, it is the mind that needs to help itself. This is a remarkable thought. It would be like a computer that has crashed trying to fix itself. It had the computing power to solve many complex problems but now the very power used to solve those problems is diminished and, in its diminished state, it is not able to restore itself to full health. Fortunately, the mind is exponentially greater than any computer and therefore better able to recover from a crash. It is in the mind’s ability to examine itself that you can overcome many issues both mild and severe. But how does your mind do it? What is going on in your mind that enables you to figure things out and take the proper action?

  Let’s go back to the diving board. Remember the first time jumping off the board, we struggled with fear, in this case an emotion based on the false belief that something bad was going to happen to us. This is often the reason we don’t allow change to happen, the reason for our resistance. This is where knowledge, reason and will come into play. Knowledge is simply the mental process of being aware of something and comparing, identifying, discriminating, or connecting it to something else. Truth is an essential condition of knowledge. This is an important point because you can mistake error for truth and find yourself steadfastly defending a false statement when you lack one indispensable condition of knowledge; conformity of your thought with reality. Without truth you would only have the appearance of knowledge. That is why saying, “I think so” is a far cry from saying, “I know so.”

  Reason is how you make good use of what you know. It enables you to infer and arrive at a sound conclusion by seeing the connection between one premise and another that you already know to be true. Finally, with know
ledge and reason, you are prepared to act. In a way your will is reason put into action. The primary purpose of your will is to accomplish something good. Through repeated voluntary acts of your will, self-control is strengthened and good habits—known as virtue—are formed which on the whole build character. So if you can look at a situation like jumping off a diving board and say, “I know what it takes, this is reasonable. It’s safe. I really want to do this,” then just do it! If necessary, acknowledge in your mind that you may not like the feeling but that you’re going to do it anyway. Once you’ve done it enough times, you will barely be able remember the bad feeling that came over you on the first jump.

  Change often requires trying something new or something you never thought possible. What if someone told you to try and kick a basketball rim or the crossbar on a football goal post? You might be tempted to ask, “Is this person crazy or just not very funny?” There are some things in life that you are capable of doing but will never try because the thought never enters your mind, or even if it did, the thought might seem so ridiculous or outrageous that you wouldn’t dare attempt it. Sometimes it takes another person who knows what you can do and who challenges you to see the reality of it. I had one of those experiences. One evening after an indoor high jump practice in the gym my coach looked around, then up, and said to me, “Thierfelder, let me see you jump up there and kick that rim.” I looked at him confused and asked, “What do you mean?” He nonchalantly responded, “Just run up and take a pop-up and try to kick the rim.” I said, “Are you serious? It is ten feet high!” “Yeah, I am serious” he said. I was a straddle high jumper. That means when I jumped, I would run in a straight line toward the bar, kick up my leg, rise up over the bar, roll around it face down, and land on my back on the high jump mat. I said, “Has anyone ever done it before?” He smiled and said, “Yes.” Believing him, I thought, “What the heck. I have nothing to lose… except my dignity.” I stepped off about ten strides, turned and faced the basket. A funny thing happened. I started to picture myself leaving the ground with my lead leg and foot above my head, rising up, and touching the rim with the tip of my shoe. All of a sudden it seemed possible. I ran up, kicked, sailed into the air and just like I had imagined it, my foot touched the rim. Ten feet! Afterwards I reflected on what had happened. I had a personal best jump of seven feet four inches, a thirty-six inch vertical jump, and as a long legged straddle high jumper, who was six feet eight inches tall, I could almost kick eight feet without leaving the ground! Instead of my incredulity about being asked to kick the rim, I should have said, “Of course!” Well, believe it or not, I got to a point where I could fairly easily kick a basketball rim or a football goalpost, also ten feet high. It really helped me with my high jumping because it trained me to jump straight up and it had the added benefit of making a seven foot bar look a lot lower! Kicking the rim also provided another bonus, at least for my coach. He would walk over to some unsuspecting soul and say, ‘’You see that guy over there? I’ll bet you a Coke he can kick the basketball rim.” He would call over as if he didn’t know me and say, “I just bet this guy that you can kick the rim. What’dya think?” In disbelief the poor soul would watch as I ran up, kicked the rim and landed on my feet. Another Coke, another proof.

  Even if you are willing to enter the uncharted waters of “change,” it doesn’t mean it will be easy. As I entered my senior year of college, I was determined that I would become an All-American. I knew that I could jump high enough. The year before, I had competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials and the NCAA Division I National Championships. I reasoned that if I worked hard enough, I should be able do it. Knowledge, reason, and now all I needed was the will to pursue and realize my goal. In order to become an All-American I had to first qualify for the National Championships and then be one of the top six Americans to place at the meet. My training was going well and I had about ten meets on the indoor schedule in order to qualify. Before the first meet I made it known to everyone around me that I was going to be an All-American. This public declaration was not made lacking humility. I figured that if I told the world that I was going to do it then I would have no place to hide. I had put myself on the line not fully realizing what lay ahead. The first few meets went by without me qualifying for nationals. I got a little more determined and worked a little harder. A few more meets went by and I still had not qualified. I was now down to about three meets in which to do it. The next two, close but no cigar. During this entire time I kept telling everyone I am going to be an All-American. Some of my teammates by now were looking at me with pity and saying, “Look Bill, we know you how much you want to be an All-American but you haven’t even qualified for the meet yet!” The last chance arrived. It was the IC4A Championships held at Princeton University. This was it, do or die. If will can become harder, mine became granite at that moment. I was clearing every height on my first attempt. The bar was finally raised to the qualifying height and only two of us were left in the competition. As I bore a hole through the bar with my eyes, I began the approach and before I knew it I had landed on the mat and was looking up at a crossbar that was still in place. My coach, teammates and I were ecstatic. I said, “See, I told you, I am going to be an All-American.” They allowed me to bask in the warmth of that thought until we returned back to school. Out of charity, they sympathetically said, “Now Bill, it is great that you were able to qualify but you barely made it. At nationals, you will first have to get through the qualifying round. Secondly, even if you manage to do that, how are you going to finish in the top six!” Instead of weakening my resolve, the narrow escape at the IC4As only seemed to strengthen it.

  As we departed for Detroit and the Joe Louis Arena, all I could think about was becoming an All-American. The opening height for the qualifying round was set at 6’10”. Whoever cleared it automatically went to the finals, those who didn’t went home. Everyone was given three attempts to clear that height, but one jump is all it would take for me to qualify. The next day I was in the finals! As the bar was raised to each new height, I kept close track of how many jumpers were left in the competition. Finally we had reached the height that would make me an All-American. First jump, a miss. Second jump, a miss. Third jump, a miss! But wait, as I was making my approach for the final jump a photographer walked across my approach and bumped into me as I was jumping. I was still lying on the mat with the fallen crossbar next to me in shock. I was thinking, “I didn’t make it. I can’t believe it, I didn’t make it.” What seemed to me like a lifetime was only seconds before the head official came over to me and said, “Don’t worry it doesn’t count. Go ahead and take your third attempt.” I willed myself to shake off the traumatic event and refocus. If my will had been like granite at the IC4As, it had just turned to diamond. The jump was not pretty, I had planted my foot so hard I thought it would go through the floor. I was surprised that I ever got off the ground, but I did. And yes, I did make All-American but by the skin of my teeth. I finished seventh but there was one foreign national ahead of me and so I was the sixth American!

  Sometimes, rather than dealing with adversity or our own issues head-on, we might be tempted to blame others for the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in. We lament, “If only this or that were different I would be able to get that done or do this thing.” Performing at the highest level requires awareness of the facts as they really are and not as you might like them to be. It means being able to quickly adapt to any situation that may arise and take the right action. The next time you find yourself in one of these situations, think of this analogy. Imagine that you’re inside a building, and it’s pouring rain outside. You go down to the lobby, and you have a choice to make. You could stay inside, you could run to your car, find an umbrella, put a bag over your head, or just go out and dance in the rain. But I don’t think you would sit out on the curb, getting drenched, and then yell up into the rain, “I hate this! I’m getting wet!” If you saw someone doing this, you’d probably think they were out of their mind.
And yet we all do this at times. We sit out there getting poured on, and we complain about how much we hate it. Guess what? Get off the curb! Go do something else. Get an umbrella, dance around in the rain, or run to your car. Do something, but don’t just sit there on the curb screaming about it. This may sound like obvious advice but sometimes, through a lack of awareness, we don’t realize that we’re just sitting there getting soaked. Next time it’s raining in your life ask yourself, “Am I sitting on the curb getting wet, or am I getting up and doing something about it?” The only thing you can’t control is the rain. It’s raining. That’s the fact, whether you like it or not. The question is: what are you going to do when it rains? By repeatedly exercising your will to act in response to the small difficulties of everyday life, you will be well prepared to handle the big ones when they come your way.

  But what happens when you are faced with an endless stream of negative thoughts and no matter what you do they continue to wash over you in unrelenting waves? It’s not the one drop of water that gets you soaked but rather the sudden downpour of a million droplets. Just so, it is not the one-time thought that bothers you so much as the endless harangue. The answer is still the same: exercise your will.

  Imagine one day the UPS man comes to your front door, knocks, and when you open it, he says, “Hi, I have a package for John Smith”. Well, you’re not John Smith. As a matter of fact, that’s not even close to your name. So you tell him that. Then he shows you the package and asks, “Hmm, well this is the correct address, isn’t it?” You respond, “That is the right address, but there is no one living here with that name.” He says, “Well, that may be so but this is the right address. Please sign here and he holds out the clipboard and a pen.” You respond, “I’m sorry but I think you have the wrong house. There is no one here by that name.” He is looking a little irritated and says, “C’mon, it’s the correct address, I need to get going, please sign for it.” The UPS guy will not give up, so you finally sign for the package just to get rid of the him. You take the package and throw it into the living room. He comes back the next day, and you sign quickly to get rid of him. Then he comes back the next day, and the next, and the next, and so on. Soon, your living room is overflowing with packages that are not yours! Negative thoughts are like the packages. They are not yours, don’t sign for them! It’s not easy though, the UPS guy gave you a hard time and he wasn’t about to leave any time soon. But, if you absolutely refuse to sign for the package no matter how many times you are asked, he will go away. The negative thoughts are not yours. Stop signing for them and they will go away.