Choosing Which Doors to Kick Down

A big part of kicking down doors is choosing the right ones to try to kick down. In describing what I mean by that, I'll tell you a little more of my story. My accident stopped me from entering one room I'd nearly been inside. At the time of it, I was about to race in the New Zealand Ironman Triathlon. Unfortunately, though, I was still very much in a coma at the time the race took place!

Once I recovered from my coma, I had two big issues preventing me from even thinking about trying that race once more - needing to learn to run again and problems breathing hard while exercising. My TBI caused the first and damage to my windpipe caused by the life-saving tracheostomy I had while in a coma caused the second.

For awhile, it seemed more than possible that I would never be able to do an Ironman. To stop me going bonkers because of that, I thought hard about why I'd wanted to do one in the first place. I quickly decided that I had wanted to do one because I wanted to push myself hard physically. So, really, the room I had wanted to enter wasn't actually the Ironman room, it was the pushing-yourself-hard-physically room!

Triathlons certainly aren't the only way of doing that. Many other ways involve neither running nor breathing hard - learning to rock-climb well is one such way. Although I might not physically be able to get in to one room, there's nothing stopping me thinking about what other rooms I am still able to break in to.

Eventually I learnt how to control my breathing by breathing smoothly - I kicked down the door to the able-to-exercise room! After that, it seemed more likely that I might one day do an Ironman. However, I still need to learn to run again even now. Ironman is still something I'd like to try and do, but there are all sorts of other rooms to go through before I get to try for the Ironman room - the ability-to-run-well room, for instance. By breaking down my big goal (doing Ironman) in to a series of smaller steps, I can make it a lot easier to get there in the end.

So that's what I mean when I say, choose which doors to kick down. The room you wanted to get in to might not actually be the right one. And, if it still is, there are very likely all sorts of other rooms you can enter to help you get there.

Cheers,
Mike