The Gift of Taking Bold Action

The Captain gave the order to abandon ship.   The crew of the ship knew the order was coming as it was all too evident that the good ship “Endurance” was being crushed under the weight of millions of tons of Antarctic ice.

The goal of the ship “Endurance” was to deliver the ships captain Sir Ernest Shakelton and his team of explorers to the continent of Antartica where they were to cross the Antarctic continent overland from west to east for the first time in history.   It was the Imperial trans-Antarctic expedition.

The name of the ship was “Endurance.” The captain was Sir Ernest Shackleton. The year 1915. Shackleton’s ambitious goal of traversing the Antarctic continent was set aside with his order to abandon ship as his crew of 20 sailors and explorers made a makeshift camp, with materials salvaged from the ship, on the ice flows which surrounded them.  All the could do was watch and listen to the terrible creaking and cracking as the Endurance was crushed to pieces and splintered apart and sank.

Shackleton’s goal of becoming the first man to traverse Antartica overland was crushed.

Shackleton immediately set a new goal.   He made a promise then and there.  Shackleton commitment to get his crew safe and sound off of the Antarctic ice and back to their homes in England.

Will finish this story and a bit.

Hello, my friend and welcome to this foundational episode number 002 of the Pathway to Promise Podcast where we will go deep on God’s gift of Bold Action to change your life for the better.

My name is Brad Miller, Dr. Brad Miller and I am a student of life transformation.

The Pathway to Promise Podcast is all about the belief that every person has a God-given promised life of peace, prosperity, and purpose which is achieved when we follow a specific path with the proper people.

Following the pathway of promise process allows us to overcome any adversity of depression debilitating disease devastating divorce even the loss of a loved one and come out to a place of spiritual depth and satisfaction,  joy-filled relationships, debt-free and prosperous living and vital health and fitness.

This Pathway to your Promised Life is guided by four foundational gifts that God gives us which when you claim them help us to achieve peace prosperity and purpose.

We find these four foundational gifts in this verse of scripture 2 Timothy 1:7 “God does not give us a spirit of timidity but the spirit of power love and self-discipline”

The first foundational gift is “God does not give us a spirit of timidity.”    

What does that word “timid” mean or “spirit of timidity.”

The dictionary definition of time is showing a lack of courage or confidence; easily frightened.

In short living in fear.  In practice when we say someone is timid we think of someone who is withdrawn, quiet, afraid indecisive.  The image we have of timid is of a shaking mouse…you know timid as a mouse.

So if the gift is not being timid according to the bible then the opposite of that would hold.

To put it another way, taking Bold Action without fear is the first foundational gift from God for the person wanting to overcome adversity and find your promised life of peace, prosperity, and purpose.

If you’re going to overcome adversity in your life and achieve your promise life than the first thing you need to do is take bold action.

The first step in taking bold action to achieve your promise life is to clarify the specifics of what you mean by your promise life.   What is the vision; what is the outcome of where you want to go.

For Shackleton and his men their vision was clear get off that ice and get back to England.

For you your vision of a promise life may be achieving financial freedom, perhaps it is developing a great relationship with your spouse, maybe your vision is to achieve optimal health, lose 50 pounds ride your bike for a century ride.

Maybe your vision is to be a spiritually deeper person the kind of person a person other people like to be around all.   

Perhaps your vision is to beat cancer or to raise money for a mission project in Guatemala.

Whatever it is clarity of your outcome is important here. If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there.  Taking bold action first means taking action in the direction of your desired outcome.    Your vision, your desired outcome is to be clear and specific and stated with clarity.

For me, I had a vision of being the greatest father of the bride ever at my daughter’s wedding and that vision drove me to take bold action.

What is your vision the desired outcome of your promise life?

I  Want you to take out a notebook or personal planner or open up your planning app on your phone and write this out “I [first name] am not timid, I claim God’s gift of taking the bold action of______.

What we are talking about by taking Bold Action is claiming your God-given Vision of your promised life.

So let’s spell out your vision for your situation.   You can use your notebook or planner for this…simpley put the letter “V” and a colon and write this down.   

“V” of Vision is for version. What version of yourself do you envision 40 days 60 days six months down the road? Do you see a version of yourself much as you are right now or do you see her version of yourself at a considerably better place? A place where you’ve lost that weight, a place where you can improve your marriage, a place where you’ve beaten debt, a place where you’ve overcome depression. The present “stuck” version of yourself will not do here. God has a great promise lies in store for you so get a specific clear vision of your version of what your promise life looks like. You got it you got it in your mind now. Okay, now write it down after “V” for version of yourself.

Now that you have a clear version of your self in your mind about how you will be when you get to your promised life the next bold action is getting started.   

This means taking the initiative.   In your planner put the letter “I” with the:

The letter “I” in your vision is for the initiate.

An initiate is to cause (a process or action) to begin. It means you are responsible for getting things started.  It means to get out of bed to put 1 foot from the other you set your intention then you initiate action.  An orchestra does not play a note of a song until the conductor raises his baton to initiate the song.

In the Bible, it says that Jesus resolutely set out toward Jerusalem which leads to his glory

Dorothy had to take the first step on the yellow brick road to get to Oz

If you heard my story from Episode 1 of the Pathway to Promise Podcast you know for me my first step was getting out of bed at 5 AM and meeting a workout accountability partner at my local gym this became a part of my process to lose about 50 pounds in just a few weeks because I wanted to look good in a tux and be ready for my daughter’s wedding.   

So what do you need to initiate in your life to achieve your promised life?   In your notebook write these words. “The first act that I need to initiate is_________-and I will do this by_____.

The letter S in spelling out our vision is for Stepping UP.

So put the letter S in your planner with a colon and the words step up.

Stepping up means to keep going, keep doing the things you need to do over and over again as you develop new habits which will move your closer and closer to your promised life.  This means to focus with the intention on the daily actions that you need to do.  It’s all about making progress.  I think you need to take significant action toward your goal for forty days to imprint that new habit into your lifestyle.  It’s about making a promise to yourself to do whatever action it is consecutively to develop your mastery.  It is the cumulative effect of practice.  You don’t learn to play guitar after one lesson and no practice.  You can’t make 100 free throws without a lot of practice and you can’t change with good intention alone your have to step up.    

For a few her to the story of the mule that fell down a well, the farmer owns a mule couldn’t figure out how to get him out of the well so you just figured he would bury him alive. The shovel dirt and ultimately you’ll be gone the well shovelful shovel dirt hit the back of the real with the meal was just shake off the dirt and then step up shake off the dirt and step shake off the dirt and step up until finally the well filled up with dirt in the meal stepped away.

Keep stepping up means that we just keep going even when you’re frustrated and upset when you see things are not going away you keep going.

You remember from my story in episode 1 about the father-daughter wedding dance I was so stressed out about.  I practiced that dance hundreds of times over several months and got to a point where that dance was a part of me.

This isn’t easy of course.  Shackleton’s men, they endured the brutal weather, unbearable hunger and nearly insane living conditions for a year but they just kept going they endured always holding out hope that they would be rescued.

The something magical about the momentum that builds you keeps taking action. the German playwright Johanne Wolfgang Goethe said: “bold action produces genius, power, and magic.”   

And so it is you take action and keep stepping up and you will make progress and build the momentum of genius, power, and magic towards achieving your promise life.

In your planner now write down these words.  “I will step up and develop the habit of _______to achieve of my promised life.

The second I in the word vision is to immunize yourself from excuses.

You know the drill by now that the letter “I” with a colon and the word Immunize.

To immunize means to be inoculated, often by injection, to prevent infection. For our purposes here the infection is any defeatism, depression, fear of failure, bad attitude or peer pressure which we use as excuses or rationalizations that impede our progress towards our promise life.   The inoculation is the specific actions we take to crush the infection and immunize ourselves from excuses

Too often we play the if/only game and wish that things were better or that we were in different circumstances.

Circumstances happen to everybody there certain circumstances we can’t do a thing about

You get a bad diagnosis and your health

 Your spouse does want to live with you anymore.

You have an accident in your car.

  many circumstantial things do go bad. However, when things go bad we don’t have to go bad with them we do not have to descend into depression when failure comes.

We have to learn to turn our excuse making a turn our energy towards what is possible to do right now.

This is about not ignoring your problems whatever obstacles are before you-you must face them they will not go away on their own.

Now is the time to name the problems that are before you.

  Be specific now what are the obstacles one of the problems that you have to deal with to achieve your promise life. They may seem to be impossible right now to overcome but you can do it but nothing really happens it to you name the problem.

You cannot immunize yourself until you focus in on the problem. Y

You take away the power of problem when you name it and speak against it if you have cancer speak against that mass within you.  Call out your problems by name and determine to defeat them without excuses.

The writer of Good to Great Jim Collins puts it this way,  “You have to face the brutal facts of your life and still choose to move forward in faith towards your goals.”   

The author of Do The Work,  Steven Pressfield, state that the force of resistance is a powerful and insidious force which looks to crush our pathway to promise.  So we have to persevere and tough out the tough times of the pathway.

Shackleton’s men had to come to terms of the elements around them and find ways workarounds to work around their situations that included doing some really tough to overcome their circumstances.

The men had sled dogs with them which they were to use to mush sled across the across the Antarctic continent.  Over the course of the months, they were stranded the dogs became their loved pets. Sadly they ended up eating most dogs to survive. They did what they had to do to achieve their greater promise.   

Some things we need to do may be pretty tough, but what do you have to do we have to do immunize yourself from your situation at hand to achieve your promise life.

In your notebook write down these words.   I will not use the following problems or circumstances as excuses to keep me from achieving my promised life.  Then list at least thee obstacles you need to name and overcome.

The letter “O” to spell out our word vision is an opportunity.  So in your planner write the letter O with a colon and the word Opportunity.

  You are going to fall down and fail on your pathway to promise.   When you fail you can either give up and quit or you can see every failure as an opportunity to grow.

This is all about choosing to learn and not be lame.

When I lost 50 pounds in a few months there was more than a few times that I stepped on the scales after a week of dieting and working out hard that I actually gained weight.  This was very frustrating but I didn’t give up after failure.  I checked in with my workout partner and evaluated what I did wrong reevaluating my tactics and habits and kept going again.  This was my opportunity to learn.   

Failures is a part of the deal when traversing the pathway to the promised life.  What can we learn along the way is that opportunities are there to learn ourselves and take advantage of our learning to become a better person. Remember, Dorothy on yellow brick road discovered courage from the cowardly lion, kindness from the tin man and smarts from the scarecrow.  This is sometimes called opportunity costs.  What does it cost us to not take advantage of the opportunities presented to us even if they come from failure

Ok now in your planner after the O of Vision write down these words.

I have the opportunity to get better by ( blank ) which came about because I’m not bitter about  (blank) failure.   

The N of the word vision spelled out is, for Now, is the time.    

So write the letter N in your planner to complete the word VISION.

Perhaps you have heard it said don’t put off for tomorrow what you can procrastinate for the day after.  Procrastination is a killer which is defeated by doing things NOW.  It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “You may  delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.”

Maybe you heard the phrase the best time to plant a great tree was 25 years ago second-best time is now.  Your problems, your situation will always be there unless you do something about it now.

Your weight will come off,  Your relationships will get better, Your spiritual life will strengthen,  Your finances will improve only when you take action right now.   

A few years ago I was in Kitty Hawk North Carolina to visit the site where the Wright brothers flew the first powered airplane flight.

I learned that the Orville and Wilber Wright built hundreds of models and gliders for years preparing and believing that they could fly.   The day finally, came in 1903 take a first powered flight.

Wilbur fired up the engine of the Wright Flyer. Orville climbed onto the wing and actually opened the throttle and with a push from Wilbur the first airplane rattled down a rail and took flight.  The world is forever changed because the Wright Brothers took action in the now.   

Okay now, get out your planner and after the N for Now, write these words.   

The action I will take right now to achieve my promised life is……?

If you follow your VISION you will claim the great gift from God to not live in a spirit of timidity but to receive and use God’s gift of taking Bold Action.

Remember Shackleton and the men of the HMS Endurance.    It took well over a year and many many many harrowing experiences but in the end, Shakelton was able to get every one of his 28 men off the ice of Antarctica back home to England – their promised land.

I know you can reach your  God-given promised life of peace, prosperity, and purpose when you take bold action powered by your great vision.

I hope you continue to take bold action with me on the pathway to promise podcast. You can connect up with me on our website drbradmiller.com. It’s there on the website we have a gift for you it’s a guide that will help you start and end your day successfully.  It’s called the “ the four-minute way to frame your day for success”  So head over to a drbradmiller.com for that free guide and lots of other helpful links and ways we can be in touch.

Until next time this is Dr. Brad Miller reminding you that there is power in a promise kept.