Heroes, Heroic Goals and a No Heroes Mentality

Heroes

A hero is defined as someone who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, bravery or strength, often sacrificing their own personal concerns for a greater good.

If anyone knows the story of Matthew Axelson, shown above with Operation Red Wing Team which now lives as famous story by Lone Survivor; Marcus Luttrell. His heroic actions up to and during his last breath were remarkable. Matt was a true hero. To hear more about his heroic story, click here.

No Heroes

When competing in the Spartan Beast Race with my brother in law, he coined a term as we approached the first obstacle. He said to me, “Ryan, there are no heroes with this obstacle. Just get over the 8 foot wall”. We ended up adopting the “no heroes” statement many other times during our Competition.

Since then, I have reflected on that statement. No hero’s.

Just getting it done.

Nothing Heroic.

Just simple grit and will.

Heroic Goals

In our lives I truly feel that we all have an opportunity to be heroic at our professions and within our relationships each day. In fact, our lives should be heroic. We should be legendary. We should be able to become next level individuals in all areas of our lives.

No matter how heroic, legendary or “next level” your life becomes I write to give you permission to have days where there are no hero’s. Where just putting in the day is ok. Grinding it out is the best thing you can do. Many may disagree with me on this and that is ok, but we are all human.

My encouragement for you today is this.

1. Give Yourself Permission to Have a “No Heros” day from time to time: We will all have great days and not so great days. We will all be on our game some days while dragging our feet on others in all areas of our lives. That is ok. You are human.
2. Give Yourself Permission to Have a “No hero’s” chapter of your life: Wait, what? I was recently home for the Holidays with family and friends and professionally, physically and mentally I decided to have a 3 week period of “No Hero’s”. This consisted of me sleeping in an hour longer, eating after 7pm, spending time with family more than running miles on the treadmill. I gave myself permission to only work out an hour a day and to fill that chapter with quality conversation while getting back to my roots. Have a chapter like this at least once a year. Rotate the crops. Get back to basics.
3. Decide What Will Be Heroic: I remember a few years back hearing a lady on the Oprah Show talk about how she finally achieved her fitness and wellness goal of losing weight and going to the gym. She said she set a goal of simply walking in the door first. So what did she do? She got her gym bag together, drove her car to the gym, got changed, walked into the gym then turned around and walked back out. She accomplished her goal and for her that was heroic. She went on to lose weight while living a healthy, active lifestyle. Incredible.
4. Don’t Let Others Dictate What Is Heroic: This is somewhat common sense for many of you, but for you people pleasers, stop pleasing. If a heroic goal for you is to run 10km, don’t let others drag you down to the couch. Or conversely, don’t let the ‘fitagramers’ make you feel that you are not good enough or that your goals are not big enough. Only you can decide for yourself what it is heroic. My heroic goal of doing a Spartan Trifecta (three Spartan Races) does not make someone else’s goal of running just one Spartan Race any less heroic.

We may not all have a heroic story like Axelson and the Operation Red Wing Team but we all have the opportunity to live heroic lives with the decisions we make each day.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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