Hero (25 page)

MICHAEL ACTON SMITH

You have to really commit. You can’t do it halfheartedly. When you really commit, every sinew in your body, your subconscious mind, and your conscious mind, whether you’re awake or dreaming, is working toward whatever you are trying to achieve. And that makes all the difference.

LAIRD HAMILTON

When you commit, situations arrive for you. I’d like to go, “I’m so smart, I thought of this,” but no one’s that smart. Those things were provided because you committed to the belief that it was possible.

LAYNE BEACHLEY

All of a sudden you’re presented with guides, and the Universe provides. It’s just like the great saying, when the student is ready the teacher will appear.

MASTIN KIPP

If you make a full commitment to your dream, doors will open. I actually think that doors have always been there, but when you fully commit you see them.

G. M. RAO

Doors opened when my commitment became a surety. I can quote the instance when we bid for the Delhi Airport. We set out to build the world’s best airport. This was our dream. The project attracted the world’s best and the biggest airport developers, and the bidding process was highly complex and exhaustive. We prepared ourselves with some of the most competent partners, very knowledgeable experts, and a very motivated bidding team. We visited modern airports across the world and learned from them. We overcame every obstacle in the way and emerged as the only technically qualified bidder. But our journey did not end there. The bidding process had to overcome legal challenges, which went up to the highest court of the country. The resulting delays made the stiff timelines even worse. It was to be the fifth-largest airport in the world and an extremely complicated environment with fifty-eight departments to coordinate with. Once we started the project, things fell in place, nearly $2.5 billion was raised in financing, and more than 40,000 workmen and engineers from over twenty-seven countries came together to finish the project in a world record time of thirty-seven months. The Universe blessed our commitment and dream to build the best airport in the world and smoothed the path to achieve our goal. Today we are the fourth best among 199 airports.

When we see someone follow their dream, we can get the mistaken idea that they must have had privileges to be able to do it. In fact, it happens the other way around; it’s when you decide to take the leap into the Hero’s Journey that the privileges come. When you commit to your dream, it’s as though any person who can help you with your dream is summoned by the Universe to be right there for you with everything you need at the exact time you need it.

Commitment and the Universe

My daughter’s boyfriend had a secure and safe job, and he knew if he worked really hard in his job over fifteen years, he would gradually climb the corporate ladder within the organization. But this job was far from his bliss. He did work really hard, but only so that he could do what he loves to do more than anything else in the world, which is surfing. So this young adult made a big decision. He decided he was going to follow his bliss.

Over several months he laid down plans to leave the corporate world and begin his dream of shaping surfboards. True to his word, he resigned on the exact day he had committed himself to. With nothing but a dream, and his commitment to it, here’s what the Universe lined up for him.

A successful local shaper let him come and watch him shape surfboards. He was given free shaping lessons from another shaper, who showed him how to make some shaping tools to save even more money. A graphic designer helped him with his logo for his new business free of charge. A surf supply store gave him wholesale prices on items he needed. He was given equipment, lights, and shelving from his dad to set up his shaping studio; and he was offered free rent on a space to set up his studio, which has the most breathtaking views of the ocean and California coast that anyone could dream of having. And wherever he goes, people are asking him to shape a surfboard for them.

All of this happened in just
two
weeks. That’s the summoning power of the Universe when you make a commitment to your dream, and the “privileges” that will rain down upon you when you follow your bliss.

MASTIN KIPP

If you have a dream, do not make a plan B. Will Smith said that if you have a plan B you’re going to end up at plan B. You need to be all in on plan A. All your love, all your faith, all your energy, all your determination.

LAIRD HAMILTON

You have a backup plan; you know that no matter what, if only my pinky works, I can still pull something off. But it’s not one you’re going to use. And if you start to focus on it, then it will become your plan.

You can give yourself a reassuring safety net in your mind by knowing that no matter what happens you’ll be all right, but if you seriously create a plan B you risk that being the plan that your subconscious mind materializes. Give all of your attention and focus to plan A, and that will be what materializes!

Determination

LAIRD HAMILTON

You have to be undeterred and relentless in your pursuit of your dream.

G. M. RAO

Once I made a commitment the determination to make it succeed was born.