I’ll never forget December 28, 2001 at 3:38pm. It was a day that changed my life.
I was invited to sit down with The World’s Greatest Goal Setter, the real life Indiana Jones, John Goddard for the first time on this day. I had read about him and his famous “goals list” in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Articles about him abound in Life Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, Reader's Digest and others and he’s been featured in over 200 television shows. I was fascinated by the idea of someone who could create 127 life goals and then set out on an amazing lifelong journey to achieve each and every one of them. I knew he was a special soul, someone that I had to meet in my lifetime. And if you know anything about his goals list, they are not meagre goals, among other fantastic journeys and experiences they consist of retracing the route of Marco Polo through all of the Middle East, Asia and China, studying numerous primitive cultures first hand, reading the entire collection of Encyclopedia Britannica and the bible from cover to cover and climbing Mt. Everest just to name a few. (See the profile below to see John’s actual “Life List”.)
I was deeply honoured when he invited me to his California home to sit down with him and his wife Carol in their living room, to just ‘chat’ about life and the art of goal setting. Both he and his wife were incredibly gracious as they welcomed me into their home. I’ve seen pictures of John on his travels who actually does resemble Indian Jones, with his adventurers hat and well worn kaki shirt and shorts which somehow look natural on him not contrived as many tourists look in them. The dust and wrinkles look well deserved and happy to have stained his clothes. But today he doesn’t look anything like the mythical figure I’ve seen, it almost surprises me how regular he looks, like any friendly neighbour opening his front door. This actually comforts me and somehow makes him more real. However I am still in awe of him as every so often, between his welcoming smiles, his eyes tease me and give away hints that he is a well travelled man who has witnessed many great almost unexplainable things, many things I may never understand as they only come from first hand experience. After agreeing to some tea from his wife, I settled down next to him and looked around his living room, which resembled a film set straight out of The Adventures of Indian Jones, with artefacts and found treasures from his many adventures neatly placed around the room, each with their own unique story. It almost seemed odd to me that there were a couple of sofa’s placed in the middle but then I am reminded that this is his home. I had previously read about many of his adventures, however now I could literally feel them in the evidence scattered all around. The air feels both electric and peaceful, as if each artefact was exhausted from its rich life and happy to retire with the Goddard family. Suddenly the $15 replica native mask I had in my own living room that I brought from a store, seemed silly and I vowed to replace it with found treasures from my own life adventures, but more importantly I vowed to have my own life adventures.
John’s number one goal was to explore the world’s largest River, the 4,220 mile Nile. He saw the Nile as the most important river on Earth, which he had read as a child as having perhaps the greatest influence on the development of civilization for over six thousand years, in the areas of astronomy, architecture, religion and agriculture. He did indeed become the first man to explore the entire length of the world's longest river, the Nile – and on a kayak yet! The Nile begins in Lake Victoria, a lake so vast it is 200 miles long and 170 miles wide, it is half the size of Switzerland! The Nile then travels through Uganda, Sudan, Egypt, and ultimately flows into the beautiful blue Mediterranean. A trip so dangerous that local experts begged him not to go and from which they never thought he would return. He encountered thunderstorms, violent rapids, was charged by man-eating crocodiles, bone crushing groups of hippos, elephants who picked up his scent and even water pirates who wanted him as a meal. Somehow he out-paddled or out maneuvered each challenge.
John has looked death right in the eye with over 42 (to date) life threatening experiences. He survived plane crashes, earthquakes, three rounds with quicksand, almost drowned twice, and had an appendicitis attack 200 miles from the nearest health care facility. He was even bitten by a diamondback rattlesnake and lived!
You may think that John has a death wish, but when I met him I realized the opposite it true. He draws his strength from family, close friends and personal spiritual beliefs. Most of all he has a deep appreciation and dominant love of life itself. His parents believed the reason he overcame so many challenges was because he simply had an unfulfilled destiny to follow and would overcome every obstacle until his “mission” was fulfilled.
When John was diagnosed with Cancer in 1983 he felt this was perhaps the biggest blow for him. He was given a one-in-ten chance of living more than five years. He was hit hard emotionally, became depressed and immediately wanted to retreat “to his cave”. But soon those close to him reminded him how many pessimists he himself had met over the years that had told him “You’ll never be able do it. It’s quite impossible you know!” And if he had listened to them before, he would never have achieved so many of his life goals and had some of the greatest experiences of his life. He remembered when he was crossing the Nile, he contracted malaria, four other infections and tape worm, all seriously crippling his ability to go forward, making him tired, ill, weak and lacking food. At those times he wanted nothing more than to retreat into his sleeping bag, but always resisted that dangerous temptation and got back on the river, struggling at first but getting stronger as each hour passed, eventually paddling twenty or more miles between daybreak and nightfall. He vowed that he would survive Cancer with the same determination. He refused to let disease dominate his life, he got up when he felt ill and continued to live his life, he didn’t listen to any pessimists, he researched and read as many books as he could on how other people had survived this illness, he rejected his own negative thoughts and immediately replaced them with positive expectations. He surrounded himself with people he cared about and simply made this a new life goal and resolved to never give up (no matter what) on reaching it. If you have to ask if John overcame Cancer, you don’t know John.
Here’s some of what I learned from John that day:
1. From that day forward I said good-bye to the pessimists in my life who were slowly dragging me down and realized how important choosing the right life partner, close friends and mentors are. What goals or experiences are you missing out on because you have too many nay-sayers around you and not enough strong friends and mentors?
2. It’s never too late to make your own life list, to start fresh if need be and reinvent yourself from scratch.
3. Our mind and our body are stronger than we sometimes give them credit for. To remind myself to keep going even when I am afraid or “don’t feel like it” and soon I feel energized or overcome my fears.
4. Life is a precious gift and not opening it is beyond unforgivable. John simply chooses to ‘go for it’. I learned how incredibly powerful and life changing those decisions can be.
5. Stop making excuses for why things can’t be done. For one, I don’t want a membership into the pessimist club but secondly John was not a rich man, nor did he have super human strength. He didn’t have access to books or knowledge that we don’t. He wasn’t a lone explorer with nothing to risk but himself, he has a loving wife and five children. He simply made a decision and took action. He prepared for things as best he could before hand then he trusted himself to figure out the rest. There’s a saying that a client of mine sent me after we succeeded at a marketing campaign despite nay-sayers. It said “Those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those who are doing it.”
6. Each adventure, each rewarding experience, each step you take in exploring where your life can go makes you stronger, makes you more confident, and shows you its possible. You need to ‘do’ first in order to ‘know’ second, its never the other way around. Waiting until you’re ‘sure’ or you know it’s the right thing is futile. Now I don’t wait for my doubts to come up or my fears to subside or for me to ‘know’ the answer. I plan my life, I make the best possible choices I can and I surprise myself each step of the way with every success I have. I’m even surprised at how much each ‘mistake’ gave me a valuable life nugget who’s knowledge saved me even more from a potential future disaster or experience.
7. I learned how important it is to value your own life journey and to recognize that each of us is on one, whether we are aware of it or not. I follow John’s advice to have more patience with myself and other people. To resolve conflict and to mend conflicts. I also resolve to align myself with good people and have the courage to sever ties with any one who is constantly negative, doesn’t see the gift of life or who makes me feel demeaned in their presence. I will make a point of aligning myself with ‘teachers’, people who see the world differently than myself or who have knowledge that I don’t, who can open me up to another area of life that I never knew existed and who can guide me through it and yet let me lead my own way. These people show up in everyone’s life, the trick is – do you always notice them?
Through the graciousness of John and his wife Carol inviting me into their home without having met me before hand, I learned that my goals and the things I want to happen in my life may not really be as far away or as insurmountable as I sometimes make them out to be. Sometimes all you need is the courage to take that chance, make that phone call or take a tiny step and you’re there before you know it.
It is time for you to have your own private ”wish list”, which will turn into a “to do list”, then finally into a ”list of accomplishments”! Begin today!
Resources:
“The Survivor” written by John Goddard, published by Health Communications, Inc.
Sitting down with John Goddard himself.
