Lesson #9: Reach Out

Note: To see all the messages, click on the category: Making Big Things Happen

No matter what you’re trying to do, you will do it better, faster and more effectively if you reach out to others.  It’s hard to make big things happen alone.  I have tried.  It’s really hard.  The problem with reaching out—and you probably know this from experience—is that you never know what people will say or do.  Let’s say you ask your mom for money for summer camp and, instead of saying: “Of course, Honey.  Go get my checkbook,” she says, “Summer camp?  I just wrote a check for your new tennis shoes.  Do you think I’m made of money?”

Sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want.  Reach out, anyway.  Do it over and over again and it will work eventually.  If there’s no interest or energy, try a new direction.  I contacted bike shops and bicycle organizations and bicyclists and told them about the Tillie Ride.  They were curious, but they weren’t that interested.  So I didn’t take it personally and kept on going.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s hard.

But you have to keep talking to people.  You have to keep telling your story.  When someone asks what you’re interested in, you might say: “I really want to be a vet and I think it would help if I had a summer job that involved animals.  Do you have any idea, Aunt Shari?  Mrs. Newsome?  Coach Elliott?”

I pretty much gave up on the bike people and concentrated on the Swedish people.  They were a lot more excited.  Then—out of the blue—I got a call from Tom Tilma, who was organizing the 2011 Bike Summit in Grand Rapids.  He invited us to have a table at the summit so that more people could learn about the ride and he paid for our registration.  He also introduced me to David Bosch, who helped me get my bike ready for the trip—he got me a mirror and side bags and a water bottle holder. That’s really going to help on the ride.

So so many people have encouraged me and helped me.  I try not to think too much about the setbacks and the disappointments.  You have to conserve your energy to get to the end of something big and there’s no use, really, thinking about these things.

I am so grateful for the way both of these men got excited about what I was doing and helped me.  I don’t have any pictures of Tom, but here are some pictures of the bike summit and of David with my groovy bike.

With Iver-Johnson bike circa 1901

Me trying to imitate Tillie riding at 'Top Speed.' That's David holding the wheel

David Bosch--Bicyclist Extraordinaire

Oh, my favorite!  Passion.  I love to feel passionate about things–it makes me feel alive.  I love thinking about Tillie seeing a bike for the first time or Althea Gibson swinging a tennis racket for the first time.  Magic!  Connection.  Your job in life is to contribute and to do that, you should feel passionate about what you do.  If you had to guess, what do you think is my overriding passion right now?

No, it’s not writing books (this was a trick question).

I feel passionate about you.  I feel passionate about helping you find the tools necessary to discover your own passion and pursue it.  When I am going uphill in a headwind I will be thinking about your faces, your questions, your health and well-being.  We all need to feel like we are making a difference.  Whether you are painting a picture for a sick friend or crocheting hats for newborn babies or helping your team win a game or cleaning up trash in the park so little kids don’t get hurt.  Your passion might be to create something, to help people, to invent a cure for cancer.  It doesn’t matter.

Passion is what grabs you.  Pursuing it is what keeps you cycling uphill in a headwind (or in Tillie’s case–working overtime to afford a bike–or in Althea’s case, surviving the grueling pain of hours and hours of practice).  If you say you want to join the track team, but you don’t really feel passionate about it, you may not have the strength to follow through.  So your job is to figure out what makes you so happy, so excited, so right that you are willing to do the hard work to pursue it.

My passion is reaching out to you!

Note: If you’d like to see all the lessons, click on the tab: Making Big Things Happen

I hope by the time I reach your school, you feel like you know me.  Maybe you feel like you know me a little bit already.  Okay, here’s a quiz… am I the type of person who takes things slow and easy?  Or, am I the type of person—like Tillie—who likes things fast and racy, speedy and scorchy?  If you said the second thing, you know me already!  I’m a nut when I get excited about something.  I want to do it right away—all the time, every day.  The problem with that is you can get burned out before the finish line.  You can’t run a marathon like a sprint.

We spent all day yesterday at the 2011 GR Bike Summit and I talked a lot. Jack, our new friend in Grand Haven, who owns Loose Spokes Bike Shop, loaned us a Tillie-era bicycle, and we had a ton of fun pretending I was Tillie and posing with the bike and telling people about the ride.  But I coughed a lot because I still have a cold.  I hate colds, don’t you?  They really get in the way of things.  Anyway, I was planning to take a long ride today, but I decided—because I’m so wise in my old age—to stay home and rest.

It was a good idea.  I’m feeling so much better.  Whenever you are trying to accomplish something big, you have to realize there are many parts and your goal may take longer than you originally thought.  If you don’t pace yourself, you can burn out.  So take care and be nice to yourself.  I took these pictures in my yard of all the beautiful native plants that are blooming.  I hope you enjoy them!

Spring Beauty

Fiddlehead Fern

Trillium Grandiflorum

Red Trillium

Bloodroot

prairie trillium