A few months ago I promised a series of posts about my time on the Appalachian Trail along with some life lessons.  I totally missed my intended start date for that series – March 14 – the day I started the trail.  But better late than never, the beginning of the “Lessons From the Trail” series.

The start of the trail – Springer Mountain, Georgia. This is the last time I would be this clean for five months!

I am pretty well known for the variety and volume of wild ideas that I get.  If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you’ve heard the phrase “on a whim” more than once.  My time on the Appalachian Trail started on a whim and took dedication and a bit of self-trickery to complete.

I was in my last semester of college when I spotted the Bill Bryson book “A Walk In The Woods.”  I had spent years reading textbooks, novels and great works of literature for school assignments.  Bryson’s book was the first book I had read for pleasure in years.  I know many die-hard trail enthusiasts hate “A Walk In The Woods” but Bryson’s adventure captured my imagination.

My poor parents.  One day I blind-sided my parents with my idea to fly to Atlanta and spend months following the 2,000+ mile trail through 14 states.  Did I mention that I would start all by myself?  I still don’t know why my parents said I could go, but I am glad they did.

Back in 1999, when I was preparing for my hike, the world was a different place.  The internet was a relatively new concept.  Most of my information about the Appalachian Trail came from books at the library.  I began formulating a list of things I would need to buy and I began to prepare myself.  As I was winding down my college career, research about the trail became all consuming.

I prepared my body by continuing the running that I had started when I was 18.  I had run several marathons and was an avid daily runner.  But as I found out later, nothing prepares your body for the trail.  Many hikers actually just pack on a few pounds knowing that it will be challenging to sustain a healthy body weight while burning off thousands of calories a day on the AT.

By the time March 2000 came around I thought I was pretty well prepared for my adventure.  I had all the gear I would need on the trail.  Meals had been prepped and stored to be mailed to various locations along the trail.  However, all the gear I bought and preparations I made would go by the wayside while on the trail as I learned what I really needed.  Of the gear I started with, the only things that I finished with were my sleeping bag and my two pair of clothes.  Everything else changed based on lessons learned from experience.

Getting started can be a major challenge for anyone.  There is fear of the unknown, risk of failure and even just the overwhelming feeling of ‘where do I start?’  Here are a few of my thoughts about getting started:

• Capturing youthful excitement.  Kids, teens and college students tend to have an enthusiasm and excitement about starting things that adults lose somewhere along the way.  Our 5 year-old starts any number of projects, ideas and crafts everyday.  Somewhere along the way it seems that adults lose that creativity and energy.  Perhaps our energy gets sucked out of us by jobs that we find no joy in, children who require our last drop of energy and patience, or the harsh reality that there are consequences for failure.  It is my belief that creativity, enthusiasm and energy can be a part of adult life, it just requires a bit of effort and cultivation.  I’m not the most creative or energetic person in the world, but I nurture my ‘excitement’ by working in a job I love, surrounding myself with creative/passionate people, and always learning and observing.  I am blessed to have young children at home, a clever wife and a job where I work with some intelligent and gifted young people.
• Failure is fun.  Ok, that isn’t a completely accurate statement…stick with me.  If we think that failure is final and depressing then we have missed an opportunity to learn and grow.  Every year roughly 3,000 people start the AT with the intention of doing the entire 2,000+ miles.  Approximately 300 people each year accomplish their goal and step foot on both Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Kathahdin in Maine.  I think that anyone who spends even one night on the AT learns a lot.  A good percentage of people have to drop off the trail because of injury, illness or life issues back at home.  Another large group simply realize that life on the trail wasn’t what they had envisioned.  Our lives may not turn out the way we expect them to, but failure isn’t final.  We can’t let fear of failure, and the consequences of failure, keep us from the blessings that lie in an unknown future.  Embrace failure when it happens, pick yourself up and know that you are a smarter, better person because of failure.  We must change our perceptions about failure and what we teach our children about failure.
• You don’t need all the answers to start. I recently read an interview in INC that featured Mike Williams, CEO of the David Allen Company.  (David Allen is the productivity guru who came up with the ‘Getting Things Done’ philosophy.)  Mike Williams started off the phone interview by asking the writer, “What would make this call wildly successful for you?”  Who starts a conversation like that?  Apparently really successful people do.  Mr. Williams went beyond vision-casting by setting a standard and goal for their conversation.  When I started the trail I was clueless but had a concept of a successful outcome.  When I got married I was absolutely clueless and somehow convinced a good woman way out of my league to team up with me for the rest of our lives.  I had a vision for our lives and she bought into it.  When we started a family I was clueless about children (and still am in many ways) but I had an idea of a wildly successful outcome for our family and make decisions based on that vision.  Want to get somewhere in life? Picture a wildly successful outcome and use that vision as a framework for decision making and planning.

That’s enough trail talk for one day.  I hope this has been a positive and encouraging read for you.  Maybe you have some thoughts or ideas to share.  Take a moment and write them in the comments section below.  If you enjoyed this post, would you do me a huge favor and use the share buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.

One final note, I am super excited to have the opportunity to meet Jon Acuff this weekend.  He is in town for a conference and sent an open invitation for 60 of his readers to come join him from 5am – 6:30am for a conversation about blogging, twitter and getting things done.  I’m looking forward to his new book “Start” that is coming out in April.