Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

[Louchie]

RESPONDING TO ADVERSITY

A daughter complained to her father about her life and how

things were so hard for her. She did not how she was going to

make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and

struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three

pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots

came to a boil. In one he placed carrots, in the second he

placed eggs, and the last he placed ground coffee beans. He let

them sit and boil, without saying a word.

The daughter sucked her teeth and impatiently waited, wondering

what he was doing. In about twenty minutes he and turned off the

burners. He fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. He

pulled the eggs out and placed them a bowl. Then he ladled the

coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her he asked. "Darling, what do you see?"

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

He brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She

did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an

egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the

hard-boiled egg.

Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. She smiled as she

tasted its rich aroma.

She humbly asked. "What does it mean Father?"

He explained that each of them had faced the same adversity,

boiling water, but each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. But after

being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became

weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had

protected its liquid interior. But after sitting through the

boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique however. After they were in

the boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you," he asked his daughter. "When adversity knocks

on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a

coffee bean? "

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

How about you?

Are you the carrot that seems hard, but with pain and adversity

do you wilt and become soft and lose your strength?

Are you the egg, which starts off with a malleable heart? Were

you a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a divorce, or

a layoff have you become hardened and stiff. Your shell looks the

same, but are you bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and

heart?

Or are you like the coffee bean? The bean changes the hot water,

the thing that is bringing the pain, to its peak flavor reaches

212 degrees Fahrenheit. When the water gets the hottest, it just

tastes better.

If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you

get better and make things better around you .

[TK-421]

That was really something ^^

[cooh23]

^^ Good post. My boss read this at one of our meetings.

[Chest Rockwell]

Check this out, I got a little teary-eyed on some of them.

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=126915643

[TK-421]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

Check this out, I got a little teary-eyed on some of them.

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=126915643

Good shit and I'm only on the first page

[py335]

i loved that quote about bruce lee on that site. bruce lee is the fucking man

[TK-421]

Holy shit. Before reading that thread, I made myself a bomb ass chicken lunch. After 21 pages i'm ready to climb a fucking mountain and my food is cold. Subbed.

Originally Posted by Reecebrah

I shed a few tears.

And what.

Originally Posted by goal055

Originally Posted by norinicole

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay For their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back Mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes Taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick Was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him Brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him And his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an Institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes Followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was Anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a Lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed Him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his Head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the School organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want To do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran More than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he Tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore For two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly Shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a Single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few Years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then They found a way to get into the race Officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the Qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he Was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick Tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud Getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you Think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with A cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best Time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world Record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to Be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a Mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries Was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' One doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

And the video is below....

[Chest Rockwell]

Yep, I powered through all 21 pages last night. Got up this morning, threw on a 40lb ruck sack and went for a run. Gonna do the same thing tomorrow. I want to go get one of those quotes tattooed on my forearm so I don't lose my motivation ever again.

[TK-421]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

Yep, I powered through all 21 pages last night. Got up this morning, threw on a 40lb ruck sack and went for a run. Gonna do the same thing tomorrow. I want to go get one of those quotes tattooed on my forearm so I don't lose my motivation ever again.

Same, I'm looking to get some motivational ink but knowing it'll be there forever makes it pretty damn difficult picking what to get

[MrRoboto]

Will Smith is an arrogant pain in the ass.

Draw inspiration from the common man...start with your father.

[TK-421]

Actually it looks like I'll be getting this on my side on the right:

[radix]

I don't think you can get much more motivated than this:

[Javi335]

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'Okay, this is the limit.' As soon as you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well ... you can fly very high

Ayrton Senna

[Year's_End]

Originally Posted by TK-421

[u2b]xUQeUsqQuVc&feature=player_embedded[/u2b]
[u2b]ciYk-UwqFKA&feature=player_embedded[/u2b]

I just balled my eyes out.

[Artz 330]

^^^ me too

[san~man]

Nick V is the man.

[san~man]

I'm at work and had to stop that Dick Hoyt video about halfway


The Greatest: