National Customer Service Week: The HEART Model, Principle #5

Imag­ine doing this: swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles, and then cap it off with a full marathon (26.2 miles). Bru­tal? Absolutely. But that’s not all. You need to cover the entire dis­tance within 17 hours out in the heat or cold, one with the ele­ments, to earn the title “ironman.”

Such is the full-distance (pop­u­larly called iron­man dis­tance) triathlon, arguably the most dif­fi­cult test of endurance that only a tiny per­cent­age of the human pop­u­la­tion will ever com­plete in their lifetime.

It may seem impos­si­ble to many of us just by read­ing about it, but hun­dreds of peo­ple become iron­men every year. These are not just your stereo­type of ath­let­i­cally inclined indi­vid­u­als or sporty fel­lows. They include your reg­u­lar Joes with bel­lies, bad habits and big dreams, who hold day jobs and have fam­ily responsibilities.

How do they do it?

British pro­fes­sional triath­lete Chrissie Welling­ton knows how. In her five-year pro­fes­sional career she has com­peted in 13 full iron­man races, and won every sin­gle one of them. What she said about her con­tin­ued success:

“Any­thing is pos­si­ble… and your lim­its might not be where you think that they are. I’m con­tin­u­ally sur­pris­ing myself by what I can achieve.”
–Welling­ton, Jan­u­ary 2011

In our every­day expe­ri­ences at home or in the work­place, we deal with cer­tain impos­si­bles: a teenage son who won’t lis­ten, a boss who is dif­fi­cult to please, a dead­line that’s unrea­son­able to meet and a com­peti­tor that is chal­leng­ing to beat.

But who set those lim­its in the first place? Can any­thing be done to sur­pass those lim­its? Most def­i­nitely, and it is about tran­scend­ing our­selves and break­ing what we per­ceive are our lim­its. Lim­its exist only in our minds and as Chrissie Welling­ton cor­rectly points out, they may not be where we think they are.

If we can only take one more step, work one minute longer, com­plain two times less, make one more phone call or ask one more ques­tion, we can pos­si­bly go fur­ther and per­form bet­ter that we ever imag­ined pos­si­ble. It is only by push­ing our­selves to our absolute limit, then tak­ing one step fur­ther, that we can real­ize what we are capa­ble of.

At Impact, we say that each of us has the oppor­tu­nity to tran­scend our­selves and our pre­vi­ous accom­plish­ments each and every day. Self-transcendence can take place at work, at home, in our sports and hob­bies, and even in our atti­tudes. Set goals, and when you achieve them, set some new ones. Chal­lenge your own lim­i­ta­tions, and make a game of out-doing your pre­vi­ous accomplishments.