Jason,

Many many years ago I was attending an early Robbins hot coals seminar in San Diego. It was intended to be a recruitment effort. I recall (and this was in the 1980s) that my stomach crawled at the hand clapping, wholesale sucking of the Koolaid that I was watching. One of the handlers was pushing me hard to walk the coals, to which I responded that my hot coals walk was to walk away. No truer words. I’ve never been able to go guru on any of these guys. These days I am doing the kinds of extreme sports that people who were proud of their hot walk would be terrified to do. If you and I wanna push ourselves, then set a goddamend BHAG and get after it. It’s simply remarkable what I’m able to accomplish (climb huge mountains, kayak icy oceans, ride horses all over the world) simply by deciding to damn well go do it, train for it, and find ways to pay for it. That doesn’t make me a self help guru. What it does is make me one happy broad, not beholden to a system or a book or a person. I lost 80 lbs thirty years ago this year, quit a five pack a day habit at the ripe old age of 19, and have overcome badass injuries. No self help book in the world works as well as focused determination. People love to say you’re lucky. Yeah? You put on a 25 lb pack and then run 80,000 steps like I did this year to train for Mt. Kenya. That’s not luck, Jason. That’s bloody hard work. There are very few women my vintage who do what I do. But nobody handed it to me, gave me a trust fund, or waved a wand over my body and made me strong. Forty five years in the gym made me strong. Discipline and sacrifice made me strong. And one hell of a sense of humor gets me through absolutely everything. There’s a lot of room at the top of the mountain for folks who stop reading self-help books and get out and train their butts off. Thanks for your response. BTW I won’t be far from you in January- I’ll be sailing the spice islands of INdonesia for two weeks and researching potential ex-pat opportunities over there. Luck? Hell no. Hard work.