213 – The Great Race…Of Life - a podcast by Alf Herigstad

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The Great Race…Of Life
There are about 7.4 billion people on the earth.  Roughly half of them are not female, so that means there are around 3.7 billion male humans inhabiting the planet.  Notice, I did not say there were 3.7 billion men—because of those 3.7 billion male humans many of them are children.  Many of them who are not still technically children are boys who simply grew up, without ever becoming a man, at least by my estimation.  So, the number of actual bonafide men on the earth is hard to figure, in fact it would be impossible.The thing about all of these men though, is that they are all a bit different.  We all have different abilities and talents and experience.  We all have our own set of problems and challenges as well.
What might be real easy for one man, may be extraordinarily difficult for another.  What works for one man, may simply not work for another man.  We are all very individual in that way.  It’s one of the things I find fascinating about our species.  The same thing doesn’t really apply to cows for example.  What works for one cow is likely to work for all the rest of them.  There is much less diversity of being, in other species.The reason I’m talking about this is because I was reminded by a listener that not everyone is like me.  As host of this show I talk about things from a perspective born of my individual experience.  I have a certain way of doing things, a certain way of thinking, like everyone else does. 
I realized that sometimes I might make it seem too simple.  I tell you things like “focus on the things you want to change and make them a priority”.  That works great for me and other guys, but there might be guys who can’t even get to the ‘focus’ part, because their life is so upside down for whatever reason they are unable to focus on anything except surviving.I speak about making a decision to be a better man.  I talk about looking in the mirror and identifying your shortcomings so that you can correct them. Sometimes I tell you to go through your days looking for opportunities to be better than you were yesterday.  Often, I tell you that your relationships are the most valuable things you have…but heck, there may be some guys that don’t have any relationships to speak of at all.
It’s one thing to say all this stuff, but it’s another thing entirely to put it into action.  There are guys suffering from depression and PTSD, or poverty, some kind of disease, or relationship issues.  Maybe you are addicted to drugs or pornography or sugar.  Maybe your house got burnt down or a close family member got hit by a train, or whatever. There are a million different things that can and do make life harder for some people than it is for others.  These things are not excuses, I’m not talking about excuses here, I’m talking about the facts that exist in individual lives.
Here’s the deal, here is what I want to acknowledge.  Every single man out there has a different starting point, that’s just how it is.  In the great race of life some of us get to start on the starting line while other guys have to start a few yards behind us, and some other guys start the race way back there.  Then there are those other few guys that get to start several yards in front of everyone else.  Yet, we are all in the same exact race when you look at the big picture, and our starting point isn’t something we can choose.  We can choose how we run the race though.That is one reason I tell guys to never compare yourself to other men, because it isn’t accurate.  Don’t compare yourself to me either because you aren’t me.  The only person you can compare yourself to and be 100% accurate, is yourself…the man you were yesterday.
I never want anyone to feel discouraged because I make this sound too simple or too easy.  What I want you to know is that wherever you are starting from, the basic principles still apply.  Regardless of...

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