At the age of 15, John Goddard sat down on rainy day and wrote 127 goals that he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime. He had overhead his father talking with one of his friends about regrets that they had, and he decided that he didn’t want to grow up with regrets like that. His motto was, “To dare is to do-to fear is to fail.” He went on to become one of the world’s most famous anthropologists, explorers, and adventurers in his pursuit of reaching his goals.
He completed 120 of the original 127 goals, along with many more that he made along the way. These were not just easy, average goals. These were audacious, crazy goals. He visited almost every country, circumnavigated the globe four times, climbed twelve of the tallest mountains, photographed many of the highest waterfalls, studied primitive cultures in a dozen countries and navigated the entire length of the Nile and the Congo. He also milked a poisonous snake, ran a five minute mile, wrote a book, taught a college course, learned to fly a plane, and learned multiple languages. He survived forty-two life-threatening experiences.
In a Dateline NBC interview in the 1990’s he said, “There’s something about the human spirit that when you accept challenge and work on it and have deadlines and capture your potential; it’s astounding what you can do.”
Goddard emphasized the importance of writing down goals and making a plan to achieve them. He told the L.A. Times in 2004, “Most people say, ‘Someday,’ and that doesn’t mean anything.”
Do you have your goals written down? You are not too young to start! Learning about John Goddard makes me want to be even more intentional with my plans and not waste my minutes because my minutes are my life.
If you want to read about some of his amazing adventures, he wrote two books that I’ve linked below. Disclaimer: I have not read either of them.
The Survivor: 21 Spine-Chilling Adventures on the Edge of Death
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