The 12 Month Project — Post No.1
The power of the mind is ridiculous!!
Understanding it will never be easy, but there are case studies throughout history that show the power of one mind changing a life forever, or a million lives forever, or even the entire world forever. Periods of total thought clarity and ultra laser focus are hard to come by for most, as it requires the necessary emotion, cause, and devotion to that cause. But, when that moment does arrive and you feel the synapses in your brain move through the gears, you will know that ANYTHING in life is possible.
Last year, a freak football injury (or ‘soccer’ injury for all my good friends over the pond) resulted in me having 3 blood clots in my brain. 3 strokes, at the age of just 21. I should have died. I took an elbow to the neck which severed my vertebral artery, seriously affecting the flow of blood to my brain. (By the way, before anybody makes any assumptions, it was entirely my fault. A rash, adrenaline fueled challenge that, in hindsight, was totally unnecessary.) You may remember Australian cricketer, Philip Hughes, who unfortunately died of exactly the same injury — just 4 months prior to my incident occurring. Apparently, it was a freak accident that has only been recorded 100 times before me and the late Philip Hughes. Petrifying for me and all my family, as I’m sure you can imagine. The only thing that I clearly remember was the doctor explaining to me and my parents what the situation was, and me laughing whilst my parents sat in disgust. The only words I said were “If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.” A phrase that explains my personality very well.
The injuries were confusing for me. My eye sight was almost completely gone, like somebody was shining a bright torch in to my eyes at all times — which doctors explained may never be fixed and that there is not much they can do. My short term memory and attention span, ruined — which again, doctors explained may never be corrected, but we can at least train & practice these functions of my brain. My balance and coordination, non-existent — this we can definitely work on, and hopefully we could have a 12–18 month expectation to get up, around & totally mobile. “Everybody recovers at a different pace, young man. All we can do is our best, and then wait to see how serious the brain damage is”.
So there I am, lying in the hospital, crippled. I felt like a vegetable. One week ago I was one of the busiest people I’ve ever known. Director of my own business working over 70 hours a week, a semi-professional footballer playing 3–4 times per week, and with a VERY active group of friends that have no chill when it comes to staying in on a weekend — it just ISN’T allowed. Lounging around or lying in bed, other than for my 6 hours sleep per night, was never on the agenda. Now, I couldn’t sit up out of bed without somebody holding me up and I couldn’t pee without somebody watching. There was no clear answers given by the doctors as to when I would be back to my uber active lifestyle — they simply had no idea.
The days were long and slow. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t watch TV, I couldn’t communicate properly, I couldn’t move around, I couldn’t do anything except lie and think. And all that thinking actually got me thinking. I thought hard about my life and where I was going to go with this. God only knew if I was going to be blind and bed-bound for the rest of my life.
Although everything seemed to be going swimmingly wrong for me whilst I should have been at one of the peak stages in my life, I felt a fire and motivation inside. I had two options, 1) live morbidly inside my own head, depressing myself and everybody else around me more and more every day, or 2) get the fuck up (mentally) and push myself to the absolute limit to get through this difficult time in my families lives. I requested audio books from my family — self help, success & philosophy only. I listened over and over until the information finally sank in. I paused, rewound, paused, rewound, and so on. I felt the fire growing inside, and the more I thought about my future, the more excited I became. This was a huge opportunity for me to obliterate the expectations of everybody around me — and become the most successful ex-vegetable the world has ever seen. This was more than just a work thing. I realised that I really hadn’t been living life properly — barely enjoying my existence. I needed to change everything.
Fast forward 9 months — my life has totally evolved. I have pushed myself harder than I ever thought I could, and have achieved an almost full recovery in an almost impossible timescale. Months of blood, sweat and tears now mean that I’m now back in work. My vision is almost perfect. My mind is in the best place it has ever been. My health is in great shape. The attention span & memory are a lot better, not perfect, but much better. And I even completed a 10 kilometer run!! (If I’m being honest it was actually more of a walk but I still completed it, nonetheless). How did I do all of this? Total focus and zero distraction. I zoned in SO much because I had nothing else to consider other than recovery. I dropped everything else in my life, and went 100mph at my only goal — which was normality again. Positivity was my greatest concern. Just before Xmas, I was thinking to myself, “wow, in less than 9 months I’ve done what most couldn’t do in 3 years.” I wondered about the future and what further challenges lay ahead of me.
Further details will follow in due course, but all I wan’t to know now is this; if a very sick man can change his life so much in less than 9 months — how much success could a healthy man have in 12? And so, the 12 month project begins. 12 months of HUGE, unrealistic & totally unreasonable goals, with 100% devotion to them. I want to prove to everybody that I (as well as anybody else with the true desire) can take life from just average to the Super-Life. I am going to blog every single Sunday, + any on day when I have a big success or a big failure. In 12 months, I’ll have a collection of blogs detailing, step by step, a cataclysmic success story.
Next week, I’ll show you my totally unreasonable goals.
See you then.
(Post no.2 is now up and you can view it here) — https://medium.com/@JPStevenson/the-12-month-project-post-no-2–7ca5815c9f49#.nrv8f1a8z
