As recent as Monday I wouldn’t have thought much about this tweet from Lance Armstrong this morning. I’ve never been much of a fan of his, nor really understood what his Livestrong organization was about beyond the kitschy yellow wristbands. That changed when I saw a copy of his book, “Its Not About The Bike” on a newsstand at the Gatwick Airport on my way back from London. I don’t think I realized what I was getting into when I picked it up. I figured I’d learn a little about some skills and techniques for improving my own riding. Boy was I wrong.
What I figured would be a casual read about cycling turned into an inspiring pager turner filled with life lessons that extended beyond the bike and beyond the cancer and found application in my work and life. I read the whole thing without ever putting it down, engrossed in the up and downs of Lance’s tumultuous life and how he coped with success and failure from his earliest days. I read with admiration as he talked of his friends and family, the esteem he held them in and the love they expressed as they remained at this side during some extremely dark hours. I laughed as his trash talking competitive nature found a place in both his cycling and his bout with cancer. And I took to heart his discoveries around coping with the stresses and trials of life.
There are a million quotes I could tear from its pages, but I want to share one and them encourage you to pick up and copy for yourself. From the book:
“To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatement, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.
Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn’t fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness of cataclysmic , millenium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer, because its a slow and inevitable death, its is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.
So, I believed.”
Oct 2nd is Livestrong day. Its the day Lance was diagnosed with cancer, his personal doomsday. He could have folded at the his frighteningly low odds of living, but he believed. I hope I would do the same in the face of such a daunting diagnosis and hope that I will be able to tackle some of the less significant trials in my own life with the same perspective. And belief.
