Keep It Where You Can See It
We spent five weeks naming the drift. Health, relationships, spirit, mindset, self. But naming where you're slipping is only half of the equation. The other half is direction, and whether yours is anywhere you can actually see.
In 1966 a twenty-eight-year-old assistant football coach got fired. His wife was pregnant with their third kid. Money was thin and the phone wasn't ringing. His name was Lou Holtz. Unrelated, the hyphenation of ages has always driven me crazy. It never feels accurate. Anyone else? Anyway, back to the story.
His wife handed him a book on thinking big, mostly to get him off the couch. So he sat at the kitchen table and wrote down what he wanted out of his life. Not a tidy five-year plan. A hundred and seven of them, covering every part of a life that matters. What he wanted spiritually, the kind of husband and father he meant to be, the work, the money, even the wild swings like meeting the Pope and landing a plane on an aircraft carrier - I love this because I’m all for not editing your goals. Go big if you want.
He was unemployed when he wrote it. He went on to hit around a hundred of them.
Writing down your goals matters, but what Holtz did with that list is what I think is critical. He kept the list where he had to look at it. It stayed in front of him for decades, quietly steering the thousand small decisions.
It’s borderline boring. No manifesting, no vision-board magic. Just visibility. What stays in front of you gets a vote in how you spend your day. What you file away gets none.
"If a man does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”
Most men don't have direction. They have hopes. And while hopes are good fuel, they are bad strategy. They live in your head, where they're easy to misplace the second life gets loud - and life will inevitably get loud.
Drift doesn't need you to quit on your goals. It only needs you to forget them long enough to let comfort take over. A day by day sliding away from who and where you wanted to be.
The Challenge
Pick one goal. One. Something that actually matters to you over the next thirty days, in whatever area you've been feeling the drift.
Write it down by hand and put it somewhere you can't avoid it. The bathroom mirror. The dashboard. Your phone's lock screen. Wherever your eyes already land first thing.
Then watch what it does. You'll catch yourself making a different call at 6am, or at the fridge, or when the easy option shows up. The goal didn't get more powerful. You just made it impossible to ignore. As a side note, when you feel the desire to make an excuse for not doing the thing that moves you toward that goal, use this phrase with your excuses: I don’t negotiate. Cheesy? Maybe. But helpful. Again, hoping you don’t make excuses is not a strategy.
A direction you can see is a direction you get to choose. One you've hidden from yourself already belongs to the drift.
Live above the line.
For you, Kevin
How useful was this newsletter for you?
Thanks for reading this. Share it with anybody you think would find it useful. And as a reminder, NO DRIFT is not mine it is ours. I want to know what you think, what you want to hear about, what you are learning. All feedback is welcomed.