At
one point over the holidays,
when I should have been updating
my plans for this coming year,
I found myself watching Batman
Begins—the 2005
predecessor to The Dark
Knight. As the movie
chronicles Bruce Wayne’s
ninja-style training on a
remote mountaintop in Asia,
I am often moved by the words
of Wayne’s mentor, Henri
Ducard, played by Liam Neeson:
“Training
is nothing! Will is everything!”
Ducard tells Wayne as they
spar across a frozen lake.
“The will to act!”
It was
a pity that a character
who played such a strong
role in Bruce Wayne’s
transformation into the
legendary superhero, turned
out to be one his greatest
arch enemies. But the lesson
I took from that cold mountaintop
(in the comfort of my couch!)
is that training is indeed
meaningless if it is not
used—if it is not
acted upon.
Why
do so many of us fail to
act? We invest
in programs, in books and
videos, yet we remain stuck
in our old routines. Or
worse, we go back to doing
nothing. We know what we
must do; yet we lack the
will to do it. In reality,
we lack the courage.
Greatness
cannot exist without courage.
Much of the erosion in business
and our culture today is
the result of people lacking
the courage to do what they
already know they should
do. Consider that historically,
many people who have fallen
from grace were those who
had the highest training
and ethics, but lacked the
courage—the will—to
act.
Courage
does not come easily. Remember,
when we speak of courage,
we are not referring to
fearlessness or foolhardiness.
Courage cannot exist
without fear. It’s
human to be afraid—as
is the temptation to take
the “easy” way
out of a situation. However,
what separates goodness
from greatness is the courage
to do what is right each
and every day.
Author
Tim Kimmel, in his book
Legacy of Love,
describes courage this way:
“Although it takes
unusual courage to die for
something; it takes an even
greater courage to live
for something. Dying for
a right cause takes one
right choice; living for
a right cause requires hundreds
of choices each day, every
day.”
Bruce
Wayne faced his fear, which
gave him the courage and
the will to advance something
he believed in. What about
you? Do you truly
believe in the value you
can bring to peoples’
lives in 2009?
Do you know what you must
do? If so, what might be
holding you back, today?
Don’t
worry about tomorrow or
next week. You are here,
now. For today, identify
one action for today, and
take it. Summon the will.
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