When I was a kid, my brother and I had dreams of playing pro football. I think I was 12 when my dad took us to our first pro football game. We were so excited. It was the L.A. Rams versus the Oakland Raiders and it was pre-season game. My dad got tickets and we went to the game.
The Los Angeles Rams were my favorite team. I knew every player on the team. I had their bubble gum cards. I loved them. I thought they were gods. I ran down to the very edge of the stadium, right there by the sidelines of the Rams, my favorite team. I was reaching over and yelling at them to give me their autographs. In those days, you could down there and get pretty close to them. A lot of them would actually sign an autograph.
One of my favorite players comes walking really close to where I was standing in the stadium. He’s on the bench, getting a drink of water and he’s about 325 pounds—big old dude, god-like figure in my life. I say to him, and I had my pen and program, “Would you please come over and sign my autograph. I LOVE YOU.” And he goes, “Get the hell out of here,” (waving me off).
In that moment, when he said “get the hell out of here,” I knew I was going to play pro football. Before that day, it was more of a pipe dream. It was more, “Wow, these guys are gods. I’d like to be one of them, but there’s no way in hell I can be because I’m just a boy.” But in that moment of rejection, I realized that one of my favorite players was just a man. It was because he blew me off that I realized that’s just a man. I’m going to play pro football. He’s bigger than me. He’s better than me now, but he’s just a guy and so am I.
I’ve got time to work this thing out. I’ll eventually catch up and be able to do this. But because of the proximity that I had, because I was close to him and I could see that he was just a guy, just a man, I knew I was going to do it. I knew it was no longer a pipe dream. I knew that it was a reality.
Think about that in your own life. You know how that story ends, which is so crazy; that was 1974 or 1975. Cut to ten years later, 1984 or 1985, me and this player, the guy who dissed me, the guy who blew me off, were on the same team in the NFL. Isn’t that crazy? He’s in my locker room. And he was still kind of a dismissive guy. He was still that way. I told him, “You’re the reason that I knew I was going to play pro football because you blew me off one day. Because you wouldn’t sign my autograph, I knew you were just a guy. I knew you were no longer a god. I knew I could do it.
So think about that in your own life. When you have these dreams, like if you wanted to become the best ballet dancer in the world, you’ve got to get next to Mikhail Baryshnikov. You’ve got to just get to next to him and see that Mikhail Baryshnikov is the greatest ballet dancer of all time, but he’s a guy. He’s a man, flesh and blood, just like you and I. And I have been close to Mikhail Baryshnikov. I’ve been in an elevator with him. He’s an impressive guy, but at the same time, he’s a guy. So if you wanted to be a ballet dancer and you could get next to him in an elevator and you could see that, you’d go, “Wow, this is not such a pipe dream. I can actually do this.”
So who is that? Define who that is in your life that you’re looking up to that is like some god-like figure. Say you want to be the best speaker in the world, and you’re in proximity of the best speaker in the world. Once you’re next to them, once you’re belly to belly with them, you’ll go, “Oh, that’s a good speaker. They’ve trained their butt off, but again, this is a guy, this is a gal. I can do this.” So put yourself in that position. Define who that god-like figure is for you, the one that you’ll never reach. Who is it? Put yourself close to them. Realize they’re just a person, just like you. And they did it. If that person did it, you can do it.
The problem with this is the media has you believe that they are god-like figures. If you watch somebody on TV or in movies, you think they’re god-like figures, and they’re not, they’re just people. Once you have that experience, you go, “Man, all I got to do is run the miles that they run and I’ll have the life that they have.” And then other people will look up to you as if you’re a god and they’ll go, “Wow, you’re the greatest in the world. I could never be you.” And you’ll have to say to them, “Actually, you could be like me. If you train like me and you run the miles that I’ve run, you’ll actually be able to be exactly what you think you can’t be, which is me. You’ll actually be able to achieve these things that you don’t think you can.”
I think Tony Robbins says that proximity is power. I think he’s very correct about that. Put yourself in the presence of the people that you think are god-like, the people that you admire the most and you’ll realize who they are and you’ll realize you’re the same. But you just don’t have the training. You don’t have the miles that they have. You want to put in those miles? Then, do it.
