You have courage or you wouldn’t be here.
You came to accomplish or you wouldn’t be here
You came to contribute or you would be here.
You came to be passionate in all forms or you wouldn’t be here.

This child, is your chance.
Your destiny is in this very moment now.
Chose it. Chose it now. Chose it here, chose it like this or suffer.
Suffer pity, lack, fear, frustration and pain.

You have a choice. Now you know.
It is your job to see that choice. To learn to make that choice and be freed by that choice.
With choice, you can have power, freedom and abundance
And there is more. . . .
There are hidden treasures. . .
Once you chose, you will be inspired, and you will want to sing, dance or share is your own way, how to choose.
And As you share power, freedom and abundance you will be happy
And you will have more and more and more and more. . .

And when you pass you will be happy.
And they will say. . . You lived, you loved, you gave.
Your light will shine on and on and on and on.
Blessed be.

~Coach Sarah K Harrison

So here they are.

Any individuals knowledge is limited. – There is so much to know in the universe or even in our own lives that directly affect us that we could never possibly know it all.
Individuals respond to the world based on their limited knowledge. – The experience of being human means we have to move forward knowing only what we know, and even knowing we have limited knowledge we in our “humanness” act as if we make our choice and decisions based on full knowledge.
There is no failure – only feedback.- Feedback allows you to make adjustments and move forward. Failure is part of a human
The response you get determines the message you gave. – That you are always responsible for the communications you put out and the response you get back. In other words it is the communicators (leaders) responsibility to taylor her message to her audience.
There is no right/wrong, just works/doesn’t work – Right and Wrong are a paradigm that push a person forward, but have a glass ceiling of influence in allowing someone to attain success and fulfillment. Works and Doesn’t Work offer a feedback scenario that allows for never ending improvement that is personal, customized and from a place of Power and Freedom.
You always have a choice in your actions – If what you are doing isn’t working, do something else.
The person with the most flexibility influences the system -
Not communicating is communicating –
Human’s are meaning making machines. – You have all the resources you need to achieve your desired outcomes. You made up all the reasons you can’t do something, so YOU can make up all the reasons you can.
Being Human is about the Experience – Every behavior has a positive intent.
People are much more then their behaviors – Behaviors are a limited expression of who we are. “I am.”
The mind and body are interlinked and affect each other. – All things are connected. What is in the mind will show up in the body as health or disease.
Having choices is better than not having choices. – And a person’s ability to be present to, responsible for and powerful in making choices give power, freedom and abundance, leading to fulfillment.
Modeling successful performance leads to excellence. – Look for great to be great!

A great Coach will teach and train you in many “distinctions” so you can have access to living the above fundamentals instead of just knowing them. In getting these, transforming your life becomes possible.

The impossible becomes possible.

Miracles are created.

I’ve seen it over and over and over again. Consider if you haven’t you have limited knowledge that is holding you back from creating miracles in your own life. And you ARE capable of experiencing and achieving more!

With love,
Coach Sarah

The opening scenes of “Jerry Maguire” are forever imprinted in my minds eye. As the audience, we are shown a brief synopsis of Jerry’s life as a high powered Sports Agent who manages the careers of a multitude of big money athletes. He is at a convention of some kind with all of his fellow Sports Agents.

We enter a dream sequence. Jerry is jarred awake while dreaming with an epiphany of sorts as he raises this question in an internal dialogue. “Who had I become? A shark in a suit? I hated myself. I hated my place in this world. ” Like a man possessed, he rose out of his bed and sat down at the laptop he had set up in his hotel room. Jerry continued to speak inside his head, “One page became twenty five, I became my father’s son again.”

He continued, saying he remembered the wise words of his mentor who said “The key to this business is personal relationships.”

Feverishly, Jerry crafted his Personal Manifesto. “I had lost the ability to B.S.,” he wrote, “It (the Mission Statement) was the me I had always wanted to be.”

He entitled his declaration “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.” He took his work to a 24 hour copy store so that he could distribute his wisdom to the other Sports Agents. The long haired clerk at the store looked into his eyes and said, surferesque, “That’s how you become great, man!” Jerry put a copy in each mailbox of his peers and blissfully went to sleep.

Temporarily, anyway. We soon learn that for Jerry, proclaiming what he believed through his Mission Statement was indeed a risky business. He called the hotel desk clerk when he once again awoke with a start to see if the copies of his Mission Statement been picked up by his peers. To his horror, it was reported that many copies of his work had been distributed.

Jerry soon found his life seriously altered by what he believed. He quickly lost his high powered job and found himself living out his Mission Statement, but it was far from comfortable. Sure, his mentor had said “The key to this business is personal relationships” but did his only client have to be so obnoxious, arrogant, loud and forever adding insult to injury, by continually spouting the now trademark “Show me the money!” phrase over and over and over?

We live alongside Jerry for two hours, cheering him through personal financial ruin, romance, marriage, separation, reunion, and finally the rebuilding of his career. But it is a career on HIS terms, in HIS way, following HIS manifesto and HIS alone!

Do all Mission statements need to be written at times of such personal awakening a la Jerry Maguire? Not at all! Mission statements can be mulled over, rewritten, revised, reduced and reiterated. They can be written alone, which would be a Personal Mission statement, or they can be written collaboratively with a team work approach.

A Mission Statement can be written for a family or Organization. They can be one sentence, they can be pages upon pages upon pages. There is no set formula in a format for Mission Statements, however the basics are the same regardless of structure or length.

Well, for Jerry Maguire its one thing, but for me? Why Write a Mission Statement? Why should I take time out from my busy schedule trying to get my venture up and running to write a Mission Statement? The answer to this is simple. Some people may choose to travel to an unknown destination without a roadmap, but most will get to their destination more quickly if a map is carefully drawn out prior to putting the key into ignition putting the foot on the gas.

Carefully crafting your Mission Statement could be paramount in mapping out your future. Think for a moment.

* Why did you start your endeavor?
* What were you hoping to do that had not been done before?
* Simply stated, what is the purpose for your project?
* How will you do things differently?

Jerry Maguire had multiple reasons for striking out as he did, for being a Sports Agent in a different way. What are your reasons? Why is your heart calling out to you to step out and see this project to fruition?

Secondly, your Mission Statement can bring focus to your exact priorities. You may believe in your mind what your priorities are but when you actually sit down with a pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard you may be surprised with what you discover.

Hit a roadblock in creating your Mission Statement? Maybe you are saying to yourself, I have NO IDEA know what either my purpose or priorities are at this point! Do not be discouraged! I have found that the easiest thing to do at this point is to take a deep breath, relax and brainstorm for ten or fifteen minute.

Take out a blank sheet of paper or bring up a blank document on your computer. Ask yourself the questions that were brought up about your purpose for starting this project. What were you personally looking for, yearning for, hoping for? Where are the Passions within you for this particular project?

Chances are you would not start something you did not enjoy a lot, because your success would be highly unlikely in that case! So don’t even consciously think! Don’t worry about making sense: just let the words flow. One word, phrase or sentence at a time. This will help unblock your mind as well as remind you what your project is all about. If you had fallen out of love with your project, this will be a great tool to re-ignite the Passion that you once had for it!

Discovering your purpose should then remind you of your priorities. Your Purpose uncovers the why, while the priorities uncover which of your smaller tasks comes first. Look at each task in small, manageable chunks, breaking each one down as far as you need to and date when each task should be completed.

Creating my website makes a perfect example! First, I set a date for “completion” (although it will always be a work in progress). Actually, this is the date when I want all components to be functioning efficiently: all the Passion Pages with an active article Ezines for each Passion, Bulletin Boards in place and with dialogue taking place, the Passion Surveys being easily accessible and regularly utilized by the Guests at my Site.

So, in addition to prioritizing, I had to map out my plan. A few months prior to completion, I had quite a few of these aspects in place. One of the first tasks I chose to complete was crafting a brief Mission Statement which would be a herald atop all my main pages. I knew the next step would be building the skeleton of the site, deciding what format to use and that sort of thing. This was a big challenge since I am not a technical person. For practice, I built a personal website, with the assistance of a dear friend who knows a lot more about computers than I do!

With my 5Passions page, there was a lot of teamwork in its creation, including requesting people from other sites to come visit mine and give me constructive criticism.

With my friend and “partner in building my site” I found some free bulletin boards, as well as finding a list host to use for my ezine, both for free. I mapped out a very “do-able” schedule for the creation of my e-zines. So on a rigorous yet not overwhelming schedule, all the pieces were crafted into place.

Finally, you want your Mission Statement to be an evolving document that can take your project from here into perpetuity. Once you have written it, it can be revisited and revised as need be. Sections can be added and deleted over time.

Most importantly, you want your overall Mission Statement to have that feeling of “YES! This is My (Our)Mission!” It should evoke a sense of Joy, a sense of the good old fashioned marching orders we were given by our childhood coaches.

So what’s stopping you? Get out your favorite writing tool and start crafting your Mission Statement. Jerry found love and a new life when he wrote his! What are you going to find? I think you will find something near and dear to your heart. Chances are, you will find You!

(Dates TBA)

Develop visual reminders of your goal and the advantages you will experience when you reach it. The classic example is being able to afford something you’ve been yearning for. Get your photograph taken with that item (like your dream car or house) and place the photograph where you will see it daily.

2.   Develop tiny steps

It’s easy to become discouraged if each step looms large and takes a long time. Break the project down to extremely small steps, then you can make some progress even if you have only five minutes.

3.   Check off small steps

As you take those small steps, check them off as you finish them. Give yourself a pat of the back for your progress. The progress you have made is just as important as the distance you have to go.

4.   Cut down on time wasters and mind numbers

Identify and avoid timewasters that you use to “numb out”. Then avoid them as much as possible. The list may include too much TV, chat-rooms, computer games, time on the phone, alcohol and partying, or other behaviors in which you indulge fairly obsessively.

5.   Get enough rest

Often, when you feel you need to work harder, you put in more hours and take less rest. It’s essential to get enough sleep or your project will suffer.

6.   Keep a journal about the benefits of your project

This involves harnessing the verbal part of your brain. This makes you feel more involved with the project. Do this especially at the start, when your energy level is high. Add to this journal whenever you can, and read it regularly.

7.   Don’t discuss the project with nay sayers

Some people worry that if you succeed, you may grow away from them. There are others who just don’t want to see you aim too high and then be disappointed. They mean well, but avoid giving them the opportunity to rain on your parade. Practice ways to change the subject if they try to talk about your project.

8.   Keep yourself physically well

Eat right, exercise and drink plenty of water… you know the routine. The trick is to keep at it so that you have the energy needed to carry your project through.

9.   Avoid all-or-nothing thinking

When we fall into the trap of all-or-nothing thinking, we begin to believe that encountering obstacles or failure, at one juncture equals total failure on the entire project.

10.   Clear the decks

While we are focusing on one thing, there are other affairs that accumulate and may overwhelm us. Keep a to-do list and keep to it. You may think that doing these things takes time from your project, but they actually help keep your energy levels up.

By now, the three mountaineers and two Sherpa climbers have already spent more than a month at or above 21,000 feet on the northeast ridge of Mount Everest, and the extreme conditions are taking their toll.

The mountaineers have grown weak from a lack of oxygen and long hours climbing. Whittaker, 47, has shed more than 35 pounds since the trip began, leaving him gaunt, his eyes sunken. For five days and nights, he has anxiously monitored the weather for signs of improvement. With each passing day, he dies a little.

For Whittaker, an amputee who lost his right foot in a car accident, the expedition is not only an incredible challenge, it is potentially historic. This is his second attempt in seven years to become the first disabled man to reach Everest’s summit.

At around midnight, the snow settles and the mountaineers strap on their oxygen tanks and climbing gear to begin the risky ascent to 29,035 feet.

Their headlamps scan the darkness for a way through the strata of limestone that presents a series of steep, slick ramps up the mountain.

But as Whittaker attempts to dig his spiked prosthetic into the icy rock, for the first time in the expedition he begins to struggle. His artificial foot slips against the slippery limestone, the exertion rubbing the end of his amputated leg raw.

After three difficult hours, he comes to the realization that he is holding back his team and jeopardizing the lives of his climbing partners, including his old friend Greg Child. As he scrambles in the darkness, his thoughts are of his life back in Arizona – his wife and two daughters, his career as an educator, and everything he could lose if he continues to climb.

“I was 1,500 feet from the summit of Mount Everest and a world away,” Whittaker recalls. “I was moving too slowly, and I realized that if I went on I would reach the summit late in the day and may never make it back. At that stage, I had to make a decision. I was going to give up the summit, but I was going to live.”

Whittaker clips himself out from the tattered rope that attaches him to Child and the other climbers and tells them to continue on without him. The Sherpas accompany Child to the top of the peak, while Whittaker heads down the mountain, consumed by the bitter disappointment.

A few days later, at base camp, the two friends are reunited.

Inside Whittaker’s tent, Child shakes him affectionately by the shoulder. “You should have never made it as far as you did, but against all odds you did it,” Child tells him. “If you want this thing bad enough, I really believe you can do it.”

Then, Child gives him a gift.

“Whittaker,” he says as he drops a small piece of rock into his hand. “I picked this up on the summit. I want you to put this back where I got it.”

Tom Whittaker’s inspiring journey to complete that challenge and reach the summit of Mount Everest would take several more years and an unwavering determination to become the first amputee to stand on top of the world.

OVERCOMING ADVERSITY

A lifelong outdoorsman who spent his life climbing, kayaking, skiing and sailing, Tom Whittaker’s life appeared to hit rock bottom on Thanksgiving Day 1979.

Shortly after completing his master’s degree at Idaho State University, he was hit by a drunk driver who swerved into his lane and collided head-on with the car he was driving.

For five days in the hospital, Whittaker fought for his life.

He had suffered multiple fractures in both legs. Severe injuries to both of his feet and knees resulted in the removal of one of his kneecaps and the amputation of his right foot.

“I was lying like a broken bag of bones in my hospital bed,” Whittaker says. “My friends would sit at my bedside and weep.”

Although Whittaker’s body was broken, his adventuring spirit was not. He vowed to climb again and set his sights on a steep, 150-foot extreme rock climb known as the Outer Limits in Yosemite Valley, California.

 “I would tell these guys I was going to go back within two years and do this climb,” he says. “They would just get all embarrassed and change the subject. It was obvious in their minds that I was not only physically messed up but I was also delusional.”

Undeterred, Whittaker painstakingly put his life back together. Through intense physical rehabilitation, he not only learned to walk with a prosthetic foot, but he learned to climb.

Two years later, as promised, he found himself standing at the base of the Outer Limits. But as he tied the rope to his harness, Whittaker realized he was terrified.

“Fear was parallelizing my arms and my legs,” he says. “But as I started the climb, I began to get into my rhythm, and I felt it come together. Finally, I reached the ledge and clipped myself off.”

Looking down from the top of the climb he was suddenly struck by an overwhelming feeling of empowerment.

“I realized it was defiance. Nobody was ever, ever, ever going to tell me what I’m capable of doing,” he says. “That was the first step. By summiting the Outer Limits, I proved to myself that I could dream as big as I dared to dream, and Everest is the biggest dare a mountaineer can dream.”

Less than a decade later, Whittaker would do battle with Everest for the first time.

THE FIRST CLIMB

It is the spring of 1989, and raging storms are thrashing through the Himalayas. This climbing season, seven people have already perished on Everest, and the mountain still holds several lives in its icy grasp.

Trapped in a glacial basin at 21,500 feet, Whittaker, his climbing partner, Andy Lapkiss, and their Sherpas fight for their lives.

Fierce blizzard winds tear through their camp, as the heavy snow buries their tents. The mountaineers periodically take turns shoveling themselves from the rising snow to avoid suffocating inside their tents.

Food and supplies are dwindling, and conditions are becoming deadly.

As the batteries die on their radios, the mountaineers hear fading, desperate cries for help from the climbers on other expeditions. Five Polish mountaineers have died in an avalanche, and another, badly injured, lays marooned with his dead teammates.

“We were hearing people dying, basically, on the mountain,” Whittaker recalls. “There was nothing we could do about it; we were fighting for our lives where we were. There was no way we could help.”

After five nights trapped in the glacial basin, the snow and wind temporarily subsides.

In the pitch dark, with improvised snowshoes cut from plastic packing cases, they make a desperate bid to escape the mountain’s wrath.

For the next eight hours, in the Arctic cold of a Himalayan night, the mountaineers wade through the waist-high snow. Beneath their feet, camouflaged by snow, yawning chasms of ice crisscross their path.

“We were trudging through desperate conditions, from mid-thigh to waist-deep of snow,” Whittaker says.

At mid-day, staggering with exhaustion, they arrive at what had been their lower camp, only now it has vanished without a trace. The storm has deposited ten feet of snow on the mountain’s floor; four feet below the soles of their boots lay the tops of their tents.

In deteriorating weather conditions, they have no option but to continue down the mountain. As they march through the snow, the minutes crawl like hours. Whittaker’s prosthesis designed for ascending rock and ice is small and sinks deeper into the packed snow. The pain has become excruciating.

Headlamps search the darkness, reflecting off the glistening snow that over the years has entombed the bodies of dozens of perished mountaineers along the trail, a grim reminder of the mountain’s allure and lethal dangers.

Finally, through the darkness, Whittaker sees a pinprick of wavering light.

Several Sherpas from their base camp have risked their lives in an attempt to find them.

Reunited with their base team, together they head back down the trail. At 9 p.m., after 16 tortuous hours, the weary mountaineers reach base camp.

The teammates have barely escaped with their lives, and Whittaker has been profoundly changed by the experience.

 “What I realized is that I’m a mountaineer who happened to be disabled; I wasn’t a disabled person who was trying to climb the mountain,” he says. “I came back from Everest that first time, knowing I could climb the mountain.”

GOING BACK

After nearly losing his life on Mount Everest in 1989, Whittaker tried to forget his goal of standing on top of the world’s tallest summit. He embarked on a doctoral studies degree, started a family and became a professor in Adventure Education at Prescott College. Still, he says, he couldn’t shake the desire to finish what he had started.

“I tried to basically give it up,” Whittaker says. “But I found myself up in Prescott on a September evening lying back in a hammock, looking up at the stars, dreaming about going back to Everest.”

Whittaker’s second, unsuccessful summit bid in 1995 only made him more determined to try again. For three years, Whittaker carried the piece of rock his friend had brought back from Everest’s summit. It was time to put it back.

For his final Everest expedition, Whittaker served as team leader, raising the $350,000 in necessary funds and assembling a team of experienced mountaineers, including two of his colleagues from Prescott College, Angela Hawse and Gareth Richards, along with two cameramen who would document the feat.

“The thing that I was most proud about was that I was the leader of the expedition,” Whittaker says. “I climbed the mountain on exactly the same terms of any able-bodied mountaineer there. I did it on my own abilities.”

AGAINST ALL ODDS

As Whittaker traverses the slopes of Mount Everest for a third time, he is optimistic about reaching its summit.

The ominous clouds that have formed overhead have passed, and despite contracting severe bronchitis just three days prior to his departure, Whittaker is moving swiftly up the mountain.

Although Hawse and Richards left a few days ahead of him, at his current pace Whittaker is likely to catch up with them at their high camp soon.

After three long, difficult days of climbing as he approaches the top of the south summit, he notices what looks like a headlamp tumbling down the mountain in the darkness. As he nears, he sees a glimmer of light shining from the side of the mountain.

A mountaineer from another expedition has fallen from the slopes and landed in a crevasse, narrowly avoiding a vertical mile drop off the face of the mountain. Aside from a few broken ribs, the man is alive but shaken and in shock. Whittaker and his Sherpa spend an hour rescuing him.

For Whittaker, the experience is jarring.

“It derailed me,” he says. “I had been standing around in the Himalayan night for a long, long time getting this person back to where he needed to go. I was fatigued. I now realized I was not mountaineering in a decisive way.”

He is unable to go any further. The lack of oxygen is taking its toll, and his lungs are filling with fluid. The doctors think Whittaker is suffering from pulmonary edema, which could kill him within hours.

“I told these guys that I couldn’t go on and that I had to go back,” Whittaker recalls. “My Sherpa looked at me like I was crazy. Again at 27,000 feet, I turn around from Everest and head back down.”

Dispirited, the mountaineers head back to base camp together. Once there, Whittaker recovers and pleads with his Sherpas for one more chance; they agree to support his summit bid once more. The next morning, Whittaker and the Sherpas head back up the slopes.

Seven days later, they reach the high camp. As the sun sets, they move into the death zone. At this point, each breath is laborious, each step excruciatingly difficult. Twice Whittaker loses the crampon on his prosthetic foot.

Nine hours later, after scaling a 30-foot wall of sheer rock, Whittaker achieves what many in the climbing world claimed was impossible. Against overwhelming odds, after three failed attempts and a decade of planning, Whittaker hoists himself onto the summit of Mount Everest.

Bundled in his red coat, an exhausted Whittaker slinks down, removes his oxygen mask and quietly utters, “Who’d have thought it.”

“Who’d have thought that a guy, ten days before he turned 50, can all but climb Everest twice in the same amount of time as an able-bodied person could climb it once,” Whittaker says. “It was incredible.”

Whittaker takes the rock his friend had given him three long years before and tosses it on the peak.

“Greg, this is for you,” Whittaker says, his voice breaking with emotion. “I took care of business.”

LIFE AFTER EVEREST

Today Whittaker is a motivational corporate speaker who strives to empower others to conquer their own personal mountains.

He continues to climb and has established several groups dedicated to changing the way the world views people with disabilities, for which he was honored for by Queen Elizabeth II at a royal inauguration.

Most recently, he co-created the Call to Duty Foundation, a group to help transition war veterans suffering from combat related trauma back to the society they fought to protect.

Whittaker says he often reflects on his expeditions to Everest. But it isn’t the mountain that he misses; instead, it’s the people he met along the way that he says he truly cherishes.

“I don’t have any unfinished business on Everest. The gladiatorial contests against these inert objects are less important to me than the places these mountains sustain,” he says with tears in his eyes. “These are not on the mountain; these are in the villages around the mountain. That’s where it all is. That is the part of this story that I love.”

August 2009 Times Publication

For information on the Call to Duty Foundation or Tom Whittaker’s other charity organizations and speaking engagements:
www.tomwhittaker.com