The key to turning goals into reality

Clark Hull spent 10,000 hours observing and measuring the behavior of lab rats. (Have you thanked God for your job lately?) He learned that rats could be trained to make their way through a maze to reach a goal. He designed electric sensors inside the maze that carefully monitored the rats’ speed and learned that rats speed up as they get nearer to the goal.

This explains why, at the Philadelphia Marathon, Dr. Lewis Maharam, Board Chairman of the International Marathon Medical Directors Association, places medics 26.1 miles into the 26.2 mile race. A tenth of a mile from the finish line, the brain dumps an incredible surge of neurochemical accelerants into their bodies. Dr. Maharam has had 10 successful resuscitations at the 26.1 mile spot. As we get closer to the goal, we run faster. In this case, with near deadly effect. The closer you perceive success to be, in other words, the faster you move toward it.[1]

The application for us is this: break long-term goals into shorter sub-goals. The brain will drop some accelerants into the body each time you perceive you are approaching one of the sub-goals, accelerating your progress toward the main goal. Science confirms it is true: Yard by yard life is hard, inch by inch it’s a cinch.