James Lawrence also known as the Iron Cowboy tackles the impossible, 50 Ironman’s in 50 days in 50 states. In this interview his shares his story and how to follow your dreams, have create vision, take massive action and continual improve! 

Summary

James Lawrence holds the Guinness world records for completing 22 ironman 70.3 races in 30 weeks and 30 full ironman 140.6 races in one year. When he first shared his vision and the idea of the challenge he was about to attempt he was often confronted with, “That’s impossible, you can’t do that”. For James, aka the iron cowboy the answer is clear, “Yes I can, and I will” and he does. (Continued Below)

“No goal and no dream is too big”

“Regret only happens if you don’t learn the lesson and if you don’t forgive yourself” James Lawrence.

What does living life with passion and purpose mean?

Having long conversations with yourself and finding out who your authentic self is and then once you discover who that is then its just matter of being real to who you want to be. Be true to yourself and that’s when success will come.

Key Take Outs

·     Our journey and our improvements are a matter of preparation and time. You have to develop yourself and keep building up that mental toughness. Each time upping the anti!

·     Follow your dreams and make sure you have a dream. Along the way take the natural steps that makes sense to you.

·     Focus on the smaller fundamentals and take the next small step that comes but importantly you must take action. We often overwhelm ourselves with the complexity to the bigger vision which can scare us and force us to stop. Instead take small and incremental steps.

·     Stop comparing yourself to others, “just stop it”. Just go out and be your best.

“The goal is not to be the first to finish, I hope I’m last, I am my own measuring stick, as long as I have improved on what I did the day before. We need to ‘put on horse blinders’”

·     Have a greater purpose and a why. Stop finding reasons to stop and start finding reasons for wanting to move forward. Stop looking for your way out look for reasons for the way forward and why.

·     Be comfortable with yourself and who you are. When you are comfortable with who you are you become clearer and gain a better perspective on what truly matters in life.

·     Take control of your life! We all have choice in our life and we all can choose how we respond to everything that is happening in our life. Choose how you want to live this life and take control, no one else is going to do it for you. No blame, take responsibility, and truly live.

·     Age does not matter. This is a great take out because often when people reach a certain age it causes self made limiting beliefs, the “I’m too old” approach to starting something. We are never to old to chase our dreams and to live with greater purpose and passion.

“Conviction, conviction, conviction. Have it!”

What advice would you give to your 20 year old self?

He wouldn’t tell himself a thing. As long as you are present and can go through life and learn from all the lessons. Take a minute every single time and learn the lesson. Struggles and low points are when people grow, create and mold the person we become. Really dissect why that happened and the reason and take lessons from them.

His interpretation of success/ piece of advice.

Salary caps are made for professional sports and more often than not we limit ourselves by comparing ourselves to other people. There is no salary cap on your life; there is no limit to what you can do. There is no goal too big and there is no dream too big, so just put all your fears aside and just go live your life.

Quick round questions

Favourite Food

He had to laugh at this question saying that he got so sick of food during these ironman’s due to consuming over 8500 calories a day.

But he does loves a good steak, sushi & crisp cold watermelon.

Favourite book(s)

James doesn’t really read books and considering he is now writing one he really admits he should however instead he recommends a movie.

Rudy (Special Edition) by Jon Favreau

Quote

“10% of life is what happens to us and 90% of our life is how we react to it”, his mum.

How to Find James and other Links

You can find out more about James Lawrence and his journey by jumping online and visiting his website and other links below. 

http://www.ironcowboy.co

https://www.facebook.com/Ironcowboy/

https://twitter.com/ironcowboyjames

https://www.youtube.com/user/ironcowboyjames

Summary (cont.)

He tells me that he is by no means a super human of genetically blessed he is just a normal guy with a big dream and a strong vision. He is a family man with four daughters, one son and loving wife that have all jumped up to support him fully in his most recent defeat. That was to attempt 50 Ironman triathlons in 50 days across 50 states. And to those that told him it was impossible, he did it! Completed the grand achievement on the 25th of July 2015.

In this interview we discuss how he came to set himself such goals and what was the passion and reason behind it all. We also discussed the challenges of attempting and completing such a major achievement and how that relates to all of us in our own unique journey in life. Many of the lessons in this discussion are directly transferable to our own life.

The mental grind of this challenge is huge and I have heard him saying that 20% of it is physical but 80% is mental. I think this may be true in life also.

To give you an idea for the first 3 ironman’s he slept no more that 8 hours over that 3 days as the distances between one location and the next where great. He went from Hawaii, to Alaska and then flew into Washington each time waking up to do another ironman all over again. The total journey in distance is equivalent to running, swimming and ridding around Australia and doing this in 50days. You can find more about the run and the journey by checking out his website using the links below.

I asked him how you prepare for such an event and he explains that the lead up to the challenge was really a lifetime of preparations. The previous two records and even as far back as wrestling, he has over the years built his body for endurance each time consistently improving.

When people hear him speak of doing such a thing often they are quick to judge and even criticize him without knowing the journey he has already travelled in life. The message here is that we all travel our own road in life and for someone like myself that has never even run a marathon the challenge may appear crazy but for him it was a natural step.

This lead us to why comparing ourselves to others is often more detrimental to our success than good. When you enter such a challenge like anything you do in life we compare ourselves to others in that field. We must remember that just by being there in the first place we are already in the top 1 per centers who are actually taking action to participate in the first place. There are many others still at home on the couch.

Also that when we compare ourselves to others we remove a lot of our individualism and can also limit what we really can achieve by benchmarking ourselves against others. If he himself believed that the “Epic 5” event, which I believe is 5 Ironman races in Hawaii, was the best we could do than he perhaps wouldn’t have challenged himself beyond that.

This is a common trait among all the successful in any field is that they do not compare themselves with others and certainly do no limit their potential by benchmarking themselves against what has already been achieved.

The mental toughness is what is really amazing to all this and is a great lesson to us all. When you go out to achieve anything in life it is easy to both be overwhelmed by the potential enormity of the task and also to lose focus along the way. So how did he get there?

He said it was liking putting a pinhole in a piece of paper and pinning it to the opposite wall in the room. In this case it is easy to loose focus but for him there was nothing that was going to stand in the way, and simply by taking one-step at a time he new that suddenly the pinhole would appear not so distant.

It is easy in life to get distracted by many things and often this is a weakness for many of us, myself included. We need to remember the journey to any goal is to remain on focus until you have achieved success. Contradictory perhaps to this is also to not be so overwhelmed by the end goal that you become fearful and give up. This was his ability to remain mentally strong.

On the fourth ironman, day four, he admits he felt unbelievably fatigued. For many of us we would look at the end goal, another 46 ironman’s to go and most likely talk ourselves out of continuing. He knew time doesn’t stop and that eventually no matter what, the 25th of July would come. His goal was not the end but the very next step.

When eating breakfast his goal was to finish eating breakfast without falling asleep in it. Then the next goal was to put on his swimming cap. He didn’t think about the rest of the journey but purely just focused on the very next step.

How do you eat an elephant? Cut it into small pieces and eat one piece at a time.

There is a lesson about making something public also that can assist us in achieving what may be a hard challenge. For him telling the world and have enormous media coverage about his vision would certainly be a strong part holding him accountable to reaching that finish line also. Although we didn’t touch on this I think it important to mention.

Being a parent he strongly believes that children are and become a product of their environment and is why he chooses to set the very best example. His eldest daughter Lucy actually ran the 5km run in each start with him over the 50 days. Her next challenge as she said was whatever her dad is going to do.

“People have stopped dreaming.” 

There is a lot of thinking time on such a journey which allows him plenty of time to be with himself and really be grateful for who he is. He also said he has his entire future planned out but importantly also we need to adopt flexibility and allow the journey to flow more naturally also.

His final point to mention was the need for us all to dream. The kids are the future and it feels like we don’t any longer encourage kids to dream. He says go on dreaming and enjoy the journey.

His Moment of Realisation

Having never owned a bike until later in life and growing up never being a competitive swimmer, only recreationally, it may be surprising to some that he has gone on to accomplish so much in this field. As an adult had to learn how to swim competitively admitting that swimming is tough. He now encourages his kids to swim from an early age.

When he was younger he enjoyed wrestling and he believes that is where he built up his mental toughness as competitive wrestling a tough sport.
One day 10 years ago, 2011, he was sitting on a couch and his wife suggested the go do a 4-mile fun run. It was at this point he got a taste for it. Often people don’t see this but his journey to where he is today took time. He suggests by doing a lot of little things consistently over time, can be monotonous and boring but are the key to achieving these enormous goals.

This running also bought out the desire and passion to give back and in 2012 they raised funds to build dams in Africa. He explained that it felt it still wasn’t enough which is why this time the 50 day ironman races was without corporate involvement and rather hosted by him and his team.

They raised a great amount of funds from donation and the public’s support that went towards the Jamie Oliver foundation to raise awareness about obesity. Having children of his own and understanding that obesity is the number one killer in the world this is something he is very passionate about.

So was there an awakening or moment of realization in life or just many little ones? Not sure on that, I will let you be the judge. I can say that it is clear he tried things, followed things he was passionate about, and always took action each time improving along the way.