Nathan Gwilliam Blog :: Social Media, Social Entrepreneurship, Faith

Last weekend Crystal and I went sand duning with our friends Matt and Michelle at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park  in southern Utah. The park is comprised of 3,730 acres of breathtaking pink coral-colored dunes, surrounded by red sandstone cliffs, blue skies, and deep emerald forests. Imagine pink sand dunes and lush pine trees.  At first glance it feels like an oxymoron of nature.

This picture shows the four of us in Matt and Michelle’s Sand Rail. This vehicle took the dunes with power and speed and had enough momentum to do whatever the driver wanted to do on the dunes.  (We wore helmets and had 5-point restraint systems in addition to roll bars.)

Later in the day, Matt and I took quads out and Matt taught me the concept of dune “bowling”.  Some of the large sand dunes were shaped as crescents or partial “bowls”.  In sand dune bowling, the quad rider builds up momentum then climbs straight up one side of the sand dune.  As the rider nears the top, and before momentum is lost, the rider turns to one side, and rides along the inside ridge of the sand dune bowl.  However, bowling only works if the rider keeps momentum.  If momentum is lost, the rider must quickly turn the quad down the sand dune to regain momentum. If momentum is not regained, the rider and the quad may tumble down a steep sand dune.

The momentum required for sand dune bowling has made me think of the importance of momentum in business and life, and I have been particularly thinking about the correlation between momentum and hope.  When our lives and our businesses are moving forward and progressing, we have momentum.  As a result of this momentum, we have hope for a better future than our present circumstances.

If we are feeling hopeless, it is often because we don’t have enough momentum in our life, or because our momentum is going the wrong direction.  Conversely, if we want to add more hope into our lives, we can often accomplish this by adding more momentum.

We can add momentum in our relationships by being more selfless, attending marriage education or counseling, spending more time with the people we love, expressing our love, etc.  We can add momentum in our career by improving education, enhancing job skills, reading industry books and blogs, improving the quality of our work, etc. We can add momentum in the physical area of our life by exercising, eating better, etc.   Businesses can add momentum through improving marketing effectiveness, innovation, user experience, viral advertising, etc. We can add momentum in the spiritual area of our life through scripture study, prayer, personal worthiness, etc.  We can even help add  momentum to the lives of others through mentoring, volunteering, helping the needy, making charitable contributions, etc.

We can’t just coast or maintain without regressing in our lives and businesses.  “If you’re coasting, you’re either losing momentum or else you’re headed downhill (source: Joan Welsh).”  

Even though most of us set well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions, studies show that most of us do not succeed in completing those resolutions.  If we really want to achieve our resolutions, we need to effectively convert a desire to change into a system or pattern in our lives.  Anthony Robbins said, “The most important thing you can do to achieve your goals is to make sure that as soon as you set them, you immediately begin to create momentum. The most important rules that I ever adopted to help me in achieving my goals were those I learned from a very successful man who taught me to first write down the goal, and then to never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.”

As our goals become patterns in our lives and businesses, they add momentum, and the momentum increases our hope.

Posted on May 12th, 2009 by Nathan Gwilliam
Filed under: Business Management, Leadership, Life Lessons, Self Improvement