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The third iteration, and the most important method of honoring your word and never giving up, is the 24-hour challenge. During the 24-hour challenge, you simply walk at whatever speed you want for 24 hours. The impact is profound. The simple act of just walking for 24 hours forces you to either honor your word and walk or honor every outside circumstance pressuring you and quit. The act of eating and drinking and taking care of yourself and even resting is not easy. You have to feel each step. You have to feel yourself be tired and maybe nauseated. You have to listen to your reasons and excuses and, if you do it in a group, hear other’s excuses as well. I call this “the battle against the demons within.”

Honoring your word to keep moving will become increasingly difficult because of the lack of experience most of us have in overcoming our internal demons. The rules are simple:

1 Walk for 24 hours.

2 Rest no more than 10 minutes before walking again.

3 Eat and drink as much as you can.

Following these simple rules for 24 hours is a profound experience. I have conducted dozens of 24-hour challenges. Through rain, cold, dry, hot, blisters, and whatever the world throws at us, I show people the method of honoring your word for 24 hours.

Why on earth would I suggest 24 hours? The answer may shock you. Because with freedom and abundance comes decay. The human condition in America, due to abundance, has lost the skill of physical and mental endurance. I am not talking running endurance or high-level athleticism. I am talking the ability to endure the battle within against our excuses for a long time. We, as a nation, have succumbed to excusing ourselves because this inner voice, which we have had no real experience with, now runs the show. It says stop; we stop. It says cheat; we cheat. It suggests fear; we disengage. The internal dialogue, this battle with your demons, has all but vanished in American society. Without this battle being waged and won, we are left with blame, entitlement, and a fragmentation of our souls in the form of sexism and racism and business failure.

In 24 hours, all that ceases. You quiet your storm, you stop blaming, you stop thinking you are due something you didn’t work for and, most graciously, you stop seeking differences in others. By actually doing the 24-hour challenge, your ability to see how honoring your word and never giving up causes a shift in you.

Having completed multiple 24-hour challenges with committed clients willing to experience their own self-imposed limits, a few points regarding limitations and foundational principles have emerged. Many of my preconceived notions of what actually stops people from achieving their own goals have been shattered, while some new ideas expose the realities of the human potential to succeed. Each 24-hour challenge pushes my limits and endears me to those willing to press past their own stopping points.

The first attempt went as well as you might expect. I walked it solo. I talked myself out of it when the weather got cold. And I drove home trying to form a story as to why I just couldn’t complete it. And trust me, the story was an ingenious fabrication of what happened and didn’t happen in order to convince my family it wasn’t possible. And my wife, Stacy, after hearing my grand tale said, “So you didn’t prepare and take the right clothing and you quit.” After a short tantrum on my part, I learned the first two lessons of the 24-hour challenge. These two lessons when translated into everyday life change outcomes immediately.

Lessons one and two are:

We underprepare for a hard life.

We can construct an elaborated story around quitting to convince anyone the thing we tried wasn’t possible.

On the second attempt I once again went solo and began the walk with a fever. I was resolute to complete it in spite of the fever. But at the 20-hour mark, I could hardly stand up without falling . . . and I quit once again.

Enter lesson three: Don’t do hard things alone. Isolation destroys humans.

The third attempt I finally completed. Four of us started it, and at the end I was the only one to walk the last four hours. I certainly didn’t want to, because it seemed stupid. I could have quit, because it was painful. I had forgotten to drink enough and was paying the price for the stupidity of that excuse. And my friends who started were really not supportive.

Lesson four crystallized: The last few steps or last moments of attaining a goal make no sense, are stupid and the mind is thoroughly convinced completing it makes no difference.

Those four rules have now been etched in stone for me. Such profound lessons are lost in the unconscious grind of everyday life. Learning the lessons strikes the spark lost in life and highlights the value of honoring your word and never giving up. Each 24-hour challenge allows participants the opportunity to learn these lessons. So what will you do?

Will you approach today and tomorrow with a never give up mindset? Will you make a vow to yourself to honor your word?

To honor your word, don’t go at it alone. Everyone struggles, whether you’re the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company or a father or mother with a new family or a high school student. These leadership principles only work if you don’t go it alone.

Don’t build a story around failure and sell the copyright to your family. Isolation from others is destructive, and isolation is the enemy of success. As you embark on your journey one step at a time, remember to honor your word to yourself and others. It may not make sense at times, but the hard times never do.

And no matter what you attempt to accomplish, toward the end of it, you will unravel, and even accomplishing it won’t make any sense at all.

Simple, but not easy! The three lessons cannot be read and miraculously become a foundation. You cannot learn to honor your word by reading or watching. No matter how long it takes you to complete all three, do it! Without this foundation built on honoring your word and never giving up, all else built on top will crumble.

What would you do if you learned these three lessons?

The Method: The three tests are yours to endure and do. You must pass through all three to construct the foundation needed to build a nonnegotiable baseline.

1 Twenty-one days to carve out something new in life and dig the foundation.

2 Face your fear. Do it often in order to pour the foundation.

3 Success takes 24 hours of constant movement to set the foundation.