What I had to realise before it worked — choosing to set everything else aside

In the course of working toward the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, I honestly can’t count how many roads of choice I’ve crossed.

Setting my sick self aside — putting even the cancer out of my mind entirely

Partway through this challenge, I was diagnosed with cancer. Normally, once you have cancer, following the doctor’s instructions and devoting yourself entirely to treatment is probably taken for granted.

But from my own past experience with treatment, I already knew that focusing your mind on being sick makes you sicker.
So I have chosen to erase even the fact of “having cancer” from my conscious mind and keep moving, staking my life, toward this huge dream, even now.
Strangely enough, through this state of mind, my body’s progression has, right now, come to a complete stop.

I’m not refusing treatment, and I’m not giving up on living, either —
it’s“living every single second with everything I have”that I hold as what matters most.

Setting aside my past relationships, and the person I used to be

It’s the same with how I deal with people.

Trip invitations, invitations to hang out, drinks, lunch… I’ve started choosing, even with the rallies I love.

Once I started turning things down, plenty of people drifted away — calling me unsociable, saying “after everything I did for you…” — but at the same time,the people who understood the “what for”and stuck by me with everything they had, to back it, also grew in number.

For me there’s no such thing as “abandoning” or “cutting off” a person.
I just set everything else aside.

Set everything aside for the goal right in front of you now, and maybe, someday, our paths will cross again.

If that day comes, let’s do this again!

Don’t be afraid of change

Staying in the same place, doing the same things, will never get your time, your money, or your thinking anywhere different.
The comfort of staying in the same place, the ease of staying with the same people — changing away from that came with real fear too.

People drifting away, things drifting away… the repeated cycle of conflict and choice keeps going.

But all I’m really doing is changing my priorities to reach the goal.

One and a half years left… in 2023, another big choice is changing how I act, once again.

I’m giving my calling, my work, everything I have.

That’s because I want to make the dream real.That’s all it is. Just that, and nothing more.