Hello and happy Monday! This is Susan Hyatt and it’s GO time. This is episode number 154.
This is a show where we talk about goals, and courage, and going after what you really want in life.
Today, we’re talking about staying in it, all in, for the long haul.
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Wanna read the full transcript? Here ya go:
On Saturday mornings, my husband Scott wakes up, makes a pot of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, and then heads into the garage to work on his Very Special Project—restoring a 1974 Datsun 260 Z car.
He’s done this almost every single Saturday morning (and some Sundays and some Friday nights) for the last seven years in a row. That’s around 364 Saturdays, all tallied up.
This project started out with a ruined husk of a car that was, really, just a pile of un-drivable metal. I’ll never forget when he brought it home. How towed it home with Ryan, Ryan was about 12 years old and I just looked at that thing and shook my head. He painstakingly scrubbed off the rust, took apart and rebuilt the engine piece by piece, installed new tires, polished the chrome until it gleamed, and painted a classic racing stripe with a number down the center. He’s not a professional car mechanic—so it was a slow process filled with lots of reading materials, YouTube tutorials, rookie mistakes, and whoops-let’s-try-that-again moments.
But Scott had a vision. He could see what the car would look like, eventually, and he could sense what it would feel like to drive it. He wanted that feeling of flying around a racetrack in a car. Not just any car, but a car that he’d built with his own two hands. He wanted that exact experience. No substitutes. No shortcuts. He never lost sight of that vision, year after year after year.
About 8 Saturdays ago, his vision was complete. He got into the driver’s seat, revved the engine, and took the car for its very first lap around the neighborhood.
I stood on the sidewalk, watching him pull out of the garage for the very first time, watching him turn right to circle the block. He had the most brilliant, beaming, radiant, childlike smile on his face. The kind of smile you rarely see on anyone’s face who’s over the age of seven or eight. Absolute joy. Peak happiness. Pride, satisfaction, and delight. The car was running. He’d done it. For real.
Seeing his megawatt smile, I found myself thinking, “That’s what seven years of devotion looks like.”
When’s the last time you caught yourself smiling like that? When’s the last time you felt that kind of full-body, head-to-toe happiness? When’s the last time you devoted yourself to a project that took more than a few weeks to complete, digging into the journey—staying in it, all in, for the long haul?
I love me some instant gratification. I love big results, fast. But watching my Silver Fox toodle around the block at 20 miles per hour in his vintage masterpiece, I gotta say, there’s something to be said for the slow, persistent kind of satisfaction, too.
So… I had the pleasure just yesterday and the day before (this weekend) to see Scott compete in his first “real” race. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that his dream of driving at a lightning-fast speed unfolded so slowly, with such patience.
It took Lin-Manuel Miranda seven years to complete Hamilton. It took Bruce Springsteen six months to write “Born To Run.” It took Julia Child ten years to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Matthew Weiner pitched a little TV show called Mad Men (ever heard of it?) for seven years in Hollywood before it finally got picked up by a network.
Patience pays off—in dollars, in book deals, in Grammy, Tony, Oscar, and Emmy Awards, in blinding smiles that light up the whole room.
Stay in it. Saturday after Saturday.
Show up. It’s GO time.
Show Notes:
What did you want to do when you were a little kid that you could create for yourself today?It’s so easy to decide that you “can’t” have/do/become something because of age or life circumstances.
But check this out….I interviewed the Silver Fox about why he spent 7 years restoring this car.
Other than “because Susan said I could” LOL…. there’s a lesson here for all of us.
You wanna become a race car driver?
GO. DO. THAT.
There’s always a way.
The results are in! Get in on the LIVE Discussion (recorded) here!
