In 1976, a breathtaking photo appeared on the cover of a flying magazine. The picture was a low-altitude aerial photo of Tikal, the lost city of the Maya, deep in the Yucatan jungle of Guatemala.

Although I was just out of college, flat broke, living in a closet-sized apartment, I felt compelled to make this Indiana Jones-type journey to Tikal…Ihad to get that same low-level aerial shot. But something curious happened. The project expanded to include the Amazon.

At first glance the whole idea seemed ludicrous. A private airplane expedition would cost thousands of dollars. I barely had a pot to pee in let alone buzz jungle archives in a rented Cessna.

But I did have a twenty year-old Frigidaire in the apartment.  That scuffed up, off-white icebox would help serve as a mechanism to give a silly out of reach dream a shot of motivational clarity.

Reaching this focal point involved a simple two-step process that rivaled grade-school simplicity.

I took a clean sheet of butcher paper and with a big fat felt pen, wrote out one word: Amazon.

Then taped the sign at eye-level on the ice-box door, which became an in-your-face reminder.

     “The Machine”

Nothing new, right?  Many of us do this all the time. But wait a second. Take a closer look. Do you see it yet? Use a magnifying glass if you must.

It’s impossible to see, because there’s nothing else on the door. Nothing. The word “Amazon” is king and not a peep competes.

We set goals all the time, but they often crash and burn. The culprit? Too much other junk and “competition” screaming for our attention.

Want more horsepower under the hood? Find your “Goal Machine”. Some obnoxiously obvious, in-your-face real estate to post on that’s impossible to ignore.

Then try this experiment: Kill the competition.Clean the slate of all other distractions, at least temporarily. Pick one, and only one, major life changing, champagne-popping type of zowie-wowie power goal.
Whether for business or personal, crank up the ‘Big G’ to level ludicrous. Judge not the degree of difficulty but rather strive for clarity of concept. Scribble it out, factor in a bit of relentless review, and prepare to fly. You’ll likely hit your target and in doing so, increase the odds of repeating the process many more times in the future.

Ungawa!

Did we get that low altitude shot of Tikal? Well, National Geographic wouldn’t buy it for a dime. “Not centered” (see below). But I thank my lucky Frigidaire for a lesson in competition-crushing simplicity.