Excerpted from Fire Your Excuses

A Barrier to Be Broken

On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first to break the four-minute mile at Oxford University’s Iffley Road Track by running the race at 3:59.4. Years later, Forbes magazine would declare Bannister’s four-minute mile “the greatest athletic achievement of all time.”

Prior to that historic day, it had been thought that running a four-minute mile might be physically impossible. For the nine years leading up to 1954, the mile record had been stuck at 4:01.3. Once Bannister broke the record, four other runners joined him over the next decade. The fastest mile is now 3:43.13, sixteen seconds faster than Bannister’s record, set in Rome by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999.

Many of the highest barriers you will face on your way to an excuse-less life will appear insurmountable. What life goal feels like your four-minute barrier? What “impossible” barrier looms between you and your own breakthrough?