Tag: achieving

The Robbie Hart Insight

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 70 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

I went to college on a full music scholarship. Bass baritone. Show choir. The whole deal. Singing and dancing literally paid for my education.

I sang in everything I could find — college choir, a professional chorale that was just starting up, church worship teams, a summer-long ministry tour where I sang at a youth camp for over two months. By the end of that summer, I was sung out in ways I didn’t even know were possible.

And when I got back to campus that fall, I realized something had shifted.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t sing anymore. I could. It was that the environment around music had started to change me into someone I didn’t want to be. The music department had started a critical spirit in me — a snobbish perfectionism that I was fighting without realizing it. And I didn’t have the tools at that age to separate the pursuit of excellence from the culture of superiority.

If I’d had the work ethic I have now — the ability to self-assess and improve — I probably would have excelled. But at nineteen, I didn’t have that in my toolbox. And honestly, I didn’t need to stay. That path wasn’t going to serve me. I just didn’t have an adult come alongside me at that moment to help me figure out what should come next.

So music faded. Gradually. Not with a dramatic exit — just a slow drift into other things. I even spent a season as a music pastor, where singing was my entire job. And it took the fun out of it completely.

Years later, I found my way back to performing. Not as a career. Just for the love of it. I joined a theater group in the DFW area and ended up playing Maurice in Beauty and the Beast — ten shows, not an empty seat in the audience.

Something was different this time. I was just there to do my best and enjoy the ride.

In the version of the show we performed, the original script had included a duet between Belle and Maurice. But the musical’s writers had replaced it with a short solo that Maurice sings as he gets lost in the woods. The removed the duet completely. They did it because the duet weakened Belle’s character — it undercut her agency in the story.

Would I have loved singing a duet with the actress playing Belle? Absolutely. She was an incredible singer. But it’s not what the story needed. It’s not what the character needed. It told a better story without it.

And I was completely okay with that.

That’s when I knew I was a different person. The younger version of me would have been devastated. This version understood that the talent exists to serve the story — not the other way around.

I’ve been thinking about this because I just started reading Todd Henry’s Die Empty, and he talks about identifying your through line — the thread that runs through everything you do and connects it into a single coherent purpose.

My through line isn’t singing. It never was. Singing was a tool. A resource. A gift I was given that served me well for a season and still sits on the bench ready to be called up when the moment is right.

But it’s not the thing.

The thing is what I’m doing right now — writing, creating, documenting, building something that helps people see what they already have and use it on purpose. That’s the through line. Phase Defiant, the 7-40 Challenge, BiblePictures365, this blog — they’re all expressions of it. The singing, the thirty voice impressions I can do, the odd jobs I do around my house — those are resources. They’re talents. They just don’t run the show.

There’s a moment in The Wedding Singer where Robbie Hart, played by Adam Sandler, realizes something about himself. He used to play in a band. He performed at weddings. But what he really wanted wasn’t to be the guy on stage. He just wanted to express the feelings and create the things. He wanted to write songs people loved. He didn’t have to be the one up there singing them.

That’s me.

I’ve written over fifty songs. I’ve performed on stages large and small. I can sing, and I can do it well enough to hold my own. But I don’t need to be the guy on stage. I need to be the guy at the desk — writing the story, building the framework, documenting the journey, creating something that lasts longer than a performance.

If you’re reading this and you’re in that spot — talented at something, maybe even genuinely good at it, but sensing deep down that it’s not your thing — here’s what I’d tell you:

There’s a difference between what you’re talented at and what matters to you.

Start with what you value. Your family. Your faith. The work that makes you come alive. The problem you can’t stop thinking about. Then ask yourself which of your talents actually serve those values — and which ones are just things you can do.

Your talents are resources, not assignments. The through line decides which ones get deployed. And having a real gift sit on the bench isn’t waste — it’s wisdom.

Let the story decide what it needs. Not your ego.

Day 69 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer
✅ Walking
✅ Reading (Die Empty — Todd Henry)
✅ Calories tracked
✅ Water (100 oz)
✅ Gratitude
✅ Exercise
✅ BiblePictures365
✅ Creative hour

740Challenge #DieEmpty #ToddHenry #ThroughLine #TalentVsCalling #TheWeddingSinger #RobbieHart #ShowYourWork #Transformation #LivingProof #DayByDay #LifeOnPurpose

Day 60: The Four-Day Hike

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 60 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

A long time ago, when I first got interested in being a writer, I thought about the kind of characters I wanted to create. I wanted heroes. Strong ones. Ones who couldn’t be beat.

It took me years to realize that a character worth reading isn’t a perfect character. It’s not someone who can’t lose. It’s someone who has to face something real, something that might actually beat them, and find a way through it. Even Superman has family issues. Nobody gets a free pass — not even in fiction.

I think that’s why Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years hit me differently this time.

The first time I read it, my son had just been born. I was the sole breadwinner for a young family — and I want to be careful with that phrase. I don’t say sole job-haver. My wife has had one of the hardest jobs there is, being a stay-at-home mom and running our household for years. But I was in survival mode. Working everything I could to provide.

So when Miller wrote about watching too much TV, buying things he didn’t need, drifting through a comfortable life without meaning — I didn’t connect with it. I didn’t have the money to waste or the time to drift. I was running full speed just to keep up.

I didn’t understand his struggle with fatherlessness, because I have a very good dad. I didn’t understand his hang-ups with relationships, because I got married early and never struggled to want to be in one. I didn’t understand his need to sit and contemplate everything to the nth degree.

I read the book. I enjoyed the narrative. I put it down.

But now, all these years later, with a lot more life under my belt and a lot more clarity on who I am, I can empathize. I can put myself in someone else’s shoes in a way I couldn’t before, because I have so many more experiences to draw from.

I can see how you fall into routines without noticing. I can see how you live vicariously through other people’s stories instead of writing your own. I can see how you’d avoid meeting a parent you haven’t seen in thirty years. I can see how working up the courage to pursue someone could feel impossible.

The book didn’t change. I did.

And the stuff Miller says about story — about living intentionally, about doing things on purpose, about making your life mean something — I always understood that on some level. But I segmented it. I applied it to my day job and nowhere else. I’d tell myself I wanted a side hustle, wanted to write, wanted to build something. But then I’d pour all my energy into the work that paid the bills and let everything else sit in notebooks.

Two years ago, in a different city, with a different job, under very different circumstances, I don’t think I would have been ready for this book to hit me the way it’s hitting me now.

Miller tells a story about hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. He arrived in Peru a couple of days before the hike started. The town they were in sat at 11,000 feet — the same altitude as Mount Hood, a mountain he could see snow on from Portland every day. Just being there made it hard to breathe.

That detail stopped me, because I remembered standing at the top of Pike’s Peak in June of 1998. I was with a college group. My future bride and I were in a van together — on the top of the mountain in shorts. It was cold. So cold that we decided to stay in the van. On top of that, the air was so thin at the top that I fell asleep. Couldn’t hold my eyes open. I know the feeling Miller is describing.

Miller and his group started hiking, and they reached a point along a river where the guide told them it was a six-hour walk to Machu Picchu along the trade route. That’s how people used to get there. Easy. Flat. Direct.

Then the guide pointed in a different direction and said the hike they were taking would be four days. The reason? The ruler of Machu Picchu once declared that the more painful the journey, the more the travelers would appreciate their arrival.

Four days later, Miller wrote that the journey had made them different characters than they would have been otherwise. The journey changed them. Had they taken the river route — the six-hour shortcut — they would have missed the beauty, missed the meaning, missed the culture, missed the experience of doing something so physically taxing and mentally draining and still making it through to celebrate at the peak.

I feel like that’s what this journey is.

The easy way would be to do seven habits, tick the boxes, and float along the river. And honestly, that’s close to what I was doing for years — circling the same goals in different notebooks, never building the infrastructure to actually move.

But I’m noticing something as I lean into these seven habits. As I lean into questions I’ve been asking for years. As I lean into being more creative than I ever thought I could be. As I lean into my skills, and into that nudge that says keep going.

I’m transforming into a different character.

A character who expects more. A character who wants to risk more. A character who won’t find it satisfying to play it safe anymore.

I’ve had my inciting incident. And now it’s time to live a better story.

Does the book read differently because it’s good? Yes, it’s a very good book. The foundation Miller is standing on — that if we’ll willingly sit for hours watching a character overcome obstacles in a movie, it makes complete sense that living our own lives with the same kind of intentional effort would be just as meaningful — that’s a powerful argument.

But the real reason the book hits different is because I’m different. When I was younger and just trying to survive, I didn’t realize I had the capacity to start building something beyond the paycheck. I had the desire. I had the ideas. What I didn’t have was the organizational structure to execute.

That’s what sixty days of the 7-40 Challenge has given me. Not motivation. Structure. And because of that structure, I’ve been able to do more in two months and six days than I did in several years otherwise.

The book is the same $12 it was the first time I bought it. The reader is the variable.

Day 60 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer ✅ Exercise (Workout C with Trey) ✅ Walking ✅ Reading (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) ✅ Calories tracked ✅ Water (100 oz) ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour

Sixty days down. Two hundred and twenty to go. The four-day hike continues.

Day 57: A Character Is What He Does

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 17
Tuesday, March 3, 2026

I remember hearing Randy Travis for the first time when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. Late ‘80s. This was right after he’d gotten big — Forever and Ever, Amen was everywhere. But when you grew up the way I did, you didn’t just hear the singles. You got the whole album. You listened to every track. And you picked up songs that most people never heard because they only listened to the radio.

There’s a song on that same album called “Good Intentions” — and I can still sing the chorus almost 40 years later:

I hear tell that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, Mama, my intentions were the best. There’s lots of things in my life I’d just as soon not mention. Looks like I turned out like all the rest. But Mama, my intentions were the best.

That chorus came back to me today during my reading.

I’m still working through Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and he’s unpacking what he learned turning his memoir into a movie script. The screenwriters and story experts taught him something that sounds simple but cuts deep:

A character is not what he says. A character is not what he thinks. A character is what he does.

Think about every book you’ve loved. Every movie that stayed with you. The characters that endure aren’t the ones who talk big. They’re the ones who act. We don’t remember them for their speeches. We remember them for their choices.

If you’ve read the Harry Potter books, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Severus Snape, judged by what he said and how he appeared, was a villain. Cold, cruel, seemingly loyal to the enemy. But when you see the full arc — what he actually did — he’s the hero of the entire story. He was a mole inside enemy territory for over a decade, driven by love for a woman he could never have, protecting her son even though that son reminded him of the man he hated most. Strip away what Snape said. Look at what Snape did. He was one of the bravest characters in the story.

Miller’s point isn’t just about screenwriting. It’s about how we live.

Are we the character who talks about what we’re going to do? Or are we the character who does it?

I spent years saying I wanted to be a writer. I told people I was going to write a book. I had notebooks full of ideas going back twenty years. But I wasn’t a writer. Not really. I became a writer when I sat down and actually wrote the book. The doing made it real. The wanting never did.

I can say I want to be a good husband. I can say it every day. But until I actually love my wife and put her needs above my own — consistently, not just when it’s convenient — am I really a good husband? Or am I just a guy with good intentions?

Randy Travis had it right. The road to hell is paved with them.

This is why the 7-40 Challenge matters to me. It’s not about the checklist. It’s about becoming the character who does the thing instead of the character who talks about the thing.

Fifty-seven days in, I haven’t missed one. Not because I’m special. Because I decided that the gap between what I say and what I do needed to close. And the only way to close it is to do it. Every single day.

So I have to ask myself — and I’m asking you too: What is the character you want to play in your life? Are you doing the thing, or just talking about the thing?

Because a character is what he does. And good intentions don’t count.

Day 57 — Seven for Seven

See you tomorrow for Day 58.

Day 56: The Hero Can’t Be the Loser

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 16
Monday, March 2, 2026

I’m rereading Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and he tells a story that I can’t stop thinking about.

A friend of his had a daughter who’d started dating a bad kid and smoking pot. Miller, fresh from Robert McKee’s story workshop, said something that sounds simple but lands like a hammer: “She’s stuck in a bad story.”

His friend didn’t get it at first. But Miller explained the framework he’d learned — a story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. And this friend realized something uncomfortable: he wasn’t presenting a very engaging story for his family. There was no mission, no purpose, nothing bigger than the routine. So his daughter went looking for meaning somewhere else — and she found it in a boy who wasn’t treating her well. At least he was telling her a story where she mattered.

The friend signed up to raise $25,000 to build an orphanage in Mexico. He didn’t have $25,000. His wife was shocked. His daughter was skeptical. But the whole family ended up rallying around it — and here’s the punchline that Miller drops:

“A girl who’s acting in the role of the hero can’t be in a relationship with a loser.”

It just doesn’t work. Because when you find meaning in your own story, when you know your own worth, you can’t lower yourself to be treated poorly. The bad relationship couldn’t survive the better story.

I’ve been thinking about how this applies to what I’m building.

The 7-40 Challenge is, at its core, a decision to tell a better story. Seven habits, every day, for 280 days. Not because checking boxes changes your life — but because the discipline of showing up daily puts you in a different role. You stop being the person things happen to. You start being the person who makes things happen.

And here’s what I’m discovering 56 days in: when you start playing the hero in your own story, it gets really hard to involve yourself in the things where you’re the loser.

The junk food that used to be easy to justify? Harder to eat when you’ve tracked your calories for eight straight weeks and watched the scale move 13 pounds. The excuse to skip a workout? Harder to make when you’ve got 56 days of unbroken execution behind you. The temptation to play it small, to hide, to keep your ideas in a drawer? Harder to give in to when you’ve written 56 blog posts, worked on two novels, lost 13 pounds and have the realization that you’re just getting started.

The better story crowds out the worse one. Not because you become perfect — but because you become aware. You see the choice for what it is. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Miller’s friend didn’t rescue his daughter by lecturing her. He didn’t ground her or take her phone away. He gave the family a mission. He gave them a story worth living. The daughter rescued herself — because the better story made the bad one impossible to tolerate.

I wrote recently about what it feels like to drift through life without a plan. I compared it to floating face down in water, only lifting your head from time to time to see where the current has taken you. That’s how most people live — pulled by the tide, reacting instead of choosing, going wherever the flow sends them.

To live differently, you have to put your feet down. You have to stand up and let the current run around you. And then you have to decide which direction you’re going to walk.

Nobody’s coming to make this easier. There’s no rich relative showing up with a check. No lottery win. No miraculous rescue. You either tell the story or somebody else tells it for you — and you’re just a character in theirs.

I’m 56 days into telling my own story. It’s connected to everything — my work, my family, my health, my writing, my faith. I can’t compartmentalize it anymore. I have to be the same person at work that I am at home. I have to give the same effort to the things I love that I give to the things I’m paid to do. Because all of it is part of the legacy I leave behind. All of it is part of the story I choose to tell.

If I start to play the hero, it’s really hard to involve myself in things where I’m the loser.

And those are my thoughts for today.

Day 56 — Seven for Seven

See you tomorrow for Day 57.

There Is No Map

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 52 — The 7-40 Challenge

February 26, 2026

I’m still working through Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and I either wasn’t paying attention the first time I read this book, or I just wasn’t ready for it.

Godin shares what he calls his favorite bad review — someone critiquing his book Tribes. The reviewer said Godin spent all this time talking about people with good ideas and how they could spread those ideas and made it sound so easy. But then the reviewer complained that Godin never provides a how-to. No step-by-step guide. No blueprint for becoming this kind of leader.

Godin’s response? That’s the point. There is no map.

When I heard that, I felt something click that I’ve been circling for years. Because I have been that reviewer. I’ve read Godin’s work and felt simultaneously inspired and annoyed. I could feel the grind between wanting to be what he described and having absolutely no idea how to get there.

But here’s what I’m realizing at Day 52 that I couldn’t see before: it’s not completely true that I didn’t know how. I just didn’t realize that the principles I was applying at work — the ones I was crushing with — were the same principles I should have been applying to my own life and my own projects.

Let me explain.

Back in the DFW area, I was working as a data governance specialist. I was doing good work. Gaining customer trust. Improving data flow. Making initiatives succeed. But the people around me were getting promoted, and I wasn’t. So I asked my manager the question: how do I get promoted?

His answer was ambiguous at best. Something about being involved in a larger project. Contributing at a higher level. And in my mind, I was contributing. But not on anything high-profile enough to get noticed.

I had two options. Whine about it and stay put, or lift my gaze and figure out how to get to that bigger project. There was no map for that. Nobody handed me a flowchart that said “do these six things and you’ll be promoted in eighteen months.” But when the opportunity for a bigger project came, I recognized it. I grabbed it with both hands. And by the time I was done, I’d gone from data governance specialist to data management advisor for the company.

Looking back, that’s the whole lesson. There was no map. But there was a framework — a set of principles I was already living by at work. Solve the problem. Own the outcome. Show up consistently. Build trust through character, not credentials. I just hadn’t translated those principles to the rest of my life yet.

That’s where the frustration lives for most of us. We want a map. We want someone to hand us a set of directions and promise that if we follow them, everything works out. But that’s not how any of this works. It’s not cartography. It’s a series of decisions made over time in response to things nobody else has encountered in exactly the way you have.

So it’s not that we want a map. It’s that we want a framework — a way to process the information that gets thrown at us. We want a set of habits. We want to name the things that matter and start pursuing them.

That’s what the 7-40 Challenge is. It’s not a map. It’s a compass. Seven habits aren’t directions to a destination. They’re tools for navigating whatever wilderness you’re in.

And I think this is why the Bible says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. It’s not that you haven’t accepted what God has offered. It’s that your journey with Him is different from anyone else’s. Your response to Him will be different. The principles are universal, but the path is individual. That’s true in faith. It’s true in business. It’s true in transformation.

I’ve had mentors who wandered through similar wilderness. Dave Ramsey taught me to handle money. Dan Miller — who wrote 48 Days to the Work You Love before he passed away — helped me see that passion and entrepreneurship could coexist. Godin has been pushing me to think differently for over a decade. But none of them walked through my wilderness. They gave me enough to start cutting my own trail.

Twenty years ago, the teacher was there. The student wasn’t ready. Now, having been through two cancer battles, corporate environments that tested every skill I had, a marriage that’s lasted 27 years, and a productivity explosion over the last 52 days — I can’t imagine going back to where I was. I see the man I’ve come from. I see where I’m going. And I realize that what felt like delay was actually foundation. Character. Work ethic. Know-how built across a lot of different areas.

The foundation is firm now. And because of that, I can finally hear what Godin’s been saying all along.

There is no map. There never was. But there’s a compass, a set of habits, and a God who’s been with me the whole time.

Day 52. Still cutting trail.