Last week I watched the RedBull TV documentary on Karl “Speedgoat” Meltzer an ultra trail runner breaking the Appalachian Trail speed record, finishing 2200 miles/3500km in 45 days 22 hours and 38 minutes.

Most people, while seeing the achievement, consider this stupid, pointless, mad. Why go through the physical and mental pain, why waste your time when almost nobody takes notice, when there isn’t even a large monetary reward.

And yet, it’s a perfect example of purpose, of something that makes some people unstoppable versus just plotting along, or worse following a trail of life one choses to accept because they have been told so. Karl made a great point in the video. He said:” My place, my office is here in nature, that’s what I love to do, I don’t envy business people making millions of dollars.” He is genuinely happy following his passion.

Made to be broken, the title can be interpreted in many ways. Karl’s body, made to be broken in a constant effort testing and breaking physiological limits.

And Made to be broken can also be interpreted in breaking rules. Bullshit rules, or Brulesas Vishen Lakhiani calls them. Rules we have been told since we born, rules that have survived centuries and yet are often only a relative truth (like religion) and not an absolute truth (like gravity)

Be sceptical when you question something and you’ve been told it has been always done that way, or its not possible. One thing I have learned, rules, in life as in business are there to be questioned, tested and broken. Only then you will see progress and today’s “impossible” becomes tomorrows new “normal”.

*image by iancorless.org