A Marathon, not a sprint …

Where in your life do you wish things would just hurry up and move faster?

I mean, you thought things would be happening by now and it seems you have to just keep waiting.  Can I get an amen?

And the longer it seems to take, the more you begin to doubt yourself and your ability to accomplish what you had wanted to.

I’ve been there … 

I can relate to the feeling that things seem to be moving along so quickly for others, while you inch along.

The frustration when every time you think you are almost done, and then you realize you need to do something else first.

Why does it seem to happen so naturally for others?

This is where perspective and mindset enter …

Our perspective is what we see in our world around us, and our mindset is what we choose to believe about what we see in the world around us.

Catch those three words? See, choose, believe.  These three words can change everything.

You see, (See what I did there? I digress …) what we see is based on our past, our experiences, and our emotions.

Choose, simply put, is what we decide to believe.  Yup, we literally choose it.

Believe is when we think and act like it is true.

It might be, but more often it isn’t true, it is just a perspective.

Did you notice the change though?  If it is something we see based on our past experiences, and we choose to believe it. 

Well, then we can choose to unbelieve it. 

That is where things start to really change.

When we realize the power we have to really look at whether things, and what we think is truth, or just a patterned perspective.

Let’s bring things back together.

Remember, we want quick change. 

We think others do it faster, better, and easier.

Truth is, they don’t … that is just what we are “seeing” from our perspective.

Social media is a big part of how we come to our conclusions, but I also recognize that we can so easily observe someone do something well, and think it just happened naturally.

We don’t hear about all the struggles, the practice, the fails, and the willingness to get up again and again. 

We also don’t hear about how long it took them.

We just see them finish.

It’s like running a marathon. 

The runners didn’t just get up one morning and decide to run a full marathon (by the way that is 42 kms or 26.2 miles).

They practiced.

They trained.

They ran smaller distances in the beginning, and built up their distance.

I personally know that running marathons takes time, persistence, and consistency.  

I had been running for many years before I even thought it was possible, and it took someone else’s belief in me for me to start believing I could do it.  

In fact, it took me actually beginning and taking the steps before I could even imagine it.

When I expressed my desire to do it “one day”, still not believing I could, a close friend suggested I could run a 10 km run in a few months with her.  

“No way!”, I said to her.  

We started with short 4 km runs, started a group that ran together in training, and began to follow a running schedule.

That’s the power of community.

When you know that someone is waiting for you at a meeting spot, you are much more likely to be there.  

When a few months was up, we as a group not only ran a 10K but we actually ran … and finished … a half marathon!

Step by step, run by run, we did the next thing each day.

The run was not a sprint.

It was not a short, fast tracked goal.

It was a long term, eyes on the finish line, day by day, journey to the finish line.

It was a marathon, not a sprint.

A few years later I finished a big dream of crossing the finish line of the Rock N Roll San Diego full marathon.

This one was all about the personal accomplishment to me.  In fact, it was telling my friend that this was a goal of mine that started the whole thing and began our community and support group of runners.

A sprint is a short, face-paced run where you give it your all for a short period of time.

Both a marathon and a sprint take commitment, practice, and training, but one takes longer and much more perseverance during the run.

That is how we need to look at our dreams and goals

Rarely do our biggest dreams and goals happen quickly, as much as we would love them to.

Some keys that will help us cross that finish line are:

• Keep your eye on the finish line, not the short-term strugggles, or even successes.
• Run with a community, they keep you encouraged … and challenged.  A community helps you see a much accurate perspective then just running on your own will.
• Remember that there are approximately 55,375 steps in a marathon.  Take one at a time and together they will get you there.
• Learn and grow as you go, that is what practice and training is all about.

Remember that:

• Dr. Suess’s first children’s book was rejected by 27 publishers.
• Michael Jordon was cut from his high school basketball team.
• John Grisham’s first novel was turned down by 15 publishers and 30 agents.
• Star Wars was rejected by every movie studio in Hollywood before it was finally produced.
• Walt Disney was once fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas.
• Henry Ford failed and went broke 5 times before beginning the Ford Motor Company.

Our biggest dreams and goals most often come to be by running the marathon, not the sprint.

Keep putting one foot after the other and instead of completing the 10K run you just may finish the full 42 kilometres of a marathon!