I get rejected. A lot. I fail. A lot. I look down. A lot.
But I keep going. Because I have an unyielding belief.
One of the athletes I coach recently reminded me of what I wrote in THE INNER RUNNER:
“I often tell myself, as I suspect many runners do, that the discomfort of doing a hard interval workout or tempo run, or of running 10 miles in the heat, will be worth it when it’s time to go to the starting line ready to race. I’ve run in both very hot and very cold weather many times in my life and have done innumerable hard workouts, and I ask myself, “Why am I doing this? Why put myself through such discomfort all the time?” But of course I already know the answer before I ask myself the question: Because it will be worth it. Runners run the miles in the cold and in the heat and the intervals on the track, because we believe it will be worth it. We tell ourselves, “By doing this workout, it will help me when I go to the starting line.”
But it may not. There are no guarantees, after all. Despite the miles in the heat or the rain or the snow, despite the hard workouts, despite all of the discomfort that goes into the training, we may still not get the result we are chasing. That’s life. I’ve never been as fast as I’ve wanted to be, nor have most runners I know. But in those moments of discomfort, we believe it’s worth it. We hold on to the belief, because that’s all we really have. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. But we have to believe that anything is possible.”
Of course, this passage is more than just about running. Running is merely a metaphor, and a good one at that, for life. Keep believing and keep working. And keep dealing with discomfort. It’s the belief, the ability to imagine the possibility, that makes us human.
Tag a friend who needs to hear this and read THE INNER RUNNER.