SUCCESS | LIFE LESSONS| INSPIRATION
How To Make Hard Things Easy
SUCCESS: The surprising thing most people don’t do
When I started running, I could barely finish a single mile. Just one year later, I ran nearly 3,000 miles across America. How do you make hard things, easy?
“What was impossible, becomes possible. What was hard, becomes easy.”
There is a lot to unpack here, so let me start with the most common question I get because you are probably wondering the same thing, “You did what? Why would you run across America?”
The short answer is because I want to do something extraordinary. I wanted to be someone extraordinary. But the deeper answer is that I am not afraid to die, but I fear not truly living.
When I went from a non-runner to a run across America in just one year, in part, to prove the idea that we have greatness inside of us, that is beyond measure.
How did I go from non-runner to running a marathon a day every day for 100 days with just one year of training?
And how can you apply the same strategies to achieve your bold dreams?
In the beginning of my training, I took more days off than day that ran because that was the limit of my body. As my body slowly adapted, I took fewer days off and I slowly increased my mileage. Over the months, I got stronger and stronger.
In less than a year, I was running 20 miles every day. That was just for the training to get to the starting line for my run across America.
Success is not based on where you start. It is not based on any one day. Success happens with consistently doing the actions that move you towards your goals. Transformation happens with consistency and building the right habits.
There were a lot of bad run training days. There were plenty of days I didn’t want to run, but I did anyway because I understand the role of consistency in achieving goals.
Even when I was running a marathon each day across America, there were many bad days. There were days that I could barely get out of bed. There were days when I couldn’t run and simply walking caused unexplainable pain that I would tear. When I would run, it made me cringe and grunt in torture.
It felt like it would never get better. Like it would last forever. I didn’t realize it at the time, but something truly magical was happening. Something I would only understand in looking back through my experience and transformation into a super human athlete.
Day 21 was the most brutal day of running where my body literally collapsed in the street with five miles left to run. Day 22–53, my body felt like it was getting worse and worse with each day.
That’s where the magic was actually happening, completely unnoticeable to me. I remember the morning of day 54, clearly. When I woke up, I felt a shift in my body. And in my spirit.
Secretly, my body was adapting in an undetectable way.
It was as if my body said, “Okay. I get it you stubborn pain-in-the-ass. You are not going to give up. So let’s do this!”
From that day on, it got noticeably easier and easier until eventually I was running a marathon a day with relative ease. Eventually, it was almost as easy as a casual training run.
Where was the magic?
My body was getting stronger and stronger, day by day, even though I could not feel it, see it, or notice it. But it was happening. The magic is invisible at first and then one day you wake and you are literally a different person.
Success isn’t an overnight metamorphosis. It is months, sometimes years of dedication, discomfort, and pushing through the resistance and pain. Success is sticking with something even when it is boring or seems so far out of reach or impossible. Success happens when nobody is watching and it is just you mastering your craft day after day.
If you cut open a cocoon so a butterfly doesn’t go through the difficult process of squeezing out, it will not fly. It cannot fly because the butterfly needs that pressure to squeeze out the excess fluid waste from its wings. If not, the extra fluid will make the butterfly too heavy, and it is impossible for the butterfly to fly.
If you want to do something epic and be someone extraordinary, you will need to grow beyond what is comfortable. You have to go through the difficult metamorphosis just like the butterfly.
I didn’t worry much about the bad days, the unmotivated days, or the painful days. I focused on my goal. I focused on doing what had to be done that day. I stuck to the simple plan. Run one marathon each day. If I did that, everything else would take care of itself.
That is exactly what happens when you are committed to your goals and dreams.
What was impossible, becomes possible.
What was hard, becomes easy.
What if you want to become a brilliant writer? What do you have to do? Write every single day. You will build your writing muscle and get stronger. Writing great will become easier.
What if you want to become a profitable writer? Write every day using the strategies of a profitable writer. There are many talented writers, but few earn a healthy living. What’s the difference? The goal.
The reason many people never achieve anything great is because they want the instant gratification.
I’ve studied the actions of many people to see what it takes to become a success because it frustrated me that my success was taking so much time.
I studied people who seemed to have overnight stratospheric success. Out of nowhere, suddenly they were wildly and amazingly successful.
Do you know what I found?
Not a single person had anything close to an overnight success.
The shortest success happened in four years of working relentlessly with no recognition before the big break happened.
Most overnight successes take 5 to 10 years before the world learned who they are.
Every single one of them practiced, worked, and mastered their talent for thousands of hours. Day after day without any crowds, nobody cheering them on, no awards, and overcoming setback after setback, and failure after failure.
If you focus on the short game of instant gratification, you will stay stuck. Guaranteed.
Focus on the long game of greatness.
Keep your head down and master your greatness, even when nobody is watching.
When you stick to the plan long enough focused on the end game, you will discover a greatness inside of you that is beyond measure. Beyond what seems possible today. Beyond your greatest imagination.
If you look at my bucket list or my list of goals to accomplish, just a few months before I decided to run across America, you won’t find a single entry about a 3,000 mile run across America. You won’t even find anything about running a single marathon.
It wasn’t even on my radar.
I had no idea of the greatness that was inside of me or what I was about to do. I had no idea of what was possible and what I would accomplish at 40 years old as a brand new runner.
If you want to lose weight, go to the gym, eat healthy and stick it out day after day. If you want to be wealthy, build your business and wealth everyday. If you want an amazing relationship, be the person who makes a great relationship, every day.
It won’t seem like much is happening in the beginning, but after sticking to the plan and taking the right actions for long enough, you hit a tipping point and everything changes.
It will start slow, but then the magic happens and the universe will conspire to help you succeed.
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