Making Your Mark

Every once and a while people will see me walking around with a limp and ask, “what happened to you?” People often assume I must have sprained or broken something in my leg, but my limping is usually directly related to the jogging I put myself through the previous day and my body is sore from all the work – I’m getting old.

When talking about running/jogging I often hear people say how they use their time to think about “everything”. When I run I am usually thinking, “oh crap! Keep going, this hurts, don’t die, keep going, you can do it”.

Lets try to get specific - what is everything? Are we thinking about work, school, family, friends, health, money, sports, books, jokes, TV shows, laundry, dinner, or commercials? If you stop to think about it – everything is a lot. I think we need to change thinking about everything to thinking about “our” everything. When we focus our mind has the opportunity to work through the things that are important to us – our problems at work, dinner for the family, paying the bills, talking with friends, thinking about family, and the list goes on.

If you think about it – it makes sense. In life our aim is to fix a series of problems (a.k.a. everything). Our ability to fix these problems will lead to a less stressful life, but ultimately we do the best when we work on one thing at a time.

At this exact moment of epiphany during my run I stepped right into fresh asphalt and lost all train of thought. My cries returned, “oh crap, I’m tired, keep going, you can do it”. The more I thought about the footprint I left behind in the asphalt the more I thought it to be a fitting metaphor – If you can narrow your thoughts/goals to the specifics your opportunity to leave your mark/achieve success increases.

Spending all your energy trying to solve everything at once will lead you to solve nothing. But, just like when your running, if you can remain focused on that single idea your chances for success increase.

If all else fails – you can try my mantra, “oh crap, this hurts, keep going, don’t stop…”