02/05/2024
What matters most in life?
I guess if you ask this question to a 100 people you’ll get a 100 different answers.
The easiest answer is whatever works for you.
But if possible please allow me to share what has worked for me.
Here’s a pic of a 5k stair challenge race I recently finished just this past Saturday. Approximately 3k of the race was going up and down stairs in a local event center here in my current city.
I post this not to brag but to hopefully inspire and tell you that I have never been the biggest, the fastest or the strongest. Not even close.
In this race I didn’t finish in the top 10, or top 50, or even top 100 for that matter. Not even top 150.
I didn’t “win” by societal definitions of winning, meaning coming in first.
In fact, I finished 173/252 overall and 14/17 for my age bracket 50-54.
I won’t mention my time becasue for me it’s not about time. That’s not why I run or do these races either.
It’s about commiting. It’s about showing up for the things that are important to you.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t train for this race becasue truth be told I’m always training.
But more truth be told I didn’t prepare for this race at all. I learned about it only a few days before, and signed up just the day before.
I had no idea of what to expect, but you know what? It didn’t matter…
The night before and morning of, I set my mindset and intention to “I’m going to absolutely crush this race no matter what!”
I kept repeating that to myself over and over before I went to sleep and all that morning.
Key being no matter what!
Setting your mindset for the results you want is a big part of what matters most in life.
What results do you want for your life and does your mindset match the results you desire?
The results I wanted was simply to crush this race, based on my own definitions of what that meant for me, not on what it meant for society.
Define your own standards and meanings to your life, it’s not about what society says they should be for you and your life.
It’s about what you say they should be. Again that’s what matters most to me and for my life.
I should also say I ran this race naked (lol not literally), but in the running world running a race naked means no watches or timers or anything on my wrist.
I had no clue how far I had run, or how far I still had to go, or what my time was. Lots of fear and uncertainty there. Should I push myself here or hold back a little bit knowing how far the end is?
What would you do?
I chose to keep going, and keep a steady pace. Knowing eventually I would get to the end. In spots here and there I pushed the gas a little more, and in other spots I backed off the gas pedal a little so to speak.
I listened to and trusted my instincts.
The same is true for you. Are you listening to and trusting your instincts?
In life, does it matter how far you’ve come or how far you still have to go?
Isn’t having a little bit of fear and uncertainty a good thing? For me it requires me to trust my instincts and intuition more than ever.
And again for me that’s what matters most in life.
It’s not about how far you have come, or how far you still have to go, it’s about trusting your instincts and intuition, knowing that if you keep going, eventually, you will get to the end.
And maybe that’s the moral of my story here.
If you’ve read this far then thank you. Thank you for sticking it out with me.
By the way, I very much won this race in my own mind (but not in society’s mind).
How?
1) I signed up and committed
2) I showed up
3) I played full out
4) I trusted my instincts and intuition
5) I kept a steady pace, pushing myself harder when my instincts told me to push it, and backing off a little again when my instincts told me to back off a little.
6) I kept going not knowing how much longer or further I had to go, knowing that if I simply just kept going that I would eventually cross the finish line.
This is how I won.
This is how you will win too.
Regardless of where you “place” in life (remember I placed 14/17 and 173/252 overall).
I can honestly say out of the 50+ races I’ve done, I won this race more than any other race I’ve ever done for all the reasons I mentioned above.
Thank you Fleet Feet Tulsa for an incredible race!!
See you next year!
Happy inspirational Monday all!
Brad
