Stop. Start. Over.
Seems self-defeating to have to stop… just to start. In
life…shouldn’t it be more about changing directions, or giving some stuff up
and taking others on, not simply stopping and starting??? Don’t follow? Let me explain.
I heard a great quote once that was referring to training and never giving up
when working towards your goals, “If you don’t stop, you never have to start
over”. It’s a bit paraphrased, but the idea is that you expend a lot of energy
starting over and it can suck to start over because you never really get
anywhere if you are always starting over. No matter how many times I start a
training plan, if I keep starting over... it won’t get me to finish a race…so according
to this motivating quote, if you just continued to keep trudging through it,
overcoming obstacles and finding solutions to problems that arise, then you
keep working towards your goal and you don’t stop and the result of that is
that you will always have the forward motion to reward your efforts. And as long
as you keep moving forward, even if it’s slowly, you are not falling behind,
right?
Life, fate, God, whatever you may believe it was, just
offered me the chance to stop and start over. A blessing in disguise? An
expensive re-route? A dream finally come true? I’m not sure…but it’s a clean
slate. I was trudging forward with relationships, work, a home, and other items
toward a goal I wanted. Well a goal that was slowly being taken over and being
made blurry by the things I was trudging. Not that they were bad and not that
they were good things…they were things in the way…helpful some days, unhelpful
other days…those were the things I needed to trudge through to feel the weight
of life…to know that I was connected to others, to know that I have talents and
gifts that amount to good in different facets of my life. When you are trudging
through them all you can forget that they are not trying to force you to leave
your goal behind, or to put it aside, but rather to show you that when you
decide to follow that dream or to chase that medal at the finish line of a
marathon, it’s because you chose it.
So, while the sentiment of “don’t give up”, “ keep pushing
through it” is a positive enforcer that you should never quit and you should
stick to the fight, I think wiping the slate clean, because you elect to or are
forced to, can shed light onto how you are going to utilize your time, gifts,
and energy. I ran the November half marathon in Seattle…I hurt myself. I kept
running and training all with the pain in my leg/foot. I was able to do just
enough to get me to be able to make it through the half marathon in May. But I
ended up even more hurt and scared my running career was over than if i had stopped and regrouped. I was in so much
pain and with a tight leg wrap for about a month completely unable to run. In
essence I was forced to stop. Not cool.
But because I stopped I now have to start over with my training. And now
as I sit in my running clothes I realized that if you never have the world
force you to stop, you miss out on the opportunity to re-evaluate what you are
trudging through. When it’s forced, when you have a weight limit on suitcases,
when you have a dollar limit on your budget, when your bucket of feelings can only
hold so much, you have to take in only what you value and you have to put out
into the world only what you can give. So a better quote…more elaborate and
less succinct but more honest and a better reflection of the true state of such
complex beings that ninjas are, would be… “If
you don’t [choose to] stop [and truly re-evaluate what you trudge through on
the daily, the world will force it upon you], you never [have to give up
everything at once to do so, but you always] have [the power and the tools] to
start over”
