Great things take time
I suspect I am writing today’s newsletter just for myself. It is the message that I need to hear.
These past few months we’ve been focusing on improving my running form. There is so much that I need to fix. I lean forward too much, I don’t lift my chin enough, my shoulders are too much forward, I don’t lift my knees enough, my shoulders rock, or sway, too much, my cadence is too low and I heel strike. In short: I don’t do anything right… (It is not true, but sometimes that is how it feels)
Trying to fix any of the above is like convincing the elastic in my Palazzo pants to not fold double or roll inside. I can stretch and straighten the elastic before getting dressed, but the moment I have it on something has rolled or folded again.
Finding the patience to slowly and systematically straighten the bundled elastic is a challenge. Especially because I also wish to see results – just like anyone else.
There was a post I scrolled past on Facebook a while back that went something like this:
One day a woman saw Picasso sitting in a restaurant drawing on a serviette. When he was done she approached him and asked if she could buy the serviette from him.
“Sure,” he said, “you can buy it for $20,000.”
“But it only took you two minutes to draw it!” she exclaimed.
“No, it took me my entire life.”
The biggest enemy of motivation is probably impatience. It is easy to remain motivated when we can see results from the work that we do, but much more difficult when the results don’t come.
When starting something new quick wins and improvements are usually plenty. But as time goes by our bodies become used to the “something new”, and we hit a plateau or even take a few steps back. Remaining patient while consistently sticking to a plan or working on becoming better at something, without that immediate feedback, is hard.
Hard as it might be to remember when stuck in the trenches, and as easy as it is to forget when we witness the product of greatness: Great things take time.
One of the things I love about my running coach is how she keeps pointing this out to me. She’ll say something like: “Look at how well xxx keeps her shoulders steady. We’ve been working on that since last year November.”
When are you likely to quit? What is it that will keep you soldiering on?
