I confess—I hate working out. But health issues in my 40s forced me to make my long-forgotten gym membership a bigger priority. However, I never anticipated how many business lessons I’d learn at the gym and how it would help me stay in the right mindset.
This is NOT an article about how you should get in physical shape, but I do want to share some realizations I made while doing it.
I recently made a choice to stop letting the stair climbing machine intimidate me after an entire year of looking up at it. You have to climb up these huge stairs and you’re about 5 feet off the ground when you start. Since I’m only 5′-1″, this always looked like a huge climb and I worried it would go too fast, or I’d trip and fall off.
So just deciding to climb on the machine was a bit of a victory for me, though to bystanders I’m sure it was no big deal. (Kind of like the things you do to start your business, right?)
Anyway, I got up there and started climbing stairs and pushing as hard as I could. I was about 10 minutes into it with another 10 minutes to go, and I was already tired and sweating. All I could think about was how late it was, how many errands I had to run, how I really needed to get back to my home office—I was so ready to quit.
But, mostly I was thinking “I can’t do this—I’ll never make it!”
Then I started looking down at the steps below me as I put one foot in front of another. And I realized with great clarity that with every step, I was walking into my future. I could take that step saying, “I can’t do this—it’s too hard!” or I could take it saying, “I can do this!”
That’s actually how it is with anything. We literally and figuratively walk into our future with every step, and we are the only ones who can shape what it will look like. If we go forward saying, “I can do this!” we bring infinitely more ENERGY to what we do.
Amazing things may be waiting around the next corner if you just keep at it and stay committed. Keep telling yourself, “I can do this” and live the truth of that even if there are doubts that keep you up at night.
You just keep putting one foot in front of the other and step into your future.
What choices have you made that felt empowering? How do you keep yourself motivated and get back on track when you’re feeling tired, scared or overwhelmed?
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