You will always learn more from finishing a task than from beginning a new one.
You’ll learn about how tough you are. Especially when it’s easy to generate legitimate reasons for stopping.
In those moments – when you make the decision to finish that task, even though you’re in pain, you suddenly discover all the answers you thought you would learn from lessons along the way.
It suddenly becomes clear what you need to do.
Your mission becomes more powerful to you.
The challenges standing in your way become less scary. You develop toughness that you didn’t ever think possible.
Over the last few years, I’ve run close to 16,000 miles on roads and trails. Over mountains and through muddy water.
I often joke with my team that my second book should be entitled “Everything I Know I Learned Running”. I love running. It gives me time to decompress. It forces me to be honest about my own abilities.
But sometimes, running is hard. Especially on race day.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been training or how big your goal is, you want to do well.
The beginning of the race is exciting. But it doesn’t take long for you to be forced into making a tough decision about your level of effort.
When you’re gasping and wheezing for air there are plenty of good reasons why you should slow down–or even stop. It feels right.
What feels better is finishing.
That joy of knowing that you’ve been through a dark place and come out the other side. That you could have quit and didn’t.
That is the reason why you finish. Because to pull it off, you have to grow and struggle, suffer, evolve, and become a better version of you.
Which is everything that you were wanting to accomplish when you started the race. You just didn’t know it was going to be this tough to make it across the finish line.
Whether your goal is to lose weight, to make more money, or to experience more love in your life, remember that finishing is where you find your breakthrough. Not starting.
Put your head down and grind.