Come on in and take a seat. I’m going to tell you a story.
Since January 1st, 2012, I have been on a mission. I decided that I was going to set the extremely ambitious goal of finishing the Akron Marathon in late September. Now, that’s not saying I’m going to run the whole thing or that I’m going to even try to be competitive. I just want to start at the starting point and still be alive at the finish line. No one could be more shocked at this goal than me. I’ve always HATED running. Back when I was a kid and we’d have to run a mile in gym class, I’d stop a few minutes in. I wouldn’t even try to walk it because it felt embarrassing. I would just tell the teacher my side hurt (which was true) and I’d sit it out. But my goal for 2012 was set. I was going to get in shape and I was going to do a marathon.
I’ve been training pretty darned aggressively all year long. There is a certain pattern to the work-outs. One week emphasizes cross-training a bit more, one week concentrates on strength training a bit more. I’ve gotten to the point where I can walk/run 6 miles and not completely collapse in agony. All well and good, certainly.
Last week, the plan was that I was going to go up to the art museum with my parents, and we were going to get a pretty early start. I was slotted to do 6 miles and I knew I probably wouldn’t do it after walking around a museum all day, so I got up early and gave myself an hour and a half to complete my goal. It was pretty chilly, rather rainy, but I had my eyes on my mission, so I went on ahead. Things went pretty swimmingly too, till about 2.5 miles. I was taking a walking break and reached a point in the lap I was in where the ground was pretty darned slick from the rain. I was trying to walk fast so as not to lose time, but I thought I was being careful. Suddenly, I found myself on my right knee, my right hand flat on the ground, and my water bottle rolling away as if to avoid being collateral damage.
At that point, I felt rather pouty. Not only does falling down hard kind of hurt, but this was really messing up my whole plan. What if I couldn’t finish? What if it took me too long and I threw off the whole day? I got up and finished up pretty much on time. I did not really take inventory of whether I had injured myself. There was no time. I had my eyes on my mission.
Fast forward to almost a week later and I am still suffering from the ramifications of that fall. It seems I put my right arm out of whack a bit. My left knee is really sore, so I’m thinking I twisted it. Because I didn’t stop and evaluate my situation after falling, I probably made things worse for myself. But I was on a mission, and I wanted to complete it.
Is your mission blinding you?
In the online world, we see all kinds of advice for entrepreneurs. Don’t worry about failing because you can learn so much, right? Keep plugging ahead. You always have your kids but your business needs to be nurtured. That company needs to grow. You need to meet your goal for success, right? You’re on a mission, and you want to complete it.
But what are you missing along the way?
Maybe a really valuable team member resigned to go somewhere else and you’re finding it difficult to replace everything they did. But you keep plugging away. Maybe you had the worst month in company history, but you can’t take the time to figure out what happened. You’ll just beat it next month, that’s all. You have to. It’s part of your mission. Maybe you suffered a PR disaster. But you don’t have time to go back and fix that. You’ll catch it on the flip side, when you take a breather. Right now you’re plugging ahead. You’re on a mission.
As long as you keep on running, a little spill here or there won’t matter, right?
Except one day you realize your company’s knee is twisted or your own health is deteriorating, and you realize, “Huh, actually…I can’t keep going on the way I’ve been going. I’ve got some real problems here.”
The mission isn’t everything
Having goals is great. I’m nothing if I’m not a goal-oriented person. And being dedicated to your goals- hey, I’d have it no other way. But sometimes there are things more important than that myopic mission view. My knee and my wrist are telling me I need to take a short break from my mission before I do worse harm to myself. What is your company (or your life) telling you? What pitfalls are you setting up for yourself as you walk past danger signs towards your one and only end-goal? What weaknesses could be fixed if you just took the time to stop and fix them? Or just to evaluate them?
Is your mission blinding you? Is it time for you to take a step back and evaluate where you are?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cori_m/6596284261/ via Creative Commons
Margie,
You’re right up there with LouImbriano as far as my favorite storytellers. Great post. Perspective is something many lose in the relentless pursuit of goals.
As for marathons, they are an insane exercise in self-abuse. I probably won’t ever run one again, but the sense of accomplishment as I crossed the finish line was like no other. Good luck and stay healthy!
@berkson0 Well that’s a fabulous compliment. Thank you!!
I’m noticing the self-abuse aspect of training. The people who are all like, “Oh, running is so fun!” didn’t make that part known to me. Who woulda thought? 🙂
@margieclayman Don’t get me wrong. I love running. I wonder how many people who hate it have never run more than a couple of miles. It takes a long time for me to warm up so my muscles wouldn’t relax until after 2-2.5 miles. Then, breathing slows, heart rate comes down. Ah, bliss.
That said, getting your body conditioned to take the pounding of 4+ hours of running/walking is tough. Hang in there, though. Not many people complete marathons. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime worthy accomplishment.
Thank you for this 🙂 I’m right there with you-about 3 months ago I decided I needed to get back into training if I was going to race this summer. Which means I promptly managed to toast my knee. Two months later, I’m still pushing my luck doing walk/run intervals over the course of an hour. And I still can’t go back to yoga 😛 I’ve more or less accepted that while I might do a 5K or two this summer for the heck of it, neither the 15K race I had my eye on nor the half marathon I was hoping to do are likely to happen. I need to slow it down and let my knee heal naturally. The nice thing is, by having to take myself out of training, and by telling my running buddies that I was aiming for some less ambitious goals, I realized something. I don’t want to race this year. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I want to run. And there are some non-competitive events I really enjoy. But I’m not going to spend months sweating my mile time. I’m finding I like popping my ear buds in my ears, jogging along at my own pace and doing my thing. And if that means I finish a 5K with a 12 minute mile time this year, I’m going to be okay with that. So there are some perks to realizing that the bump in the road is something you can’t avoid!
@rmalove1 Yeah, those goals can be seductive, can’t they? I am still working hard, but I have decided that if I hurt myself maybe I should take at least a minute to figure out if I broke anything. And then maybe I should even do something about it. So it is with most goals we have. If you end up killing yourself to get there you won’t enjoy the fruits of your labor anyway.
I think I saw that in a fortune cookie once….
I did me one of those marathon thingies…..here’s my advice (like you asked for it, huh?), only use time as in ‘I’m going to run 45 minutes today and next weekend I will go an hour (never increase your time by more than 15 minutes no matter how good you feel as you start increasing your distances). Marathon is more about getting used to being on your feet for that long. And yes, it is always ok to walk during the training; the MAIN thing is getting used to being on your feet that long. They call it a marathon for a reason and it’s critical to stay healthy during training.
Good luck.
The economy has made us look at things not only differently but much more frequently in a tried and true insurance agency. Where some of the ‘core’ stuff still looks the same, there have definitely been changes.
@bdorman264 Thanks Bill. The schedule I’m working on tends to work things up by a mile or two every other Saturday. So last Saturday and today I did six miles. I haven’t had the heart to look what is in store for me for next weekend 🙂 It is weird to think that four months ago doing a mile was a pretty big deal to me. That’s another thing we miss by only looking forward – we miss how far we’ve come. And that can give us a real boost!
You are, of course correct, Margie, our vision can maje us myopic. We forget to assess what is going on with our health (or the health of our business), we overlook or ignore the good and bad behavior of other people, we don’t applaud the contributions of others as opften, we lose sight of our families and those who matter to us, and we lose sight of the good we sought to find or bring with the mission. We tend to get so caught up in our “perfect process” that we forget to take a breath and be human.
We have to learn to build buffer zones into the mission and the plan. A time, space, place to sit and think about the mision in a clear-headed fashion. A time to reassess the “Why” of what we are doing, and often the “How”
Good post, as always Margie
Martina
@martinamcgowan
@Martina McGowan Yep, being human…it’s more than any one goal. Hopefully. Otherwise you can really get stuck in the mud and miss out on other things that are just as significant.
Thanks Martina!
How wonderful for you Margie! Really!! I have ALWAYS wanted and dreamed of doing a marathon for some cause or another…I just never seem be BE anywhere that makes it even possible. Good for you!
Now. Oh, Friend of mine. (Paying attention??) Do NOT damage my very special pal in the glory of your accomplishments. Remember, “Do no harm”? Remember, “Do not stand there and watch harm come to another”? Well, you count too. You wont be accomplishing anything if you hurt yourself! (Boy, I sure told you, huh?…come a long ways, haven’t I??)
I can see the analogy perfectly. Our lives here, online always line up, side by side, it seems to me. You take care of you. If I could be there, I would watch your back…. but I can’t be. So, be you. Be smart.
@girlygrizzly I am being careful, I promise. I took two days off this past week to let myself recover a bit. My body is very good about telling me when I need to sit down on me tush 🙂
Thanks lady 🙂 ((hugs))
When I make a goal and I begin talking about it, I feel more committed. Yet, when I talk about it, I also feel more pressure to make it happen. It becomes a matter of pride – I can’t tell people I couldn’t/didn’t do it.
The Zen Habits blog promotes NOT making goals at all.
Perhaps my new goal in life is finding the happy medium :).
When I make a goal and I begin talking about it, I feel more committed. Yet, when I talk about it, I also feel more pressure to make it happen. It becomes a matter of pride – I can’t tell people I couldn’t/didn’t do it.
The Zen Habits blog promotes NOT making goals at all.
Perhaps my new goal in life is finding the happy medium :).
Janet | expateducator.com