Show up. Keep Going. Rest. Repeat.

I wrote most of this in the first two miles of my run today. By the end of 4.2 miles, I’d forgotten most of it. So I sat down, started typing, and hoped it would come back while I typed.

I showed up. And here I am.

The first 15 minutes of my run almost always sucks. It used to be the first five minutes. Now, I’m edging towards it being the first 25 minutes.

(By the way, I thought this 15min thing was just me, and clearly I would always suck at running, until someone told me his runs were always that way and even ultramarathoners advised him they might always be.)

I showed up. The only way to minimize the suck is to show up.

Show up for yourself. Show up for other people, too.

Like how @articllama showed up for this thread. And then I was still thinking about it when I went for a run this morning. While I wrote this in my head. And realized I was doing it. Because we’d talked about the places where our ideas come up. We showed up for each other.

Once you show up, keep going. When I hit an uphill on my run, it’s easy for me to fall into that self-talk — I can’t do this, I’m tired, etc., etc. But if I just keep going, it turns out, the worst that happens is...I just keep going. And that 5min suck turns into 25min; that can I make it to 2mi turns into I can’t stop before 3mi.

And…every uphill eventually turns into a downhill. Revel in the downhill.

I’ve been trying to teach myself this for a long time. The first time I wrote something like it was years ago. As I transitioned from corporate life to solo consulting, I was thinking about the uphill thing. How sometimes we make it harder for ourselves to show up or keep going because we choose the uphill path.

The problem with being wired for new challenges is that you can make yourself work too hard when you shouldn’t. You can refuse to allow yourself rest when you should rest, when you need rest. You can make things harder than they have to be.

It’s as important to allow yourself rest on the downhill as it is to run hard through the uphill. To not give up on the uphill. You’ll hit uphills. You’ll hit downhills. You preserve your reserves on the downhill so you have them to push through the uphill.

Show up. Keep going. Rest. Repeat.