Recently I took a road trip to visit my college roommate, Jennifer, and a lot of my extended family in Iowa. On the way home, a life lesson found me by way of a BMW that I almost passed while on cruise control in my new-to-me (yay!) Toyota RAV4.
As I approached steadily from behind, the BMW must have realized I was about to pass it and suddenly sped up. (I’m sure that’s never happened to you or that you’ve never done that to someone else, right?) I pulled back over into the right lane and let the BMW stay ahead.
It wasn’t long before the other driver got distracted and probably without knowing it, let up on the gas. Meanwhile, my cruise control kept me going at the same pace consistently. I approached again and this time, passed the other car. Without any extra effort, I continued to put more and more distance between the BMW and my car until the BMW was out of sight.
Laughing, I thought about the classic Aesop’s fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare.” We all know the story about how the turtle outruns the rabbit because the turtle is steady and persistent. Thanks to cruise control, I was able to witness how little effort it takes to keep doing something consistently, once a manageable pace has been set.
When I am struggling with a discipline in my life, it takes so much more energy to start and stop. And then procrastinate about starting again. And then beat myself up for not keeping my word to myself with my intentions (again). And then start the cycle all over again for the umpteenth time. It’s so much easier to just begin and keep going at a pace that is easy to maintain.
At some point, an incredible phenomenon takes place. Over time, after creating consistent effort toward our goals, and although nothing else has changed, momentum kicks in and it becomes even easier to keep doing the same thing we struggled so hard to begin. It’s easier on Day Fifty than it is on Day One. But we have to start at Day One and then keep going until the magic happens.
If you’re on Day Twenty and it still feels difficult, I want to encourage you to keep going! Don’t stop now. Celebrate how far you’ve come and how far you’ll go if you just stay on pace. If you’re on Day Zero regarding an intention that is important to you, congratulations! Today can easily become Day One if you’re willing to take a small step toward your goal.
When I’m out walking and decide to sprint for a few minutes, I will challenge myself to run to a mailbox a few houses up ahead and I keep my eyes fixed on the mailbox until I pass it. With your Day One goal, can you challenge yourself to invest at least twenty minutes of effort today? Will you promise yourself to do another twenty minutes tomorrow?
If we invest twenty minutes toward a goal every day, we will have invested 7300 minutes in a year, or 121.66 hours—all because we got started and made a small commitment to be consistent. If we do that, we will definitely beat the version of ourselves that starts and stops repeatedly. And we'll feel a lot better about ourselves too.
I love the book/audio book “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson. I listened to it in the car again on the way home and this statement jumped out at me: “Position your daily actions so time is working for (you) instead of against you. Because time will either promote you or expose you.”
I hope we will all let time promote us today.
