A commitment is serious when you do it every day. I like to say, Everyday is Everyday. This phrase reminds me that if you do not do the commitment every day, then you are not serious. In my example, one of my commitments is to run every day. Now, I did learn a lesson that is running at max distance, and speed is a disaster waiting to happen, so you have to have some method to plan runs to keep in mind recovery time and give your body time to build strength and resilience. However, running every day is a serious commitment and one of the commitments that has significantly impacted my life. I am not necessarily trying to convince you to run every day, but I am trying to convince you to take on some specific activity such as this to rocket-ship your commitments in life to the next level. First, let me tell you how I came up with the run every day commitment.
I was in a hotel room attending a work conference. It was 2:30am and I felt horrible. I got out of bed and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked worse then I felt. I was a bit overweight, but it was my eyes, my demeanor, my skin color. I looked like a dead man walking. The night before, I heard two messages circulating in my brain. The first was a David Goggins YouTube short where he was screaming at the camera to embrace the suck and the second was a book I was reading in which the author had a motto called, “Ride at Dawn.” I have written over 20 blogs on the Ride at Dawn concept, so I will not cover it again here. Anyway, as I stared into that hotel room, I said to myself, if I want to change my life, I have to do it right now. Ride at Dawn. So I asked myself the question right then, what would be the one healthy thing that I could do right now that would suck the most? The answer came back – “run.”
So, at 3:00 a.m., wearing a pair of shorts that I had packed and my dress shoes, I ran about 1/4 of a mile down the 18th fairway on a golf course. When I reached the green, I stopped gasping for air, knelt on that green, and prayed for the strength to keep my commitment. From that day, I ran every day for 365 days in a row. Almost exactly one year later, at the same conference, I returned. The difference was incredible. I slept great that night, and when I woke up in the morning, I went on a light ten-mile run with a friend of mine and averaged a 7 min/mile pace. I had a running headlamp, two pairs of Hoka’s, and suitable running attire in my suitcase. When I looked in the same mirror this time, I was healthy, in shape, and lean, and I looked full of energy and vigor. In a few months, I would be running in my first marathon, and my run everyday goal was no longer difficult at all, but rather an enjoyable experience that I looked forward to.
Running has become many things for me. It is now my major stress release valve; it is the time that I come up with new ideas, andit is the time that I plan and come up with my strategy for the day. This has become my meditation time and my reflection time. Running keeps me in check mentally, physically, and spiritually. I started having some pain in one of my hips for a while this last year, which seriously hurt my ability to run. That time away from running felt like I had lost a part of my soul, and stumbling through life, I felt lost and in disarray. Now I am back running every day and suddenly feel like a giant weighted blanket has been lifted off of me. If someone were to ask me, what is the most critical thing I could do to improve my life? I would answer. Run. Everyday.
