If you designed a perfect day in Kansas City, it would look like today.
Saturday. 75 degrees. Sunny. Huge, blue sky. Slight breeze.
For our kids, Fortnight, iPhones, YouTube, SnapChat, and Netflix are losing mightily today to bikes, trampolines, basketballs, hammocks, fire pits and water balloons.
For us adults, with nothing on the schedule miraculously, plants are being planted, the garage is being cleaned, and the slower pace is refreshing.
With such perfect conditions, a run sounded like it should be in the cards too.
The combination of the anxiety of starting a business, the stress of working through marriage stuff, and of course loads of chips & salsa and ice cream, has me about 15 pounds more than I’d like to be.
One run certainly won’t fix that, but I felt like running today. That is, until that breeze hit me right in the face about a half-mile in at the top of our hill in the neighborhood.
Then the feeling of wanting to run, turned into a feeling of wanting to drink a beer, ha.
The problem with waiting to do just about anything until the conditions are perfect is that…well, they’re rarely perfect.
And even when they feel perfect, the winds of resistance will come up out of nowhere and remind you that it’s:
- Easier to eat like the hell out of some carbs than eat something that’s green
- Easier to watch TV than write something down and share it
- Easier to stay stagnant than get moving
- Easier to let your relationships erode naturally than lean into them
- Easier to think of another new idea than do the work required for the one you already have started
- Easier to settle for good than pursue the path of greatness
- Easier to be mindless than aware of your emotions
- Easier to avoid the hard conversation than to have it
- Easier to play it safe than to go for it
- Easier to run from the pain than to sit in it and be healed
Maybe it’s just me, but that list of 10 could easily be 100.
At the first gust of resistance, shutting it down seems like the only option.
But perhaps, the resistance is a signal. An indicator that what you’re doing, or at least trying to do, is the start of something special.
Perhaps it’s a sign that your movement is towards something meaningful.
There’s no damn resistance on the road to apathy, gluttony and erosion.
The winds of resistance only exist on the road that matters.
Easier said than done, but don’t wait for 75 and sunny. It rarely shows up. And even when it does, the winds are coming for you.
To tell you it’s not worth it. That it’s too hard. That someone else is already way out in front.
Instead of turning back in and giving resistance the upper hand, tell it to shut up. Then tell it thanks.
Because you’re onto something…