“You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
“By perseverance the snail reached the ark.” ~ Charles H. Spurgeon
“Believe you can and you are halfway there.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Those are three of my favorite quotes about sticking with a goal. For often, just when someone is thisclose to achieving what they set out to do, that old adversary impatience – and its buddies frustration and pain – shows up and causes a person to quit.
To keep those bad boys from derailing his efforts, one of my friends uses the analogy of ‘one more swing of the axe to fell the tree’ to keep him focused. Another reminds herself of the familiar ‘eat that elephant one bite at a time.’ I think about my swimming workout.
When I get in the indoor pool – which is not warm this time of the year – and think about what’s ahead, finishing 2,000 yards seems so hard and so long… and I fight thoughts of ‘do I really need to do this again today?’ To overcome those self-inflicted disrupters, I break the next 40 minutes into smaller chunks: 2x 200 / 150 / 100 / 50 and reverse.
While it may be a mind trick, I quit thinking ‘still another 1,000 yards to go’ and focus on ‘two more laps to finish this set.’ If it’s a tough day, I pull out another of my favorite quotes – by Vince Lombardi: “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.”
