A recent discussion with Romandog focused my thinking on these ideas.
(I'm also going to post this in my introduction page, but thought it would be helpful here as well.)
Over ten years ago I, along with several friends, rode my bicycle across the U.S. It was a long, delightful, and exhausting journey. To prepare for the trip we did a weekend “trial run.” We were warned ahead of time that the route for the trial run involved a rather significant hill about midway through the trip. After climbing the hill, all of us agreed that it was a bit of a challenge.
When the real ride across the country occurred, it took us about six weeks to get to this same hill that we had climbed earlier. However, now we approached the hill having ridden around one hundred miles per day for six weeks in a row. We were much stronger riders. As we approached the hill, we all sort of hunkered or geared down for the challenging climb ahead. But when we arrived at the top all of us stopped and actually laughed. Where was the hill? We had ridden up the hill with hardly a notice.
The same sort of thing happens in our quits. When a difficult day comes and we plow through it, we are strengthening our quit muscles. Through repeated exercise and determination we get stronger as we overcome each hill or obstacle. Finally, we know that we have reached a milestone when a crave comes (and threatens to make the day miserable), but instead of struggling, we laugh at it derisively. The crave has lost its power because we have become stronger quitters.
(Note: this doesnÂ’t mean that we take craves lightly or that we are impervious to failure. No, it simply means that the longer we quit, the stronger we grow, and what once was an extreme difficulty becomes a tiny obstacle in a lifetime of quit.)
