Todd Henry, AccidentalCreative.com

A few months ago, I decided to start running.

Nothing huge, just 3-4 miles a day.

After my ACL reconstruction surgery, it’s an easy way to get in shape without risking another tear. Anyway – I’ve been sweating it out for weeks, miserable, then a few days ago, out of the blue, in the middle of a run, I suddenly realized “Hey – I’m actually enjoying this.”

I’d tried running before, and had always hated it. I’d probably given up a dozen times in the past after a week of hating it.

It just made me wonder how many other things in my life I might have loved doing if I’d not given up too soon just because it was difficult.

We are wired for two conflicting things: comfort, and conquest. We want to stay comfortable, but we also want to achieve and stake our claim on the world. But, in order to feel the sense of achievement and mastery, we have to push ourselves out of our comfort zone for enough days in a row to allow us to begin to experience some success. Small successes accumulate over time into big victories.

A few things I’ve done to help me push out of my comfort zone long enough to experience the fruit of my activity include:

Track It

I track it, every day. I’m using Runkeeper, and it lets me compete against myself, which is great motivation. I hate losing to myself. (Sounds weird, but it works.)

Break your big goal or ambition into smaller chunks. In Die Empty I wrote about the value of step, sprint, and stretch goals to help you work toward your objectives. Measure small, daily progress and you’ll soon gain momentum.

Resource It

I bought good shoes, which meant that I spent decent money, which meant that I felt the need to justify the expense by giving it a reasonable try.

If something is important to you, you simply must allocate adequate resources to getting it done. Don’t throw hurdles in your own way by trying to shoestring it or hack together a solution. It will make engaging with your goal needlessly complex. What resource would make today’s progress so much easier to achieve?

Give It A Deadline

I’ve been working to get in shape for the Global Leadership Summit, which I speak at next week. Knowing that I’ll be in front of 400k+ people at locations around the world, I wanted to drop a bit of weight and be fitter by the event. So far, I’ve dropped about 10 lbs and I’m beginning to develop some muscle tone in my legs, which I lost due to inactivity after my surgery.

If you don’t work against a deadline, you’ll lose momentum when things get too uncomfortable. Give yourself a reasonable timeframe, then work backwards to determine what it will take to achieve your goal.

So, track it, resource it, set a deadline. Seems to be pretty applicable to nearly anything you want to do, and definitely seems to be working for me with the whole running thing.

I encourage you to consider a goal you have, or a team effort you’re engaged in, and think about how these three principles might help you and those you work with achieve a little bit of progress over the coming week.

Best,

Todd Henry, AccidentalCreative.com