1 week ago, I did something that I could barely imagine just a month or so ago – I ran a 5K fun run for the Atlanta Community Food Bank in a brisk 21 minutes an 58 seconds.
The annual Hunger Walk/Run is something I’ve participated in for many years, but this year, I donned a pair of running shoes and a determination to push myself further than I had ever gone before.
I wrote about my reasons for not running before in an earlier post, and in all honesty I was still slightly unsure of how my endurance would hold out in the actual run. Continue Reading…
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do” – Eleanor Roosevelt
When I was in high school, I told myself that I wasn’t a runner. ‘I have bad knees.’ This is a belief I held onto, and I believed it all the way into adulthood. I’ve always been a pretty active person, particularly when it comes to outdoor activities, but running had been completely off the table.
An interesting thing happened lately, though. I went for a run in the park across the street from my new home. It was only about 2.5 miles, but the pace was respectable (8’14” if I recall). I did it again a week later, and then again a few days after that. Continue Reading…
I have this weird relationship with setting goals. It’s not something that I do in the typical, structured way that most people do. In fact, I tend to resist the concept at every turn. There is something in there that runs counter to my way of letting things happen and going with the flow of life. And it’s not like I don’t aspire to things – on the contrary I have huge aspirations in my life. I just have been resistant to putting timelines and structure around these aspirations.
Last month in Sarah Robinson’s 28 Days to Getting Your Sh*t Together blog series, I was actively engaged in every post until the one on setting goals. I went silent. I suppose I don’t like being told that I need to set goals. But guess what? I do.
On Sunday afternoon, I participated in the Hunger Walk here in Atlanta, which benefits the Atlanta Community Food Bank. I’ve been participating in Hunger Walk for several years, and I sit on the Advisory Board of the ACFB, so I definitely have to step up my game around raising money for this initiative. Continue Reading…
For many years, I’ve been greatly inspired by some of JFK’s speeches from his time as President. Perhaps the most inspirational of them is the speech he gave at Rice University regarding the space program and his challenge for the USA to go to the moon in the 60s. As a side note, I find it somewhat disturbing that a video of this historical significance has less than 200k views, yet random videos of people falling off of treadmills get millions of views. But I digress.
This speech is particularly powerful to me because of the challenge that JFK put forth to our nation. It was a challenge of almost unimaginable proportions and one that he had no concrete plan for how to solve. I thought about his message this past weekend at Creating Irresistible Presence when we were talking about stepping outside our comfort zones and pushing all the chips to the center of the table. The parallels are clear to me. Sometimes we have to push ourselves beyond what we know intellectually and into what we know in our core. When we know something at the gut level, when that burning passion is there, we must go and do what we are called to do.
Perhaps the most quoted portion is at 8:48:
‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept – one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others too.‘
This famous message holds lessons for us all. On a personal level, we each have our own challenges that we must overcome – some of which seem insurmountable right now. But we can overcome, and we can achieve greatness when we believe in our dreams.
If you have never watched this speech, I highly recommend it. It’s just under 18 minutes long, but is a true testament to the power of inspirational leadership.
What does this bring up for you? Feel free to share your thoughts or reactions in the comments.
