A little bit each day

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My dad was about my age when he decided to begin his weightloss campaign. Every evening he would come home and work out. We lived atop the hill of an old dirt road and was about a half mile to the section line. My dad set a goal for himself to be able to run from our front door to the section line road and back. He had trouble just making it to the end of our driveway at first. No small feat of it’s own as our driveway was 2/10ths of a mile. That’s a pretty good distance when you’re out of shape.

His plan involved accepting the reality that he was that far out of shape and to not let that hold him back. Often it’s too easy just to say, “I’m too far gone. I can’t.” Simply accepting the reality is very powerful, though painful. Once you accept your short comings, you free yourself to address them. You can face them down and even defeat them once you admit they exist and accept them.

Every day he would come home, change clothes, stretch and take off out the door. When he felt like he just couldn’t carry on, he would set a target ahead to run to. Once he made it there, he would walk for a while, contininuing on to the corner. He found that after a few minutes he would recover enough to run a little more. He began setting mini goals, dividing the run up by lengths between telephone poles. “This week, I’ll run between every third set of poles.” The next week it was every second set, then every other set. It wasn’t very long at all before he was able to run the whole length non stop.

Being honest with yourself and dividing large, unmanageable problems into smaller problems are great ways to acheive any goal.

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A little bit each day

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