Finish Strong!

By Carl Woolston

Last week I wrote about pushing through resistance and ignoring that voice or urge that tells us to stop something after we’ve just begun it.

This week I want to talk about the second voice or urge that we hear which we must also push through.

Some years ago my wife and I sponsored a cadet from Hawaii who was attending the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

During one of his weekend visits, he shared with us how they taught them to push hard, no matter the distance.

He explained that during their training exercises, particularly running, they wouldn’t tell them how far they were going to run.

They would just tell them to run.

I learned from our conversation that on some days they ran one mile and on other days it may have been 10, but part of their training was to learn than no matter the distance they needed to learn the discipline of staying consistent.

Their discipline needed to become stronger than their brain telling them the end was in sight.

I’ve thought about this lesson on a number of occasions throughout the years, and again as I’ve been doing my new exercise routine I talked about last week.

Why is it that when I’m just five minutes from the finish line, I want to slack off and slow down?

You’ve probably experienced this too, maybe in other areas of your life.

• You’re running 5 miles and the last half of mile five you take slower
• The last quarter mile of a mile-long race seems like it drags on forever
• The last ½ hour of your work day you spend talking to co-workers
• The last 2 hours of your day you watch television instead of reading a book
• The email or voicemail that can wait until tomorrow because you’re tired

Just think how much more we would all accomplish if we learned to finish strong, as though there was no finish line.

In business this has enormous ramifications towards or efficiency and effectiveness.

If you were able to squeeze just an extra thirty minutes more out of every day you might be able to:

• Make an extra 5 phone calls per day
• Write an extra blog post
• Contact several additional contacts by email
• Read an additional 10 pages in a marketing book that just might give you the key insight you’ve been missing

Finishing is good, but there is something more powerful: finishing strong.