The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it

“The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it.” ~ Epictetus

Friday 13th is often considered unlucky. For me it’s quite the opposite, it’s my rest day after a four-day training cycle that consisted of 25 hours, these hours were made up of.

Swimming: 3 Hours (8,575m)
Cycling: 16 Hours (389km / 4,271m elev gain)
Running: 6 Hours (52km)

I don’t share my workouts and stats with hope of impressing, my intention is in expressing that we all have unlimited potential. Yet, the thing with potential, it is only ever realised through daily action.

Approaching each day with the belief that today I’ll be 1% better than yesterday, and tomorrow I’ll be 1% better than today. Of course this is lovely in theory and all days won’t follow this linear path, but retaining faith and belief that more often than not you’ll win your fair share of day’s and over a period of time you’ll progress.

The trouble with the 1% rule, it’s not particularly sexy. It’s not an overnight transformation. It’s not a quick-fix. Rather it’s an investment in yourself and one which requires patience, discipline and a great deal of commitment and quite possibly your fair share of sacrifice too.

We live in a society where more often than not results are what are deemed most important. This results focused culture can damage the beauty of the process. We cut corners, we become overly competitive and we look ahead rather than what’s right in front of us.

Returning back to the quote at the top of this post... When I was formulating The Smileathlon 2018, I had two choices for the challenge. It was between 7 half Iron Triathlons in 7 day’s or 7 Full Iron Triathlons in 7 day’s. I’m sat here writing this, happy with the choice I’ve made.

I would much rather fall short of achieving a goal, but in the process grow as a human than to achieve a goal without truly stretching myself on the journey to accomplishing the challenge.

This week has provided me with a huge number of insights where knowledge and experience have intersected. One of these realisations has been:

There’s no such thing as failure. Yes the ego can fail as it concerns itself with reputation, opinion, & identity, but on a spiritual level, failure ceases to exist. You learn, you grow.

So here’s to putting my feet up and having a lazy day. I hope you have a terrific weekend.

For The Smileathlon Story and to support: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Smileathlon2018

Steps + Smiles 

James


Leave a comment