While reading another book (I can’t seem to read one at a time) I found myself drifting off in thought and ended up with this statement: “What I do today will open or close doors for me in the future.” I was reading a chapter titled “Inspiring a Shared Vision” in Kouzes and Posner’s book “The Leadership Challenge”. It’s a great book even if you’re not interested in leadership. By the way, you are; you just might not know it yet. 
The day I decided to start running again in April, I opened the door to the level of fitness I have today. If you run, you’ve heard it before; “Oh, I could NEVER run that far” or “I can’t even run ONE mile” as if to say that runners were born with super-human abilities that enable them to do things the “average” person cannot. If you don’t run, I’m probably talking about you. 
That day I opened the door to running my first 10k in August. That day, and every day since, I have been gradually opening (and sometimes closing) the door to running my first half-marathon in December and my first marathon in February.
Every day I have to make a decision, “Do I want to run Boston or not?” I never really phrase it that way; it usually sounds like “Am I going to run today? Am I going to make sure I eat enough today?” I’ve started to see that running doesn’t have to be my obsession to reach my seemingly impossible goals. I just have to make some trade-offs. Instead of sleeping in, what if I went for a run? What if I went for a run instead of spending the evening watching TV and surfing the net? Those little trade-offs (which will eventually develop into habits) will start to add up to some serious mileage which in turn will open the door to more satisfying finishes on race day and eventually take me all the way to Boston… and beyond?
Kouzes and Posner quote Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard who says “the human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.” I’ve tried to get into running before with marginal results. I focused on what I had done in high school and college, but never really thought about where I wanted to go. This resulted in half-hearted efforts which lasted a few weeks. Now, with my eyes on a seemingly unrealistic goal, I’ve run farther and faster than I ever have before and have the motivation to continue to climb this mountain. Ziglar says “the only way to coast is downhill.” What are your goals? What are your dreams? What do you want to be when you grow up? YOU get to play an active role in shaping your future! What are you doing today that will open doors for you in the future? What are you doing today that is closing the door on a dream or a goal?
Oh, and I set a new 5k PR today! I ran the Tyler Half/5k today which makes me 6 for 6 on running a race every month. It wasn’t my goal of 21 minutes, but at 22:43 22:38, (waiting on the official results) I was just quick enough to sneak in a second place finish for my age group.
