Do you ever have the temptation to give up and quit? Whether it’s quitting the day, quitting the week, quitting your job, you just want to throw your hands up and say, “That’s it. I’m done.”
For me, I cycle 90 minutes a day. Now, that might not seem like a long time to some people, but it is high intensity and it is tough.
At the beginning of a ride I’ll think to myself, “Oh, I totally got this.” But by the 45 minute mark, I’m huffing and puffing, thinking, “I just have to make it 30 more seconds. Then another 30 and another 30.”
By the end of it, I always feel tremendously accomplished that I made it through. I mean, it really felt like a journey.
Now, the reason why I’m telling you this is that endurance develops every time you reject the temptation to quit.
You truly fail when you quit. You end up robbing yourself of any opportunity to grow.
This year all of us business leaders were all hit with COVID-19, and we saw many leaders say, “You know what? That’s it for 2020. I will try again in 2021.” However, I would argue that we never really know how close we are to accomplishing our goals, and how dark things have to become sometimes before there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
The reality of it is this: Every time you quit on something, you’re really sending a message to yourself that that’s the new standard. That’s just “how you do things” from now on. If you’re quitting on something as important as your business, who knows what else you’ll quit down the road a week from now, a month from now, or even 10 years from now?
But if you establish the habits that build endurance, you earn something no one can take away from you: true value in yourself, confidence, and capability.
Endurance is an incredible thing to have right now, especially while we’re in a global pandemic and have all of this uncertainty about what will happen in the future.
But like I said, if you develop that endurance and refuse the temptation to quit, you will get there.
