EFFORT: 31 days of five-minute free writes

Here’s a lesson I’ve learned for the umpteenth time in a lifetime over the past few months: The amount of effort you expend on a goal doesn’t necessarily equate to success. More accurately, it may equate to success, but may not be recognized in the way you hope.

I’ve been watching friends and acquaintances report back on their results of long races they’ve trained for recently. One friend (who had worked consistently through their training plan) finished their race in less than the time they hoped — meeting a goal!

Quite a few others, who had trained equally consistently, reported back things like, “it just wasn’t my day” or “the wheels fell off halfway through.” It’s so disappointing when that happens. I am not speaking as someone who has EVER attempted a marathon like my friends had, but I can relate to thinking, “I have worked so hard for this. Why is my body betraying me now?” or “Why are things out of my control leading this opportunity to elude me?”

I think we all, when this happens and we know we put the effort in, need to:

a) Give ourselves some grace (hard to do, I know, when those around us are humblebragging (or just bragging))

b) Take a deep breath and reevaluate. In a situation where I didn’t feel my effort had the outcome I wanted recently, I started being more vocal (it’s not an athletic effort, but it feels like an emotional marathon — does that count?)