Uphill sprints

Over the last few weeks I’ve received quite a few ‘how’ questions from readers and clients.

• How do you get it all done?
• How do you write every day?
• How do you deal with writer’s block?
• How do you get new clients?
• How do you grow your business?

There are more….but they don’t really matter. I mean, they matter, but the details don’t – because these questions are all basically asking the same thing: “how do I/you/we keep going when it gets hard”.

Of course, I can only answer how I do it, how I make it through adversity, through the uphill climbs. I can’t possibly answer that for you.

But, I’ve been thinking about this a lot – my answers to these how questions, and found some insight this morning on my run.

I have a love/hate relationship with my usual loop – because the first 3 miles or so are just excruciating. For the most part, they are flat and straight. There isn’t even an ocean view. These miles are treacherous and hard. And seemingly endless.

All of this contributes to the fact that by the time I get to the first hill (straight up past the lighthouse), I’m thrilled – for the novelty, the challenge, the difference, the ocean. But that doesn’t make the hill easy.

And while I was noticing this, I was also busy running up the hill. Not jogging, but running, sprinting. That steady pace I’d survived through for the first three miles was gone. The harder it got, the steeper it got, the harder I pushed and the faster I ran.

Et voilá. That’s my answer.

The uphills are going to come, right? There’s nothing we can do about them. And they’re going to be what they’re going to be:

• A 50 page website that needs to be written
• A month’s worth of blog posts
• An ebook you want to create and all the trappings that go with it (here’s how you do it, by the way affiliate link)
• Finding new clients
• Reaching out to a site with a guest post
• Getting out of bed
• Eating well
• Exercising
• I could go on and on and on…

The point is this: writing a blog post means writing 400 +/- words. It doesn’t matter if you take a month to do this or twenty minutes; it’s still 400 words that must be written. How quickly, efficiently, and well you complete the task is up to you.

How do I do it? Apparently, I look forward to the hills and then I sprint up and over them. Though sometimes I gather hardship, piling it as high as I can.  And then, I stand at the bottom and freak out for a bit and complain and talk about my plans. I do this until the hill is a mountain. ‘Cause I like a challenge. And because I find easy to be excruciatingly boring.

image credit: Stiphy