If you have had a look at my profile on this blog, you’ll know that I enjoy doing a bit of running.
Locally we have what’s known as a Parkrun at 9:00 am every Saturday morning at our local park.
If you are not familiar with Parkrun , it is the name given to a collection of regular five-kilometre running events that take place every Saturday morning in several countries.
It is a great event with people of all ages and abilities taking part…including myself.
One of our local participants is a lady who had never run before.
Now this lady, clocked a time on her first run of 52 odd minutes. When you consider some people finish the run in under 20 minutes, you might wonder why she even bothered.
Well she did bother, and the second week she improved her time by over 5 minutes.
On the third week she lopped off another 3 minutes from her time.
She was now finishing in a time of 44 minutes.
It could be very easy for her to look at this time in isolation, or even worse compare it against the times of other more experienced runners…
…and having done that, conclude she was not cut out for running and jack it in.
However rather than compare her herself against others, she is comparing herself against herself!
Where is she now compared to where she started?
How far has she traveled (figuratively and not literally)?
How much quicker is she?
And in this respect she has had a huge amount of success.
Now let me compare this story to what some of us tend to do online.
As we get to the end of the year, it is quite common (and very sensible) to assess the previous year.
The trouble is, as humans we tend to be too quick to give ourselves a good mental kicking for not achieving what we wanted to achieve. For not being where we wanted to be online.
We inevitably compare ourselves against other successful marketers. And relative to them we think…
Our list isn’t big enough.
and/or
We’ve not launched the product we promised ourselves we would.
and/or
We are not making the kind of income we wanted
etc, etc etc…
Just insert your own reason as applicable.
I have to admit, I’ve been guilty of this myself on more than one occasion.
However if we were to look at this in a different way…
…in the same way our lady runner did, things will probably look a lot different.
In a lot of areas (if not all), you are going to be ahead of where you were last year.
Your list is bigger
and/or
Your knowledge is greater
and/or
You know what doesn’t work
and/or
You have more ideas for the creation of products
etc.
Now this is not to say that you then sit back on your laurels. Of course you want to be more successful than you are.
In the same way as our runner probably wants to be even quicker.
But allow yourself to recognise the very real successes you’ve had so far and then build on them.
If you do this, and keep doing it, one day you will look back and smile at where you are today.
In this time of good will to all men (and women), why not show a bit of that good will to yourself?
I’ll be interested in your thoughts.
