The 108th Edition

Last week I wrote about letting go in order to succeed, but there are some things I believe we should refuse to let go of.

Something to Think About

The life you want will often appear unrealistic to people who’ve never allowed themselves to want it.

Something to Ask Yourself

What would you pursue if you stopped allowing other people’s limitations to shape what you believe is possible?

Personal Lesson

The picture above is a manifestation of a dream Lou and I have had for a long time. It’s not a huge dream. Some might say it’s not even all that ambitious. But others look at it and say it’s not possible, or that those who achieve it got lucky.

The dream was simple: to work remotely and travel to Europe in a van.

To get there, it’s taken years of work – mainly to get to a point where we are flexible enough with our work that we dictate our own schedule.

But we’re now here, living out a part of our dream that, although relatively small, many would’ve told us was unrealistic.

All the paths I’ve taken that I’ve hated have been the paths recommended to me.

They were the sensible paths. The respectable paths. The paths that offered certainty, approval and a clear answer when somebody asked what I was doing with my life.

Almost every path that has been good for me, however, has been one that other people warned me against.

I always believed I could build enough of an audience online to sustain myself.

If I hadn’t believed that, I’d never have started making content. That doesn’t mean I was endlessly confident. I’ve doubted myself constantly, I succumbed to the pressure to get a normal job, felt embarrassed by my content when it wasn’t working and questioned whether I was being delusional.

But beneath all of that doubt, some part of me continued to believe it was possible.

Eventually, it started working.

Eventually, I blew my own expectations out of the water and realised that far more might be possible.

I’m now having the same realisation with my business. If I genuinely want That’s Runnable to grow into something much bigger, I must first believe that it can.

Otherwise, I will never make the decisions, take the risks or dedicate the energy required to build it.

Running – Life’s Metaphor

Nobody finishes an ultramarathon accidentally.

Before you reach the finish line, you must first accept that reaching it is possible. You might doubt yourself during training. You might question everything halfway through the race. But there must be some underlying belief that keeps you moving towards something you’ve never done before.

We can learn from running that belief doesn’t mean it will be easy, but it’s required for us to reach the finish.

Final Thoughts

If your sole aim in life was to buy a chalet in the French Alps, I strongly believe you would make it happen.

Not because chalets magically appear for people who think positively, but because your entire life would begin organising itself around that ambition.

You would save differently, work differently, learn differently and make sacrifices that would appear ridiculous to somebody who didn’t want what you did.

You might hear that and think: if that were true, everyone would own a chalet in the Alps?

No, because most people don’t truly want one. They might like the idea of it, but they don’t want that specific thing enough to rearrange their life around it.

There is a significant difference between enjoying the thought of something and making it the organising principle of your life.

Of course, belief guarantees nothing.

You could believe you will become a world renowned pop star or play in the next football World Cup and never get there.

But what is the alternative? Deciding not to try because somebody else concluded it was unlikely?

Every person who’s ever achieved something remarkable had to believe in its possibility before they had any evidence it would happen.

You don’t buy the chalet and then decide you’re capable of buying it. The belief has to come first.

So hold on to your dreams. Protect them from the small mindedness of people who abandoned their own.

Whether you frame it as you “being chosen” or you simply recognise that you are more powerful than you currently understand, choose to focus on what might be possible.

Believe in the smaller dream, pursue it with everything you have, and it may reveal a bigger dream waiting behind it.

RUN THE RUNNABLE 😉