Thinking about time management one night, I soon realized the similarities between a relationship and a business. Both take a huge initial investment of time in the beginning, but require less and less "work" as time goes on. As in, you're no longer trying to learn everything about each other or trying to do everything in your business. You have learned to trust and delegated. Thus, it becomes more about maintaining. Both, relationships and businesses, go through stages. Both have a beginning and an end; however, if you are lucky, you will build something that will last a lifetime.
One thing I have realized is it doesn’t really matter how many failed relationships or failed businesses you've been a part of. It only takes one special person or one successful business to change your life.
Too many people settle too early. Settling is easy; to continue to put yourself out there and take chances is hard. Every time you reach out to do something new, you run the risk of losing what you have already accomplished. Every time you end a bad relationship, you run the risk of being lonely, and I’m sure most would agree that being lonely is hard. However, I’m also a believer that anything worth having is hard to obtain. As cliché as this sounds, you'll know when it's the right one.
I recently just finished a half-marathon, training for a full marathon in April. It was an experience that I will never forget because I learned so much from it. One of the things I have learned was that once you cross that finish line, everything was worth it. The 5-6 months of training, the 20-30 miles each month, it was all worth it. It was worth the 2+ hours of exhausting, sweat-dripping pain I endured throughout the run. In fact, it made the journey that much better. All of the work and training became trials and tribulations in my small "story" to the finish line. If the race had turned out to be an easy run, I guarantee you that it would not have meant as much as it did. The fact that I felt like I could collapse at any moment during the last 2-3 miles made crossing that finish line memorable.
I kept thinking to myself, if I had given up anytime during the race, I would have never been able to experience that. All of my pain and struggles would remain just that, just pain and struggles. So, if you ever feel like you just can't handle it anymore, that you’re in unbearable pain, find a reason to keep going because once you cross that line, all of that pain will make it that much sweeter.
I do the things I do because I see the running, the reading, the self-analyzing, the critical thinking, and self-development as part of a bigger race. Bigger than a marathon, a run for life.