Everyone focuses on the end goal. Instead, focus on progress!

I used to hate running. Every time I would leave my house to go for a run, and it was just a three mile run, I would start thinking, how much do I have left? How much has gone by? When am I gonna get back? How much time, how many miles? I would always focus on what I had left to go, which seemed eternal and impossible. And this was just with three miles. When I started training for a marathon, imagine I was like, what? Five miles? I've never done five miles in my life. Six miles, seven miles, eight miles, I don't know if I can do that. And every time I would leave I would be like, oh my gosh, how much longer am I going to be able to make it? I'm tired already and I haven't even gotten to half a mile. And I would tell myself all these things because I was focusing on the end goal, getting to the finish line, rather than focusing on the progress. I have already accomplished a mile. I'm already, I've already gotten to mile two. Look at that. Today I did five miles and I had never done that in my life. This is amazing. This is my new finish line. But we were talking about 26.2 miles, so 5. What were 5 in 26.2? Well, if you focus on the progress, If I would have focused on how much I had accomplished, which was way more than I had ever done, three miles, it would have been easier to feel empowered and re energized and with all the motivation to just do this, and I would have been able to believe more in myself. So I decided that that's what I was going to do. I was going to focus on the progress rather than the final outcome. And that's something that I always tell my clients all too often we focus on, but we're not. I've done all this and we're not where we needed to be. I've been training for three months and I've only done 18 miles. Gosh, 18 miles when you could only do three at one point is amazing. Why don't we focus more on the progress? Why don't we realize that what we have done is incredible, is valuable. And that's why a lot of people are not happy, are never happy, because when they accomplish a goal, then there's another one waiting, there's another one and they keep on moving the finish line. But what if we focus on the day to day goals? Today's goal is 5 miles. Today's goal is getting off from bed. Even though I feel so sad and depressed, today's Goal is to pay this credit card to start lowering that debt. Today's goal is to say something nice to my spouse. Today's goal is to not scream at my kids. Today's goal is to work out and eat healthy. Focus on today's goal. Focus on the progress rather than the big goal and what you still have pending. Let me give you a couple of examples. I have couples that have called me hysterical and super desperate, saying, betsy, I don't know how much longer. We're now where I thought we would be after five months of this. And I've been working and I've been humbling myself and I've been a good spouse and I'm doing everything for my partner and he or she is not reacting the way I would have wanted him or her to react. And I remember one in particular that I told listen, five months ago, your wife wanted to divorce you. She was out. She was ready to go. Today, she's not where you want her to be. She's not super loving and completely into the relationship, but she's not even thinking about separation. That's not part of her thinking process. That's amazing. That is 18 miles. Not everybody gets to 18 miles. Yes, you have a few more left, but you're not where you were at before. You're very far from there. When I think about the running, I realized that at some point I felt like I couldn't. There's no way. It wasn't in my bucket list to do a marathon. There's no way that I can run 26 miles. I don't even drive that far. But as I practiced and as I focused on the progress and as I was consistent with my daily decisions of getting up and going for the run, I realized that there's nothing I can do if I focus on the progress, if I focus on how far I've gotten, rather than thinking about what's still left. So my recommendation is that you focus on. On what you've accomplished. When you go to the gym and you say, okay, I'm going to lose 10 pounds. And you go to the gym for three hours. Three hours of hardcore working out. You get home, you look at yourself in the mirror, and what's different? Nothing. You go the next day, you work out for three more hours, go back home, what's different in the mirror? Nothing. Same thing the day after. Same thing the day after. But if you compare your before and after pictures a month later, is there going to be a difference? There is. There is going to be a difference. And it's not only going to be measured by the mirror. It's going to be measured by the way you feel, by your self esteem, by your energy. It's going to be measured by way more than we think about when we look at ourselves in the mirror. Same thing with everything in life. You cannot see the difference right after you made the effort. You cannot get your wife or your husband to be all over you right after you said something kind and you gave up what you wanted to make her or him happy. You don't see that immediately. You see that in the process. You see that eventually it's the conglomeration of little things that we do, little actions, little gestures that becomes something grand. Rarely ever is it like a heroic act that changes something in a heartbeat. The fact that you don't see the changes right away does not mean that they're not taking place. Change is taking place and you have to focus on the progress, on the process, rather than the final outcome. Before you know it, you'll be crossing the finish line at 26, 6.2 miles, something that you never imagined yourself capable of doing.