PRACTICE: How do you define progress for your personal life?
Since we are unable to go to a physical facility for 8:00 AM worship, my husband and I have taken to doing a long walk /run early on Sunday mornings. The humidity and heat have curbed this practice a little. I usually will not set a specific goal for miles. He will always set a mile goal and never shares until we are about to complete it or miss it. And I shouldn’t say I don’t set a goal; my only goal is to walk if he can. Our longest distance this spring/summer was a half-marathon, 13.1 miles plus.
Walking/running implies 3 things- activity, growth, and direction. If one stands on both feet and puts one foot in front of the other, one does not stand in the same spot. Until gyms were shut down, I walked a lot of miles weekly on a treadmill…my practice was to set a goal for the activity weekly. Even when one is walking on a treadmill and going nowhere in terms of leaving one location and arriving at another – walking is movement (legs, joints, feet and arms are moving). Walking is a progress (cardio fitness and endurance improvement). Walking toward a goal (healthier mind and body) is direction.
Here’s what I believe. We might begin to live more fulfilled lives if we adopted the treadmill approach. Most of us don’t get to pick up and move our mat (change our space) on a regular base. We are tethered by responsibilities to job, family, mortgages (treadmill). Even when one is walking in the tediousness of the sameness of life, change in direction has the potential to occur. Sometimes, I am tempted to get off the treadmill before my goal is achieved. Sometimes I am tempted to tell my walking partner on the trail to keep walking because I am done. I have seldom gotten off the treadmill and I have never failed to complete one of the long walks on Sunday…resulting in an awesome resting heart rate for a person of my age per my recent yearly physical exam. Sometimes staying on the treadmill or on the trail has meant an adjustment of my speed or incline, but I finished what I started. I define success as putting one foot in front of the other even when it appears, I am not going anywhere.
PONDER THIS THOUGHT – Purposeful walking is one of the keys to living a successful life.
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