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-Justin
Last week Ashley and I took a quick trip to the Rockies in Colorado and met up with my brother and his wife for his birthday. We love the national parks, so we were eager to hit the trails. We drove thirty minutes from Estes Park into Rocky Mountain National Park, passed through the main entrance, and made our way up to the trailhead. When we got there, a ranger looked down at our sneakers and said, more or less, “Are you sure you want to do this?” It had snowed two days earlier, but now it was seventy degrees so the trail was wet, slushy, and muddy, and we were badly underprepared. We had three options. We could push through in the wrong shoes and guarantee a miserable, soaking-wet hike. We could give up and leave or we could drive back into town, get what we needed, and come back better prepared. We chose the third option. We got the right gear, returned to the trail, and had a great day.
People face a similar decision when they are ready to change. They look at the path ahead, realize it is messier or harder than they expected, and often assume they have only two choices: force their way through miserably or turn around. But there is usually a third option. You can go down the path better prepared. What you should not do is the dance of starting and turning around. Preparation is useful but if you keep waiting for the trail to dry, the delay is costly.
Years ago I had a consultation where a member mentioned that she had completed three Ironman races. She was in her fifties when she did this, so naturally I was curious about her journey. She told me that about twenty years earlier, she needed to make a change. At the time, she was inactive and smoked regularly. The first thing she put her mind to was quitting smoking. Once she did that she started walking outside. She had a series of lightposts out by her house so she started walking to the first one. She told me that when she reached it for the first time she was completely out of breath. But she kept showing up and soon she walked to the next light post, then the next. Walking turned into walk–jog intervals and walk–jog turned into jogging. Jogging turned into her first sprint triathlon. Then a triathlon, then an Ironman which is 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles on the bike, and a full marathon run. The time from her first walk to her first Ironman was about eighteen years.
One of the more powerful lessons I have learned in my life is that time is going to pass no matter what. When people hear that story, they might think I don’t have eighteen years. But in reality, you probably do. Of course, this does not mean you need to do a triathlon (that’s extreme!) and also don’t assume meaningful change needs to take decades. Dramatic life changes can happen in a single year. I’ve seen it over and over again. The problem is that most people fall into planning traps. They plan and plot and never take the first step. That would be like if Ashley and I did a detailed search of the best mud boots to buy and the best sports stores in town, ran a budget analysis, and asked three friends about their favorite boots. By the time we did all that the park would be closed. It’s better to just gather the tools you think you need, and go.
Preparation matters. You should get the right tools and you should think ahead. But preparation is supposed to move you toward action, not become a hiding place from it. At some point, the research and strategizing has to end. The first walk has to happen. Because the people who change their lives are not always the ones with the best plan. Executing on a half way there plan works far better than stagnating on a perfect plan. The people that start are the ones who gather enough of what they need, take the first step, and let the path teach them what comes next.
