MM: Keep on Shuffling

05/16/16

Recognize this guy? Maybe not, but he accomplished what most of us wouldn't even dream of– Cliff Young ran 543.7 miles in five days and won an Ultra-Marathon, beating out numerous pro athletes. A pretty hardcore runner right? Except that Young was a potato farmer, age 61, and showed up to the starting line in overalls and work boots. So how did he do it? It’s a classic tortoise and the hare story– Young kept on shuffling. Seasoned runners ran the race 18 hours a day and then would stop to sleep. Young on the other hand didn’t know you were supposed to stop, so he kept on shuffling all day and all night until he crossed the finish line a whopping nine hours ahead of anyone else, shocking everyone.

Pretty inspirational stuff for a wanna-be runner, but what does Young’s story have to do with the average joe. It’s simple: Just keep on shuffling.

You and me, we like to sprint through to do list, pile up commitments and run fast and hard through life until we crash and burn in exhaustion. We live for productivity, but we have let ourselves believe that being productive only looks one specific way.

Hustling through the week is great, and hitting the books hard is sometimes needed– but other times we have to just keep on shuffling. When the task laid out before us is about 543 miles long, we can’t sprint through it– to do that would be to run ourselves into the ground. Instead, we simply have to keep moving, keep ourselves out of our heads, and not look at the other runners to compare ourselves to them.

Take a hint from Young and shuffle through this week– not because you can't do the sprint, but because it is more important to get to the finish line well than to look impressive wearing yourself out.

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