It's so easy to create a huge goal, get so excited about it, plan everything out, and then forget about it a month later. Your motivation just dies out. Or you found something else that's more interesting. Either way, you got too excited too fast, like trying to take three steps at once instead of one at a time.
Especially when things get hard, something in your plan goes wrong, or you have to take a detour, you probably, at least in the back of your mind, want to quit. But quitting is never the answer. You chose to do whatever you're doing because you love it. So don't give up because of a small bump in the road. Climb over it one step at a time.
Now I'm only 14, things haven't exactly gotten too hard for me. But that doesn't mean I haven't ever wanted to give up. Many times, in a cross country race, I do amazing the first mile, and get so busy thinking about how fast my time will be and how proud my coach will be. But I forget to keep running fast, and by the second mile, I've slowed down a lot. So I decide it's over. I might as well keep running slow, right?
Wrong. No matter what happens, you can't just give up like that. You have to keep going, keep doing what you love. I run cross country because I love to run, so I should take advantage of every chance I get to run, not just give up when one thing goes wrong.
Charlie Jones, an NBC and ABC sportscaster, once said, "Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.”
You don't set a goal just to set a goal. The point is to have something to work towards. To put energy and time towards something that seems unreachable, but your hard work will make it reachable. The point is to fall down and completely fail 100 times, but to get back up 101 times.
Just when you think you're done and it's time to quit, that's when it's most important to get back up. That's when champions are made. And when you've fallen down more than anyone else, it just gives you a chance to say you've gotten back up more than they've had to.
But when you set goals and get excited about achieving them, remember they aren't going to happen overnight. And if they do, it wasn't much of a goal. They might not even happen for months or years. But you cannot get discouraged. Remember to enjoy the journey and take your time getting there. Because once you reach that goal, the process will start all over again. So keep climbing, keep reaching, whether there's flat road in front of you, or a giant mountain, just keep walking over it, one step at a time.
