What Happens When You Push Yourself?

I recently took my son for a camping trip. We live in Colorado and went to the Great Sand Dunes National Park as part of a Christian youth group we enjoy so much.

Not only was it great to spend time together as father and son, but with all the other dads and boys. We played, talked, ate, made fires, told stories and simply enjoyed being away and unplugged.

Sometimes leaving your daily routine can also give you tremendous insights and perspective.

There were two huge takeaways that really came out of that weekend for me.

#1 – Even though everyone had a ton of different ideas on what we wanted to do, we were there to explore the sand dunes. We had a focus. There were no other choices of playing electronic games, going out to grab a bite to eat, checking off our to-dos from home, etc.

We spent every hour of the day focused on fellowship and those dunes!

What is your focus for your business? How are you taking away distractions? Are you allowing yourself the opportunity for periods of time to really concentrate on your business? Or are you just trying to slip it in here or there?

#2 – What else was really interesting was how easily some of the boys wanted to give up while hiking to the top of the dunes. It can be a bit difficult as the hike is steep and the sand can be deep and hard to walk on. Plus, most of us were barefoot and the temperature of the sand was really hot. We had to stop a number of times and just dig in deep to get the cool sand down below the surface.

Many of the boys just wanted to turn back before we were even half way there. But we kept encouraging them to make it to the top.

When we finally made it, the views were spectacular. The sense of accomplishment was tremendous. We stopped, drank a ton of water and soaked it all in while I lead a bible study.

The top is where you could see everything, including the climb that you had just accomplished. It allowed us to teach that Bible study with tremendous perspective. It was the goal we had all set out to conquer from the moment we had started planning this trip.

Then came the fun part… running down the steep and sandy hills! We laughed, wiped out, picked ourselves back up and kept going. I have never seen a group of fathers and sons having so much fun together in a long, long time.

It turned out to be the highlight of the trip for us all.

But what if we hadn’t pushed ourselves? What if we only experienced a small portion of what we could have? What if we allowed ourselves to think that going up part way was good enough?

We need to push ourselves in everything we do, or we’ll fall short of simply what could have happened.

How are you holding yourself accountable to make it to the top of your business?

How are you moving forward when others around you simply don’t have the drive to keep up the pace?

How are overcoming your own hot sands, steep inclines tons of opportunity for complaints?

You are the most important asset in your business by far. You are also the biggest obstacle. Don’t let yourself go just part way. You need to hold yourself accountable to overcome all the obstacles in your way, stop the blame game and get the job done.

Go the distance and get the rewards!