It's early on a June morning in 2017 and I'm out on a run I didn't want to do. There's a tree down across the path. I duck under it and keep going.
That's all an obstacle like that needs. Under it or over it. You don't stand there looking at it, you don't turn round and go home. You find a way past and carry on.
So why do the bigger ones stop us dead?
Russian roulette
It's a year today since my three minutes on a TEDx stage. The theme of the event was a brave new world, and my idea was that so many of us are playing Russian roulette with our health. Not because we don't know better, but because we don't act on what we know.
I knew that from the inside. For years I was depressed, I was carrying a growing list of health problems, and I knew full well that the way I was living was making it worse. I ignored all of it. A proper ostrich, head buried in the sand.
Most of us have a fair idea of what's good for us and what isn't. The gap is rarely knowledge. It's action.
It isn't only health
I see the same thing everywhere now. In business, in relationships, with money. People know what they need to do to move forward, and they bury their heads instead. I call it the ostrich epidemic.
And I still catch myself doing it. That morning I could have stayed in bed. I had a half marathon booked for the October, I was still building back up after an ankle injury, and I had a dozen good reasons not to go. No time. Too tired. Too much on. I went anyway, because I was committed to that race.
When you're committed, you find a way
That's the bit I want you to hear. When you're committed enough, you find a way. It might not be the perfect way or the quickest. It doesn't matter. Done beats perfect.
If you're training for a race and you can't face five miles today, can you do one? Can you walk five instead? There's nearly always something that moves you in the right direction, even if it isn't the thing you'd planned.
It's the same thing a class of seven-year-olds taught me with one small word, which I wrote about in The power of yet. Not yet isn't the same as never.
Taking the bullets out
I still think about that question I finished the talk on. Are you going to take the bullets out of the gun, or keep playing?
It's a bit dramatic for a morning run, I'll admit. But most of the changes I'm glad I made started the day I stopped pretending I didn't know.
First published June 2017.
