Defeating Yourself Before You Start

This is my first blog post I have written, ever. Immediately I noticed that one of the hardest things about writing one of these is finding a topic. 

There are a few I have thought of, but this one stands out to me as something that I would like to cover first and foremost. 

Defeating yourself before you start.

I work for a company called Spartan Race. Spartan Race is an obstacle course race that can have distances ranging from a 5k to a 14 mile course. We run in mountains, desert, swamp, mud, water, you name it. Amongst the varying terrain are a variety of obstacles to challenge each participant. 

When I travel for work I end up having conversations with a lot of people I do not know.

After a short conversation the question always comes up (especially in airports) "So, what do you do for a living?". I say "I work for Spartan Race". I can usually tell by their face if they know what it is or not. If not its a pretty easy explanation.

I swear, at least 75% of the time I get this response "that sounds awesome! Id love to do something like that but i'm not ready", or something very similar to that.

So what happened was they heard of something they would like to do but it sounds like it could be hard, so they automatically start making an excuse to justify why they cant do it.

I try and take the time to explain that they can do it right now. Sure if you trained for it you would have a better finishing time, or the run may be easier, some of the obstacles may not be quite as challenging, but if they can find the excuse to not do something because it would be difficult right now, that will turn in to them not training for something because the preparation would also be to difficult.

People defeat themselves immediately in their head before even trying. This applies not only to a Spartan Race but to many things. Diet, going to the gym, education, or something exciting they would like to do in their life. If it seems hard or there isn't any immediate gratification people will make excuses of why they now shouldn't, or can't. I've done it too.

The more difficult something is to accomplish, the more rewarding it will be at the finish.

We need to stop backing out of our ambitions or goals because they seem to hard to accomplish.

Suck it up, roll up the sleeves, and wade in to it head on.

Its only failure when you stop trying.