I must admit I’m feeling pretty guilty here, writing this, gripping a hot coffee and nibbling on some fruitcake whilst the Cardiff 10k race in underway.

Well, okay, not that guilty …but today’s race has got me thinking … you see I know quite a few people doing the Cardiff 10k and they all have different reasons for doing it… For one, it’s their pinnacle of achievement after months of hard work, losing weight and getting healthy. For another, it’s part of a training programme working up to the New York Marathon. For someone else it’s to raise awareness for a charitable cause they support. Another friend just likes running as part of their day to day fitness approach.

This got me thinking about choice: how we choose which races (or life paths, or businesses) to run and which not to run.

It also got me thinking about our “whys”: the reason(s) why we are running any race (and how big and compelling our ‘whys’ are so that they carry us through to the end).

Last year I was lucky enough to meet business leader and publisher of Success magazine, Darren Hardy from Cardiff-by-the-Sea (a beach community in California, rather than our own beloved Cardiff). One of Darren’s key messages is that in the long run we get out what we put in over and over, over time.

So whether you’re into running or not… in business as well as life, perhaps it’s useful to ask ourselves these 2 questions:

  • What do I want in the long run?
  • What do I need to do over and over, over time to get what I want?