Our boys have been taking Taekwondo for the past 3 months, and they love it. We love it too. Beyond just teaching them a new skill, they’ve been learning plenty of life lessons: discipline, self confidence, self control, respect. Apparently, they’ve been learning perseverance too.
Last night at class they were going through warm-ups. In one of the exercises, they had to give two round kicks to a standup bag, sprint to a specific point at the other side of the room, sprint back and do it all over again on repeat for 3 minutes.
Round Kick – Round Kick – Sprint – Sprint. Round Kick – Round Kick – Sprint – Sprint.
I watched Allen go through this exercise thinking, “Wow! I’ve never seen him move that fast outside of running downstairs on Christmas morning.” And then something happened. In one of Allen’s sprints his feet got tangled, and he fell flat on his face. Knowing Allen I fully expected him to stand back up, brush himself off, take a couple breaths and get right back to it. But that didn’t happen.
In fact, as Allen was falling on his face he was still propelling himself forward, as he was hitting the ground he was still propelling himself forward, and as he was getting up he was still propelling himself forward. It was almost like he never lost his sprint speed as he fell, got up and kept sprinting.
I wish I’d known it was going to happen ahead of time so I could have been filming it. But we don’t always know when and where we may fall down.
Someone has fallen down and jumped back up before. We all know lots of people who have. We may not always remember those people when we’ve just fallen down ourselves.
Have you ever heard of Heather Dorniden? If not, well then let me introduce you.
Heather was a University of Minnesota Golden Gopher who won First Place in the 2008 Big Ten 600-meter final race. Pretty cool, right? Even cooler? She won First Place after falling flat on her face.
She’s made a lot of running accomplishments since then, but this is her most well-known story of perseverance. Want to see something really inspiring? Watch this:
When Heather fell, she could have been like most people and simply stood back up, dusted herself off and trotted the rest of the way in. Some people would have said, “Good job. You didn’t quit. At least you finished.” But that’s not what happened either.
She jumped up as fast as she fell down, and kept going. Not only that, she kept going faster. She passed the next runner and kept passing them all until she was in first place.
In an ideal world, we would achieve all of our goals and hit all of our habits every single time, with 100% accuracy. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world where life happens.
Whether you’re setting an achievement goal or a habit goal, you’re almost assuredly going to fall down on them. You may forget something. You may make a mistake. An external force beyond your control may happen and trip you up. Life will happen.
Then what?
I talked about goal-setting using the SMARTER framework recently, and I hosted a Facebook Live session on it earlier this week.
When you set goals for yourself using the SMARTER framework, there’s always some Exciting reason why you set it. With that, you can’t afford to quit, and you can’t afford to simply pull back on the effort you’re giving to your goals. There’s too much at stake. What’s at stake that you’re aware of? How your life will change and be better by achieving your goals. What’s at stake that you’re not aware of? Who’s watching you and what lessons you’ll teach them by your decision to jump up and keep moving forward.
At some point in the near future – it could be next week, it could be next month – you’re going to fall down. When that happens remember Allen, remember Heather Dorniden, remember James 1:12 that says:
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
When you remember those, jump right back up and keep sprinting forward, people will remember you.
