Sprinting to the Finish
How you finish is all that matters. We’ve all heard that before and it’s certainly true in sports, work and life…I think. I was thinking about this concept this morning when I was exercising on the rower. I set the timer to ten minutes and I tried to kick it off and get into the flow. The first couple minutes were stretching and warming it all up. The middle I got into a bit of a flow but my mind was drifting and trying to find escape hatches. Then that final minute arrived and I turned on the jets, it’s a sprint to the finish.
Whether it’s adrenaline or something else, when you see the end in sight, you tend to push your hardest. Maybe its the finality or the scarcity of time and your final effort is intended to play catch up OR it’s an acknowledgement that there’s nothing left to give, so you better lay it all out there or else you’ll have regrets. It’s an interesting phenomenon though - how should one pace throughout an entire race or epoch. Is it better to be flatly consistent all the way through or is it normal, and desirable, to have lumpy efforts that adjust with duration? I would be curious to hear what the sciences have to say around this for endurance sports but I’d imagine the answer, like so many things in life, is it depends. Whether you’re talking sport, spiritual practice or work, we all take different paces, depending on where in the race we are. On the work front, the transition from one job to another has an enticing slowdown at the end but should it follow similar applicability to a workout?
We recently brought a new member of the team over to LPC Ventures. We were super lucky to entice him to join our effort and we had our eyes set on this guy for quite some time. He brought consistent energy - unlike anything I’d ever seen before. He lit up every room (or zoom) he entered. Before he left his former company to join us, I tried to remind him, how you finish matters greatly. Exit as gracefully as you entered. I had been given that advice in the past and it’s critical for reputation and it’s the right thing to do for the company. He not only exited on a high note, I saw how he navigated the final sprint and devoting his energies to the cause and his final chapter of his current employer. This was the right way to finish and it inspired me - especially at a pretty critical time in my own spiritual calendar.
Spiritually, Jewish people everywhere have arrived at the month of Elul. Elul is the final month of the Hebrew calendar. It’s the December stretch, secularly speaking. Unlike December though where it can feel like you’ve arrived at the cushy end of the calendar, Elul takes on a very different spiritual meaning - one of preparation and even more fervent observance. Elul is a month that culminates in Rosh Hashana (new year) and then Yom Kippur (the day of return or repentence). In order to get ready for game time, I need to sharpen my spiritual game. I need to get more acutely focused on Tefillin (prayer), I will go deeper on reflection, I will get more stringent on healthy habit formation (minus the upcoming bachelor party) and try to sharpen my focus.
In an essence, this is the sprint to the end but like so many things in life, it’s not the true finish line; its a yet another milestone on a much longer journey.