What Mile Are You In?

You just ran a 10K.

And if this was your first one, your very first race ever, I need you to stop and let that land for a second. You just did something a version of you not so long ago might not have believed you could do. I remember my first race. The Mini was my first. And when I crossed that line I felt like I had summited Kilimanjaro. That’s not an exaggeration. That is exactly how big it felt. So if you are standing here today with your first medal around your neck, don’t let anyone, including that pesky little voice in your own head, make it smaller than it is because it is enormous.

However you got here, you got here. You decided to start something and then you finished it. That matters more than your time.

I want to tell you about a mile.

Not this one. The invisible ones. The miles nobody hands you a medal for.

There was a mile in my life where I built a business from my apartment into something I never imagined. There was a mile where I sold it for more money than I grew up believing was possible. And then there was a mile where the company that bought my business turned around and sued me, and I lost almost everything I had rebuilt, and I sat alone in a new house at 52 wondering who I even was anymore.

Nobody trains you for those miles. There is no course map. No water station. No cheering crowd at the corner telling you that you’re almost there. Here’s what I learned running the literal ones that saved me when the figurative ones tried to break me. You can’t run the whole race from where you’re standing right now. You can only run the mile you’re in.

Not the mile behind you, the one you wish you had run differently. Not the mile ahead, the one you are afraid you do not have the legs for. This one. The one under your feet right now. It is the only mile where anything actually gets done.

That sounds simple. It is not. Because the mind wants to be everywhere except here. It wants to relitigate the past and catastrophize the future and do anything but stay present in the discomfort of the current moment. But presence is not passive. Staying in the mile you are in is the most active, most powerful thing you can do. It is how I survived a lawsuit, a bankruptcy, a divorce, and a pandemic without letting the whole future crush the present.

One mile at a time. That is the whole strategy. That is the whole book.

You already know how to do this. You proved it this morning. Somewhere out there on the course, your body wanted to quit and you made a decision to take one more step. And then another. That is exactly the skill that gets you through everything else too.

So I will ask you what the banners asked you at the finish line.

And whatever it is, I hope you run it like you ran today. Present. Stubborn. Alive.

Run your mile. I'm cheering for you.

Kettia