The Next Telephone Pole

Quotation attributed to Anton Chekhov:

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

The way to get through anything hard, painful, taxing is to take it a little bit at a time. You’ve heard the advice regarding how to eat an elephant … one bite at a time!

The mind can’t handle dealing with a massive iceberg of “stuff” (work, pain, responsibilities, trials, emotions — you name it) in front of it, but the mind can deal with short spurts that will come to an end.

So instead of thinking … Ugh!, I’ve got twenty-four miles to go … focus on making it to the next telephone pole in the distance. Whether you’re running twenty or one hundred and twenty miles at a time (similarly whether you have 5, 15 or 115 items on your task list), the distance has to be tackled mentally and physically one mile, one task, one day, one hour at a time. The ability to compartmentalize your energy and focus into these small bite sizes is key. Instead of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything, identify just one thing that you can do now.