Are you running your marathon?

A close friend of mine is a highly successful entrepreneur in the USA. He started a software services company 8 years back and that company has grown to a 250 million company with more than 80 employees.  He is highly driven and ambitious individual who pushes the envelope to the extreme to ensure that targets are achieved. Very passionate about whatever he decides to work on, he is highly focused and spends endless hours on the job.

The last time we met, when he had come to India, I had just walked into my house after completing a half marathon.  He congratulated me and went on to add, “I don’t understand how come you guys are so crazy about spending so much of your productive time running. This is the phase of our life where we should be focusing all our energies towards our work and developing our business. Once you are stable and well to do, you can do what you like”. I didn’t say much to him but wondered by myself, “By the time I establish and do really well in my business, would I be able to run.” Just as he was not able to appreciate our craze for running and spending time just doing that, I wasn’t able to appreciate his way of thinking about work and life.  How can he not understand a simple thing that one needs to run when he is able to and not wait till everything else is right. I wanted to run my marathon and just didn’t understand his perspective.

And then it struck me –he indeed was running his marathon, just as I was doing mine. Only difference was my marathon was about running long distances and his was about building a successful business.

Just as I would not quit on my practice and targets, he would run (work) hard to ensure that he achieved his. He was looking at finding the right people just as I was looking to find out the best shoes for me.  He was reaching out to people who could give him more business enabling him to achieve his goal, I was looking out to people who could guide me to make my run more comfortable and in a shorter duration.

The one reason, why people who are successful do succeed is that they have identified what they want to focus their energy on. They have identified their passion and their purpose of life.  Just as I can’t be as enthused about a IT services company as my friend, or he be as enthusiastic about running a marathon as I am, we cannot be excited about doing something that others do. We can only be successful at things that we enjoy doing and that align with our purpose.

So while you run in this rat race of life, trying to reach the top, beat the others, be successful, just pause and think “Are you running your OWN marathon”