Hitting the Ground Running

In the recruitment ‘space’ all employers are looking for staff who can hit the ground running. But that’s not what this is about. Realising our deepest, most elusive goal is about hitting the ground running with positivity, excitement, life—to shut out the darkness of previous failures with a million lux of light!

Initially, a decision and then resolve are the matters of the day. No good complaining when we got work to do, as Bryan Adams would say.

Up, Up and Away!

Imagining ourselves as a passenger aircraft, and our journey to the achievement of the goal as a long haul trip, we’ve pushed off and have taxied to our takeoff point, fresh to embark on something both wonderful and scary.

With orders to throttle up, the idling drone of those huge jet engines transforms into a high-pitched whine oozing power; the thrust catapults us along the tarmac—equivalent to our first few days from embarking toward the goal. And we need every bit of thrust we can muster for the steepness of the climb in the early going.

Soon, however, there is the predicted turbulence as we climb through the early stratosphere; temptations to buckle and crash land becoming evident. It’s hard to maintain the poise to continue to steadily climb.

But the good pilot steadies the craft and keeps it climbing toward cruising altitude. (It doesn’t matter at this stage the amount of previous crash lands we’ve endured.)

Soon enough we are there—enjoying the pleasantries of life at cruising altitude. We have time now to reflect, and to enjoy something to mark what we have achieved thus far.

Before we get too comfortable Air-Traffic Control confirms: we are to commence our descent—time to land.

Achieving Our Goal – Landing Well

Weight loss is perhaps the most salient example, worldwide, of something akin to air flight: we take the entire trip really well, achieve our goal, and then we land only to lose our bearing. We don’t hit the ground running.

To hit the ground running is a military metaphor; as the chopper lands in hostile territory those soldiers better be ready to hit the ground running... Enemy fire is sure to meet them. Quick movement and wits about them are their best chance.

It’s the same for us. Our best ally is our conscious mind, geared and ready to fight the good fight that is already well advanced.

Too many times, perhaps, we’ve given up good ground for a swamp of a promise—to revisit ‘just for a moment’ that forlorn territory. As soon as we got there we realised we had again been duped.

Not this time!

The only limitation, the only barrier, to continuing that blessed path we’ve already begun is a forgetful mind, a weak, deceived or overbearing conscience, or a misaligned focus.

Life can seem long and maintenance is now the goal; we must hit the ground running one day at a time. Breaking that down, we must manage our thinking one moment at a time.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.