It occurred to me today that everybody is in a position where they can’t, until they end up in a position where they can.

Today, I ran 5.4 miles and I only stopped seven times. This might not sound like much to you, but in January, I was incapable of running any significant distance at all. Earlier this week, I ran a full 5k and I only stopped once (after a particularly grueling hill). Again, maybe not that impressive, but a measure of my improving physical fitness.

Ten years ago, if you would have asked me about running, I would have told you that, “I only run if something dangerous is chasing me.”

About a month ago, I started working some one-mile speed runs into my weekly running schedule. At this point, I can run a mile in less than nine minutes, if the conditions are right (running is harder in heat and humidity, in case you didn’t know).

Ten years ago, running a mile would have probably killed me.

These days, the process of running –doing my very best during my runs, trying not to stop unless I absolutely have to, pushing myself to achieve– is a lot more in my head than in the physical ability of my body. I feel like I have become physically capable, even though my mind is still often struggling with the realization of what I can do. I hear the voices in my head that would continue to try to tell me what I can’t do, when I know what I’ve been able to do. Each significant achievement in my training raises my confidence that I am capable, so that I feel less and less like listening to those negative thoughts.

Of course, there are bad days. When I set out to run a distance that I know I can run in a certain amount of time with a certain average cadence and I get into it a little bit and I stop (because I’ve convinced myself that I must stop), and then a little later, I stop again. And, before you know it, I finish the distance I set out to finish having stopped so many times that it ruins my time and it ruins my cadence and I end up beating myself up about it.

But…

Even on those bad days, when I shouldn’t have let myself down and I shouldn’t have lost the faith, I still finish the race. I make it to the end. My failure in those particular moments is only a failure by degrees.

* * *

This all sounds great and everything; a truly motivational series of paragraphs by yours truly. But, here’s the kicker.

The unfortunate part of this can vs. can’t scenario is that it goes both ways. The things that are good that you can’t do right now –> you might be able to do one day, if you persevere. Unfortunately, you can also become capable of doing that which is not good, if you head down those roads.

The college kid who has a drink at a bar with some friends, just to see what all of the fuss is about, who then ends up having a drink every time she is out with those friends, who then ends up having three or four drinks every time she is out with those friends; she may end up –slowly, and by degrees– with a lifetime ability to which she never would have aspired.

Or the guy who gets together with his friends on Friday nights to play some penny poker, who then ends up playing cards on the internet for slightly larger sums of money, who then ends up wasting all of his savings –and then some– trying to make it to the next big win that sets everything straight again. Slowly, and by degrees, that man becomes capable of what he previously wasn’t.

And I know, because I’ve been in these situations (and you probably have as well), that the mind game is there, as well. The voices that haunt you in these places of failure, the voices that say that the failure isn’t just a bad choice –> it’s who you are, those voices are harder to ignore because you feel defeated already.

* * *

Slowly, and by degrees, is the only place that we ever get anywhere in life. I can tell you that every time I think about all of the work that I’ve put into the training that I’ve been doing to try to become a competent runner, I know that progress is a grueling road. But, I don’t imagine that the drug addict, waking up in the emergency room for the third time in as many months, is wondering, “Well, how did this happen?” They’ve gotten to their place slowly, and by degrees.

When I started my training in January, I couldn’t run a quarter-mile without stopping. Looking back at that version of me makes me proud to the same extent that the shame buries the drug addict who looks back at who they used to be. In their past lies a better them that they left behind, headed down their particular road.

Every success story has failures in it, just as every failure story has some success in it. That graph, of my upward climb to further and further running success, while it might be generally pointed upward, has some backsliding in it. Conversely, you never end up in a place of catastrophe without having taken a lot of little steps along the way to get there; some of them may have even been good days.

I guess, what I’m trying to get at is this: choices are important. And not just the big ones, either, but the little ones. That big choice that I made back in January, while momentous, is now comprised of each of the little choices that I make to run.

Respect the power that lives in the little choices.