A couple of weeks ago, M2B Fitness hosted a free women’s 5K for all the ladies at our gym and in our community.
It was a pretty unofficial 5K, for sure. I had laid out a route, set up mile markers, and created a start and finish corral, but that was about it.
No official timing.
No officially marked course.
No starting gun or air horn.
Just a “One, two, three—go!”
And no awards.
The purpose of the 5K was to celebrate M2B Fitness’s two-year anniversary at our new location. We wanted to celebrate with a fun, pressure-free 5K, followed by food and drinks.
As the ladies headed toward the starting line, I told them, “The person who comes in first and the person who comes in last will receive the same award as everyone in between: a loud round of applause and a ‘Way to go! You did it!’”
We didn’t give out awards because we didn’t want the event to become a competition for placement. We wanted each person to compete against herself and discover what she could do.
We wanted to celebrate every person who crossed the finish line because each one was competing in a field of one: herself.
The event was a great example of how different we all are and how we are all in different places in life. Although the ladies crossed the finish line at different times, they all crossed it hot, exhausted, thirsty, and glad they had finished.
It didn’t matter when they crossed the finish line. Each person faced her own version of hard and challenging out on the course, just as each of us faces our own version of hard and challenging on the course of life.
I want to challenge each of us to think about how often we compare our income, car, house, or wardrobe to someone else’s as though those things tell us who is winning.
The real measure in life is the same as it was for the participants in the 5K:
“Am I challenging myself? Am I constantly asking myself if I can do a little more, no matter how my current pace looks to others?”
The true measure is not where you place compared to someone else. The true measure is what you are capable of and whether you are pushing yourself to reach that capability.
When you can sincerely answer, “Yes,” the feeling when you cross the finish line is the same for each of us:
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”