I woke this morning and I was perusing my emails, I found one from Seth Godin telling me that “I rock!” And so I’m like finally, someone recognizes the awesomeness that is me. ….I’m sorry, what?…He sent that out to everyone subscribed to his email update list?….Oh….Bu, bu, but, he said “I rock,” and then I was thinking “Oh yeah” and then feeling like totally awesome. Well anyway, don’t matter casue I know that I, in fact, do rock. You’ll see….

Nah, all kidding aside, as a long time fan of Seth’s writing, today’s post ends a little bit on the snarky side: “And five minutes of rocking would be enough, because it would be five minutes more than just about anyone else.” Back in my previous incarnation as an artist, I became convinced that I was slowly building momentum, safe in my belief that I was outperforming everyone else I knew in the amount of time I was being creative. My thinking was that if I kept outproducing any of my potential peers, I would eventually obtain the attention and recognition I sought.

For me, Seth’s post reminds me of this mindset. I think too often we think that obtaining our goals is a sprint, but with everything I’ve read (and witnessed) I’m certain that reaching our dreams is a marathon. Reaching your dreams is left to those who keep their goals in front of them and consistently put one foot (or five minutes) in front of another, whether it’s second after second or day after day. With writing, most accomplished writers clearly identify a direct correlation between a writer’s “success” and the amount of time they are sitting in front of an empty pad of writing paper, a typewriter, or word processor.

At times knowing that you’re in a marathon is de-motivating. Especially when we see the rare and extraordinary shooting stars break this rule and blast their way to their dreams, it becomes even more difficult to accept. However, what we miss is that even though some bright stars seem to give us a glimpse that achieving our dreams can be obtained through a sprint, I bet if we did the research, we would discover that even those shooting stars didn’t achieve their dreams without putting more time into their passion than anyone else. Of that I’m certain, there are no shortcuts. Whether you finish the marathon in world class time of 1 hour and 56 minutes or 6 or 8 or 10 hours, achieving our dreams IS a marathon.