The End of Your Rope

It's the place where dreams can become a reality or instead be shattered. The point at which you have to choose to fight or flee. It is a wall you have to scramble over and it takes every ounce of mental fortitude within you to overcome.

Maybe you find yourself there at the halfway point. Heading into the third quarter of the race, you're just wearing down and struggling to decide if you can keep pressing on for the distance you just covered all over again. Your legs feel heavier than usual, your breathing is becoming increasingly labored and that fire you had before is sputtering out.

Maybe it's within that last quarter-mile; which so effectively separates the boys from the men. Your body is entirely shutting down. Every step sends a tendril of flame up your calf, the muscles in your shoulders are tending up, your whole body is in agony. So you tell yourself you'll let up because you don't have that much speed and you'd lose anyways. You let relief take over and watch as people pass you one-by-one. And though your body has been relieved of its suffering, you cross the line with a greater weight on your shoulders and heart. The burden of knowing you could've given more, of knowing people beat you in that race that never should have. The burden of losing by a few points and knowing those points were accumulated by your moment of weakness.

I'm here to tell you a secret though, but first something you probably already know. When you toe the line to race, you're going to find yourself at the end of your rope every single time. You're going to find yourself slipping away physically and mentally and you can choose to cling on for dear life or simply let go.

Now for that secret. When you find yourself at the end of your rope, it's not because you've reached the point where your body has nothing left to give. It's because your mind is afraid you’ll discover you've only used half of what you've got in store. It's because you've come to the border-zone, where mental barriers no longer inhibit you, but instead only physical limitation can stop you. And believe me, you haven't found your absolute. You haven't hit that point where your body can't take another step of abuse.

Most people race their whole lives and never cross that line. Never come to the point where the brain says, “You need to stop” and they respond, “Good thing you aren't calling the shots.” They never discover the satisfaction of a race trying to break their body, their mind, their will to continue suffering and discovering it instead broke some part of them deep-down that made them a weak-minded human. That piece within them that always tried to say, “enough is enough” or “you don't have what it takes.”

So when you find yourself at the end of your rope, grab on with every ounce of your soul. And when the going gets tough, do the impossible. Don't just hang on for dear life; start drawing yourself back in. Return from the dead, find that beast within you. Because when you do, every sorry soul in your part better run for their life or they'll be eaten alive, right along with the weakness that once burdened you.

- @qhugget ( Quinton Huggett)