Using the Metaphor of Running a Marathon to Prove Yourself Right
The most common goal I hear from adults approaching a milestone birthday is the desire to run a marathon. Why is this?
Unquestionably, everyone who aspires to run a marathon has a different conscious motivation. However, I think everyone’s unconscious motivation is the same. It’s the metaphor of what it means to run a marathon. Setting a difficult goal you believe you have the potential to accomplish, then proving yourself right.
Specifically, everyone knows in their unconscious mind that the most important things in life are earned by completing a metaphorical marathon. It’s simply a fact of life that you can’t sprint from the person you are now to the person you want to be. You can try to sprint but sprinting through life is not sustainable. Burn out is inevitable. There’s just no way to sprint a marathon, real or metaphorical. In order to get from where you are now to where you know your potential could take you requires time. Time invested wisely into a step by step process, with a sustainable pace earned with preparation and consistency.
This is why I think so many people set goals to run real life marathons. Even though running 26.2 miles doesn’t actually lead them to where they really want to be in life, the physical accomplishment serves as a metaphor to prove to themselves they can do it.