7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 24
I checked my Apple Watch today. I’ve had it for about seven or eight years. It tracks how often you close all three rings — calories burned, movement, and exercise minutes. Since I’ve owned it, I’ve closed all three rings 1,750 times.
I thought I’d been dragging. Apparently I’ve been showing up a lot more than I was giving myself credit for.
John Maxwell tells a story about a donkey that falls down a well. The farmer decides the donkey’s old and the well needs filling anyway. He calls the neighbors over and they start shoveling dirt in.
A few loads later, the farmer looks down. The donkey isn’t buried. He’s been shaking every shovel of dirt off his back and stepping up on it. Shake, step up. Shake, step up. Until he walks right over the edge of the well.
Then the donkey came back and bit the farmer. The farmer got sepsis and died. Maxwell’s moral: if he hadn’t tried to cover his…, he would have lived.
The real point: failure is dirt, and dirt is something you can stand on.
The health I have today didn’t come from this year alone. It came from 1,750 days of closing the rings when I didn’t feel like it, when I wasn’t tracking a challenge, when nobody was watching. I’ve been shaking the dirt off and stepping up for years without realizing I was building ground under my feet.
David Willis 