Life Lessons Running A Marathon Can Teach You Completing a Marathon requires months of hard work training in all types of weather. While there are certainly health benefits to the training, the discipline can also teach you important life lessons that can be applied to other parts of your life. “26 Marathons: What I Learned About Faith, Identity, Running and Life from My Marathon Career”. by Meb Keflezighi - winner of the NY Marathon and Olympic Marathon Silver medalist explores this in more detail. But, if you’ve ever run a Marathon, or are considering running one, here are a few lessons from our own experience: • Lesson 1: You can accomplish a lot if you set your mind to it If you really want something that feels out of reach - tap into your desire to do it. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish if you really apply yourself to something you are passionate about. Pace yourself. Be patient. If you stick to your objectives and set interim milestones along the way you will continue to make progress towards your goals. Life lesson: Completing a difficult task, like a Marathon, has many benefits - including increased self-confidence, improved time management and the realization that you can accomplish a lot if you set your mind to it. • Lesson 2: Make a plan - break down big goals into smaller successes Completing a marathon is a major goal. You don’t just wake up one morning, roll out of bed and decide to do a Marathon later that day. You need to learn how to set a goal and have a plan that you stick to. It takes months of planning and training during which you’ll slowly build up your endurance and race mileage from 5Ks to half-marathons. Along the way, you have accomplished big and small milestones you can celebrate: A new PR. A distance you’ve never thought you can run. Making new friends. Life lesson: After you’re done, you’ll realize that with proper planning and hard work, you can accomplish a lot. • Lesson 3: Teamwork Most people think of a Marathon as an individual sport. While crossing the finish line is under your own two feet - who helped you get to the starting line? Your family with responsibilities around the house, with kids. Your training partners who ran with you for countless hours providing you inspiration and motivation to go the extra mile or run harder. Life lesson: Being a team player, even in an individual activity, can help you accomplish more than what you can do on your own. • Lesson 4: Overcoming obstacles - it’s about the journey, not the destination Training and completing a marathon is not easy. You’ll have good days and bad days. Learn from the bad days - see what you can improve upon and remind yourself of your ultimate goal. Life is like this. Difficult goals requires hard work. Instead of giving up, see what you can learn from it. Tomorrow is a new day where you can try new things, make improvements based on what you’ve learned. Life lesson: completing a Marathon is all about the journey you take and the memories you develop. Along the way you will face obstacles. Leaning how to overcome them will help you when you face other challenges in life.