Covering the business of education and training

I learned some of my most important lessons about business NOT in business school, but on a bike.

I was reminded of one of them today while out riding.

To really understand this, you might want to buy a couple of 20lb bags of rice or potatoes or whatever it is you eat. That's two bags = 40lbs total.

Now, put them in two separate back packs and hang one on your back and one on your front. Feel good?

Now with those forty extra pounds get out your old clunker bike - a mountain bike will suffice - but I used a hybrid.

After that, find the most unforgiving hills you can 4-9% will do.

With your forty extra pounds strapped on, ride up and down the hills for 4.5 hours and try to reach 30 miles total for your effort.

That's what I did today, except I went up one mountain and down the other side in a big loop that started and brought me back home.

Oh - the lesson -

The climb got real tough...really tough. In fact, I got my fat butt off the bike and started to push my bike up the hill.

At one point I knew I wasn't going to get back home in the time I had alotted. My goal, believe it or not was 2-2.5 hours.

The prudent thing for me to do would have been to turn around and go back. I had only one bottle of water and nothing to eat.

But, dangit...I don't know how to turn around. Furthermore, I hate turning around.

And to top it off, I had put so much effort into getting to where I was, I couldn't imagine turning around.

That's the lesson - the harder you try, the harder it is to give up.

Have you ever felt like quitting - business, a relationship, a course of study, whatever?

If you do quit, you can be sure you didn't put enough effort into it. Because the harder you try, the more effort you put into a project, the more difficult it becomes to just give up.

How can you quit something that you have sweat over, cried over, poured money into, dreamed about, lost sleep over and devoted yourself to day in and day out?

The more I climbed the more I did NOT want to turn around. I got miserably tired AND embarrassed when people saw me pushing my bike. They (bikes) are actually made for riding.

I also got ungodly hungry - at about 2-2.5 hours everyone bonks...I persisted for two hours beyond that.

That is another lesson - persistence.

Dang it, if you are going to start something...finish it.

If you feel like quitting...ask yourself how hard you have tried up to that point. Is it worth wasting the effort you have put forth? If so, you haven't tried hard enough or you wouldn't be so eager to waste the effort.

And, that lesson, I didn't learn in Business School.

How about you?