Powering through or setting your own pace?

Are you powering through life or setting your own pace? You know you’re setting your own pace when your lifestyle feels sustainable; you might be powering through if you feel like you’re always behind and can’t quite catch up.

Life isn’t a race and yet we sometimes live as though it is one. But, have you noticed how exhausting it is to power through?

Powering through becomes a cycle

Greg McKeown refers to this as “The False Economy of Powering Through.”

“When we try to make too much progress on a goal or project right out of the gate, we can get trapped in a vicious cycle: we get tired, so then we take a break, but then we think we have to make up for the time lost, so we sprint again.”

Greg McKeown, Effortless

We have to let go of this “false economy”

When we believe the lie that the only way to “win the race” is to power through, we’re believing in the false economy. We see others sprinting around us and we believe we need to sprint also. We have to catch up!

But setting a pace that you can sustain for the long run doesn’t mean that you’re falling behind, though it may seem like it at times. Remember the old fable of the tortoise and the hare?

The tortoise in the tale is the poster child for setting your own pace. Let’s review the story! (Note: Even though the fable refers to both racers as males, I’ll refer to them as females because it suits my story.)

The tale of the tortoise and the hare

The hare mocked the tortoise for being a slowpoke. The tortoise, standing strong for her own pace, challenged the hare to a race.

The hare took off running and the tortoise took off too, slow and steady. And even though the tortoise moved much slower than the rabbit, she kept moving at her own pace.

After a time the hare looked back, saw her enormous lead, and exhausted from running so fast, stopped to take a nap. We all know how it ends, the tortoise passed the hare while she was sleeping, crossing the finish line first.

Powering through leads to burnout

Just like the silly hare, when we believe we have to sprint all of the time, we get really, really tired. So we rest.

Then we’re behind again, so we sprint. And round and round it goes, till our head’s are spinning.

Ask me how I know. I was an expert at powering through — which unfortunately made me an expert at burning out.

But setting your own pace leads to fulfillment

It took me a while to realize that powering through wasn’t serving me well. But, I’m slowly finding my pace. And so can you.

This process of finding our own pace, of becoming ourselves takes time. I hope you’ll join me on the journey!