You don’t have to enter an official “race” to talk about your finish line.

We all have finish lines almost every day of our lives. It depends on how you define that phrase. I see people whose finish line is the end of a work day or perhaps the achievement of a goal.  Maybe it’s when the kids go to bed or when you go to bed or even when you stop working for the night.

The point I want to emphasize, though, is that the fact is you “cross” the finish line – you don’t stop right at it. You keep going in other words. You move on to something else. If it were a running race, perhaps you’d move on to your car or the food table or your home. But you’d keep going – somewhere.

In all of life you have to keep going or you get stuck and stagnate. This happens frequently when people fail to look beyond the achievement of one goal. When they’ve reached the conclusion of that one, they have a let down period and get depressed and often just stop doing anything. It takes a great deal of momentum to pick back up again. It’s much better if you anticipate the end of one project and already have a new “goal” or finish line delineated.

There really is NO finish line except perhaps death and that is even debatable depending on your view of the afterlife..

Stop demarcating your life with various arbitrary finish lines or at least change their name to something cute that simulates “new start line” (that’s not cute but you can come up with your own term).

It would also be of use for you to do an inventory (it’s past time for a midyear inventory anyway) of all your past finish lines and what they led to next. It will give you a much better timeline of your life and your growth than the Facebook timelines. Go way back and see if you can list everything you achieved and then what came next. See if you can see a nexus between the two. I bet there will be because most of what happens to us is NOT random despite what we may think.

Stop wishing for the end, just think about the next step. We don’t really want to reach the end – we want to reach the beginning of something new because it will have been based upon your last achievement. Case in point – I just finished the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life (my Trek across Tennessee) but when I crossed that finish line, I knew it was simply the beginning of processing all I learned while out there alone as well as figuring out what I would do if the physical damage I experienced is irreparable and I can’t run again, or what I will reach for if it does resolve. There were so many openings in my life and soul once I crossed that finish line – it was the beginning of a new life!

Where are your finish lines leading you? Have some fun exploring!

Terrie