What's Your Ending...Better Yet What is Your Beginning?

“I believe that an ending is only an opportunity for another beginning.” That was a quote I heard on a television program recently. What a true statement. No matter what you do this happens. As I spoke about yesterday I had a great day celebrating with friends and family. What I didn’t mention was that after the fun Michelle and I went to a different type of celebration. We went to a celebration of life for a lady who is becoming a close friend of ours. The ending of her husband’s life is now a new beginning for her. The outpouring of support and the way he was portrayed made you believe that he would only want all of his relatives to continue on. Honor him but don’t be sad or become stagnant. We have endings all the time. Whether it is a task we are working on, a workout, a relationship, a job, or even a loved one’s life we are always ending one thing and attempting to begin again. We don’t finish working and say, “alright I did my job, I’ll stop now.” No, we find the next assignment and begin the task of completion. Even people that do quit working either by quitting their job of retiring begin looking for something else to do. We don’t workout one day and say, “well, that was nice” and not go back. Even when the workout is one that pushes us past our limits we get up the next day and embrace the pain and push our bodies again. The end of one workout allows us to assess our weaknesses so that we can begin to address them and better ourselves. Relationships are interesting things. We find someone we like. We hang out, hook up, date, move in together and then something happens. What causes the dismantling of what we thought was such a good thing? Who knows, but as we have all been told there are plenty of fish in the sea. We start the entire process over and then one day it ends. The ending is just the beginning of being together in a way you may have desired or even never thought you would want. Marriage is the beginning and your life together becomes the story you get to write the ending to. As a coach I am faced with endings and beginnings every year. Beginning in August my players come back, the new guys come in and we start the process of our season. We know the ending will come in May and how it ends depends on how we wrote the story through the previous 9 months. There are times we are sad because things end and other times we are happy or maybe even thrilled. With any of the endings we have the capacity within us to determine our next beginning and how we will write the story. Maybe it is because I am a coach but I always like endings. Whether it is the ending I had planned for or things didn’t necessarily go my way I know that I am only moments away from beginning the next chapter. Today’s workout was to be a 10k but honestly I am tired of running the same route so I swerved. Instead of running south I took off northwest. Well, after completing my run I realized I only did 5 miles instead of the 6.2 I was supposed to do. You know what, oh well. I was hot, maybe somewhat hung over, and still feeling Dairy Queen in my belly. I ran only a 9:45 pace but with all the hills I am fine with it. I ran, I felt better for it, and I bettered myself. My positive ending and just the beginning of what drives me.