Finish Strong

Finish strong and you’ll always win

Kevonstage



Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.


1 Corinthians 9:24

Starting is easy when you finally decide to. However, where it really gets interesting is when Mohammed must decide whether or not he wants to meet the mountain! Of course I take this from the age old adage, “if the mountain will not come to Mohammed then Mohammed must go to the mountain”. What this is really saying is that if your will does not prevail as the ultimate choice then you must submit to an alternative. Let’s unpackage this.

We want to move on. We can see just ahead the new path we must take and we want to take it. But, before we can start on that new path, we need to finish this course. We are almost there, it’s almost finished – but not quite yet. For the impatient ones among us we begin to burn our bridge before we have finished crossing and risk falling to our demise – unintentionally of course. Many of us do not realise that it is the last 20% of work that requires 80% of our total effort to make the whole enterprise complete.

Many will start fast, few will finish strong

Gary Ryan Blair

I recently reminded my students that they will have to consider that many of the persons who they will leave school with when they graduate, will not be around them forever. They will leave together, but they will not stay together. It takes time to really understand what this means but after this discussion I did hear some of them reflecting on this truth that many find incomprehensible now. The friends you can’t go a day without talking to now, one day you will go days, then months, then years without seeing or talking to. As you run your race and you look to the left or the right, you begin to realise that some have dropped way behind or have opted out of the race completely. What will you do? Will you wait for them to catch up or will you join them on the sidelines. Also, consider that when many have left us we still have our race to complete, when we fail to maintain the pace others set for us we still have to finish the race the best we can. There is nothing that is guaranteed in this life; you won’t be the same forever, you won’t live in the same place, or be around the same people, love the same things and the list goes on. What is clear is that we all have a purpose and if we want to see it through then we have to ensure that when all else fails, our will and drive to finish our race is never compromised.

Is the Mountain Friend or foe?

We started at the mountain and there we shall end. The mountain can be viewed either as positive or negative. Moving forward, always look at the mountain as your springboard to success. A mountain can be the thing that tests and sharpen a spirit of survival; a testimony of your spiritual and mental growth and maturity. When you begin a race you don’t know the rest stops you will have to make but the mountain is always in sight and to meet it and experience it is to be at your optimum. It is where you will find your perfect self from your imperfect experiences.