Running Upstream
On an early January day I decided to go for a run at a park that I often go to located just down the road from my house here in Asuncion, Paraguay. The park is a great place to run because it has plants and trees with lots a shade which is great for the hot Paraguayan sun, it also has a nice, soft one mile running circuit and a very peaceful environment. A real tranquil place to go run, walk, meditate and escape from the hectic life here in the city.
On this particular day the park was unusually packed with people, I like running in this park because not too many people go there to run but this time it was like an Apple Store on the launch day of the iPhone 10 or something. Then it hit me, “oh today is January 7th”, everyone is keeping their New Year resolution! “Interesting, I wonder what the park will look like in March?”
I set off on my usual run and I noticed that everyone was going in the same direction, which just happened to be the opposite of the direction that I was going in so essentially I was running upstream against the flow. This would normally not be a problem except for the fact that there were about three hundred million more people than normal and I had to constantly look out not to run head-on into anybody. There was no real reason for everyone to go in the same direction, no signs, no preset rules or regulations, I guess one guy said “i’ll go this way” and so everyone else did the same.
I considered turning around and just going with the flow of traffic, but then I thought, well wait, often if we want to be successful in life, business with our friends and family, we have to go against what everybody else is doing and saying, we have to be different, we have to not care about what is popular or fashionable. So I decided to use this small experience, difficult as it may be to practice the habit of going against the flow. I kept running ‘upstream’.
As I ran I thought about the very important words that my father often told me my when I was growing up in apartheid South Africa, “you march to the beat of a different drummer”. This has been a moto throughout my life: think different, do different, be different. This is the reason I am who I am, the reason I live in Paraguay, the reason I run my own business and the reason I am a coach. So as you go about your journey of life I ask you, what direction do you run in?
About the Author
Timo is a coach, trainer and motivator (and runner) in Paraguay. He and his team work to train and inspire the people of Paraguay through workshops, trainings and conferences including Leadercast and leadership events with speakers like Robin Sharma and John Maxwell