Today, I received one of those little reminders about the obvious. A while back I wrote a blog post on losing my cool during a difficult travel experience. I glossed over this part but probbbabbbly part of what got me rattled when I landed in New York was the very tight connection I had to make in the Minneapolis airport en route from Los Angeles.

We were way delayed out of LA and when I got to the gate agent who was helping those of us with connections, she let me know “oh! They’ve put a short hold on your flight, you can make it if you RUN!” So I ran.

Now, sidebar, it wasn’t until one of those airport golf-cart-passenger-transporting thingy’s was beeping past me as I was RUNNING with my bags, that I could have suggested to the agent one of those might be helpful for me.

Regardless, I made the flight, sweaty and painfully winded. I’m not exaggerating. I think of myself as a strong person, I get my 10K steps most days, have a (mostly) regular yoga practice, but when it took about an hour for the pain in my lungs to calm down, I said to myself, “Man, that is not ok. I gotta do more cardio.” Full disclosure: it’s not the first time I’ve had the thought.

And that’s how I’ve found myself owning and doing a set of Jillian Michaels’ workout dvds. 8 weeks of progressive HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts that I totally suck at since I now know that I’m quite out of cardiovascular shape and I’m just not that coordinated. Sheesh, it takes me a while just to figure out the not super complicated moves and in fact, I’m spreading the 8 week workout over 12 weeks. But, I committed to myself to see it through, told friends and my accountability circle that I was going all in, so I have stuck with it. AND today, I did the cardio workout (which stays the same for the first half of the program) and actually, after about 5.5 weeks, felt like I could do the whole thing. It was difficult, but I could get it done and didn’t feel like I needed to die instead of do the mountain climbers.

Point being: things–change especially–take time and sticking with it slow and steady through the suffering and impulse to quit is the basically the way. I’m going to stick with it just keep going. What’s something that’s been tinkering around in the back of your mind you can commit to for a period of time? It can be small, an opportunity to explore what’s possible and assess some gains. Just a thought.

PS I’d be lying if I didn’t say that mostly when I’m doing the cardio section of the workouts I wonder why in that airport, I didn’t instead think to myself “I really hate cardio. Noted. Moving on.”