Have you ever had a glimpse into your greatness? I’m sure you have. That moment when you see yourself in a totally new light doing something you prepared very little for and pulling it off? You probably thought, “huh, just imagine what I could have done if I had really prepared or went “all in” for this?”

I’m almost embarrassed to admit how many times I have seen that. I have seen it in my business, my career, my relationships and every other area of my life. The most recent “sighting” happened last week while I was in Hawaii. My husband, daughter and I were there with a whole group of friends and a brood of kids enjoying a week of being totally unplugged. One morning on my run I  saw a little registration sign for a race that was happening the next day. That sign flashed into my head over and over that day and then finally at about 3:30 that afternoon I called up race headquarters to see if registration was still open. They said “yep but you have to be here by 5:00pm”. It was a 45 minute drive from where I was.

So, I asked my friend, “hey, do you want to do a marathon tomorrow?” For most people this may sound like a totally odd thing to do last minute and many of my friends would have said, “are you freakin crazy?” but the group of us who went to Hawaii are known as The Village Idiots because of our collective and individual tendency to do things that seem totally idiotic to normal people; so, in the spirit of idiocy she said, “okay”. When she asked her husband what he thought of her doing it he said, “I think it sounds idiotic.” Perfect!

So, suffice it to say we were totally unprepared and un-trained for this race. We both run of course but the longest run I had done in a while was 14 miles and that was 3 months ago. My friend has a bad knee and could not run more than 4 miles without being in serious pain so we decided we were going to walk it – knowing full well that walking would drive us absolutely batty but also knowing that believing we could walk it if we wanted took away any anxiety.

Anyway we set out at 4:45 with the “walkers” but ran anyway and decided we would try the run/walk Galloway method. I had heard of people who had done this method many times with success and in past marathons I actually thought I would try it but was way too impatient, and if we’re being honest too embarrassed to walk. However by not walking at all I would invariably hit the wall at mile 17 or 18 and I’d feel like crawling in a hole and hope even the sag wagon wouldn’t notice me. I would then end up walking 1 or 2 or even 3 20 minute miles just to stay in game, totally blowing my time. (I should say that I have a run a gazillion races but rarely, if ever, actually followed through on a rigid training plan.)

In this run it totally changed. We ran the first 3 and then tried a variety of systems – walk half mile, run a half mile, walk 5 minutes, run to the mile marker, walk a quarter, run three quarters. Something crazy happened along the way. Every step was fun. It got to the point that we were hitting mile markers saying, “I can’t believe we are already half-way. This is flying by.” If you’ve ever done a marathon I’m pretty sure those are not phrases you’re used to uttering along the course. At mile 18 we felt awesome. There was no wall.

In the end we finished an hour ahead of our goal. Based on both of our marathon histories it was a dismal time for a marathon but pretty good for deciding to do it the night before and not training at all. Incidentally I have new-found respect for people who walk marathons. In my opinion that is way harder than running them! (Can’t wait to see the mockumentary Racewalkers)

So, on the way home we kept thinking – imagine what we could have done if we actually had trained for that? What if we really tried to be great? And that thought naturally brought me to all of the times I have thought that. In my business, career, you name it. There have been scads of times in my life when I had the chance to be great and I didn’t take it. What’s up with that?

The funny thing is that recently this question, “are you willing to be great?” has been posed to me on more than one occasion  by a few different people. I’m supposed to pay attention to this, right? The fact that I am holding back, sabotaging myself, allowing glimpses to be enough…when I know they are not.

We have all seen glimpses of our greatness. Some see that glimpse and ignore it, justify it and don’t really care to do anything about it. Being comfortable is far more important to them than being great. But for people like us, those glimpses are simply not enough. We see them and they drive us and often give us the swift kick in the ass we need to see what we can really do if we go “all in” and live like it really matters. Each time I see a glimpse something changes in me. Catching those glimpses are what has brought me to where I am today and this latest one will take me even further. This glimpse has made me do my business a little bit different this week, work out a little more intentionally, and produce a lot more than I would have.

I think one of the tricks to catching these glimpses is to do things when you aren’t ready. Stop waiting for everything to be perfect and every star to line up before you take action. When we just go for it we really see what we’re made of and we remember that we don’t have to get it right, we just have to get it going.