Marathon x Sprinting

In 2019, I boarded a plane 45 times and there are only 52 weeks in a year. That’s crazy, right?

But at the time, I was very proud of myself and truly believed this was how you build and scale companies. And even though I had always loved exercising and eating healthy (since I was born, thanks to my mom and dad), I was getting fat, constantly irritated, and always exhausted.

At that time, I wasn’t feeling pleasure in anything anymore. But the peak of my life (the moment I felt the happiest) was when I had a connecting flight in either Galeão (RJ) or Guarulhos (SP), because I could use the VIP lounge and take a shower.

That was it. That was the highlight of my life that year.

Looking back now, it’s hard to even understand how I was living like that. But when you’re deep inside that mindset of performance at all costs, you don’t question it. You just keep going. You convince yourself it makes sense, and for a while, it does.

But now I see clearly that it’s the same as running a marathon as if you’re running a 100-meter sprint. You will almost certainly not finish it.

And on top of that, everyone around me (friends, investors, society) was giving me positive feedback about how resilient and amazing I was as an entrepreneur.

Think about it: if people watching a marathon saw someone sprinting like crazy and said she/he was doing a great job… it sounds kind of silly, right?

I wonder how many of us are living like that without even realizing it. And if you’re in that space right now, I think the real question it’s whether you can slow down just enough to actually make it to the end.

Does that make sense to you?

ps: Can you guess which picture was taken in 2019?