Running Again
For most of my life, I hated running.
With a passion.
I was “not good at it,” and my cardio was seriously lacking.
But it was something I had to come face to face with after joining the military. I was either going to fail, or I was going to keep hitting the starting line until I learned to like this grueling sport.
Failure was not an option.
I won’t go into details, but I learned a lot about running (did you know that the bulk of a runner’s training is “easy recovery runs”?)
I learned to like the battles with myself in my head, fighting to get to the finish line every time I decided to lace up my shoes to go out on a run.
I kept at it…consistently. And I got relatively decent at it.
My 2-mile run time dropped to sub 15 minutes, and my 5k runs dropped to sub 24 minutes.
Note, I was unable to run 2 miles before doing this. So I was proud of my accomplishment.
Becoming a “runner” was the first time I experienced the power of consistency firsthand.
It was an amazing feeling. I just had to put in the work day in and day out.
And I used this same strategy with visual communication. I was not good at this skill when I started with this visual illustration thing (see my very 1st post below):
But I kept at it. For 100+ days straight. And people resonated with my work.
Check this out. These are my impressions in 2022 on Instagram. It’s mindblowing:
I can’t even imagine 8.3 million people seeing my work.
Consistently posting online has opened up a lot of doors for me. And all this to say:
Keep going. Focus. Don’t stop.
These are the lessons that running has taught me and lessons I will be implementing in many aspects of my life for the rest of my life.
I hope my story inspires you to do the same.
Click Worthy 🔥
Starter Story: A cool website I found this week showcasing over 3700 case studies with founders who built profitable businesses. This is a nice way to learn from those who have already done the work and reaped the rewards.
Growth.Design: Another case study site with a nice comic-strip style user interface. It’s super engaging and super interesting. The topic of this one is consumer psychology in product design.
SwipeFile: A website created by Neville from Kopywriting Kourse. It’s essentially a huge swipe file for marketers. I’ve seen some really interesting stuff in there. It’s worth checking out!
Last Word from Me
Be on the lookout for an email from me soon.
I’ll be putting together a pre-order for my course “Get Started with Visual Communication” (title a work in progress).
In this course, I will be teaching you the basics of design, tools of the trade, and how I go about connecting ideas to visuals (and other bonuses 🚀 ) so that you can start to communicate visually on your own.
Feel free to reply to this email if you have any questions or if there is something specific you’d like to see in the course or this newsletter.
Until next time!
Elliott
I can totally relate with running man! Took me 4 months to run a 5k and its helped me connect with other runners across south east asia 🌏
loving the posts 🤙🏻