Gotta Get Ugly to Get Beautiful

Ugly often leads to beautiful.

I started my heavier training runs this past week or two as I gear up for another season of triathlon. Interval running is the killer for me. It hurts. As an adult, I have become more conscious of how it looks when trying to push through that fitness level. Fact is, the last few laps always look ugly. There’s no way to hide from it, unless I want to quit and go home early. But if I do that, I don’t get quicker.

That got me thinking.

How many people go home early because they don’t want to look like a failure, even though looking ugly means growth. It means learning. It means improvement. How many people get caught up in how they look, over the growth that is so small it’s hard to even notice?

Writing a sales letter. Doing your first sales presentation. Making your first speech. Designing your first powerpoint. It’s all ugly starting out. But as time goes by, you get better. You get fitter. You get faster. You get more fluent. You begin to get so good, you look good… even beautiful.

Even our “addicted to cosmetic surgery to look more beautiful” friends come out of surgery looking like a smashed crab.

You either accept ugly as part of the path to beautiful. Or you go home early and accept that your life is only ever going to be as good as it is now. Become unless you are prepared to be ugly for a little while, you will never get to beautiful.