What is your extra mile?
Posted on March 10, 2021 by Danny Buccilli, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
I have personally heard this expression many times, but never really managed to fully grasp its meaning until I had that "AHA" moment.
Have you ever wondered what “going the extra mile” really means?
I have personally heard this expression many times, but never really managed to fully grasp its meaning (at least the meaning I decided to give it) until I had that “AHA” moment.
Yes, it was just a moment, but quite an intense one, when I decided that I needed to get back in control (somebody I know would laugh at this expression :-S ) – and that I couldn’t just let events and life happening around me dictate who I was going to be.
I decided I was going to be “even more” me and less that idealistic projection – of the perfect man, professional, partner, son, brother, friend… you name it – that funnily enough I so hardly fought for building over the past 3 decades.
I was going to question everything, out of the blue, right then, in that moment.
And I did it.
I had to step out of the comfort zone where I was surrounded by many others like me, all young professionals in their roaring years all hungry and eager to fight for the hierarchy ladder at any cost, no matter what. I was going to join a new “community”, sometimes quite a lonely, but colorful one.
My extra mile was the effort of leaving that mental framework behind me, respectfully ignoring what I thought others expected me to deliver on.
My extra mile was the freedom of allowing myself to make mistakes, the freedom of “sacrificing” my weekends to study for a new master abroad, the freedom to nurture my passions (or the newly discovered ones) and to acknowledge that day by day I was somehow becoming “even more me”.
My extra mile will be to keep finding myself “even more” in the things I do.
It’s too easy to get somehow stuck in an image of ourselves that might not fully paint our portrait.
What is your extra mile?
