Keep It Moving

0:00What's going on my friends welcome back to the Ryan League podcast where we love to keep being short and sweet for you each and every week. Today's episode has a very simple title but very powerful if acted upon in the title of Simple This. Keep it moving. Keep it moving. You know, it takes extreme bravery to get started. Oh, but it takes resilience to keep it moving to keep going. We love celebrating starters. Yeah, of course. We celebrate the person who finally launches the business or they started writing the book or they finally applied for that job or maybe they went back to school at an older age or they just started working out or they finally made that decision to move to a new city or decided to try again and they absolutely should be celebrated because getting started

1:02takes courage. But eventually the adrenaline of starting wears off. Eventually the newness disappears. Eventually the thing you were excited about gets difficult. Eventually you get criticized. Eventually somebody leaves. Eventually the numbers don't look the way you thought they would. Eventually life introduces you to something you did not plan for. And that's when bravery has to become resilience because life will not be perfect. And when life is not perfect, my friend, I'm going to encourage you to keep it moving. Your best ideas might flop. Keep it moving. People are going to disappoint you and break their promises and leave when they said that they

2:05would stay, keep it moving. You are going to disappoint people. And when you do, keep it moving. It's going to rise, markets will crash. You guessed it. I'm going to encourage you to keep it moving. You're going to have seasons where everybody seems to believe in you in seasons where it feels like nobody does. Keep it moving. I know that that can sound overly simple but sometimes the most profound advice isn't complicated. It's just hard to follow. Because when life hits you, your first instinct isn't always to keep it moving. Your first instinct is to stop, to sit in it, to replay it, to analyze every angle of what went wrong, who's to blame, what you should have done differently and what they should have done differently. And look, there's a place for reflection, no question about it.

3:07There's a place for grieving. There's a place for sitting with disappointment and learning from failure. I'm not suggesting that you ignore what happened, but there is a difference between processing and parking. Yeah, processing says, I need to understand what happened. Parking says, I'm going to live here. I'm going to move into this neighborhood. And some of us, well, we aren't processing anymore. We're parked. We're stuck. On the thing that happened three years ago, we're stuck on the job we lost, the relationship that ended, the person who betrayed us, the failure that embarrassed us, the opportunity that didn't pan out how we thought it would, the investment that didn't work, the mistake we wish we could take back. And because we're stuck on what happened, we're missing what's happening. At some point, you've got to keep it moving.

4:12At some point, you've got to keep it moving. Keeping it moving doesn't mean you don't feel the pain. It means you refuse to let the pain set up permanent residents. It means you grieve the loss, but you don't build a house on it. You acknowledge the setback, but you don't let it define the season. You learn the lesson without allowing the lesson to become your identity. You can be disappointed and still keep moving. You can be confused and still keep moving. You can have unanswered questions and still keep moving. I think sometimes we believe that we need closure before we can move forward. We need an apology. We need an explanation. We need somebody to finally admit that they were wrong. We need to understand why it happened, but what if you never get the explanation?

5:16What if they never apologize? What if the opportunity never comes back? What if some questions never get answered? Are you going to give someone else the power to determine whether your life keeps moving? You will be criticized for thinking differently. Keep it moving. Some seasons will be lonely. Keep it moving. People will misunderstand your motives. Keep it moving. You might have to start over. Keep it moving. You will never have a shortage of pit stops and setbacks, giving you an opportunity to give up. And here's what I've learned. Resilience isn't always dramatic. Sometimes resilience is just waking up tomorrow and doing it again. It's sending another email, making another call, writing another page, having another conversation,

6:17showing up for another workout, going to another counseling session, applying for another opportunity, trying another idea, and there's actually some fascinating research behind this. Did you know that there are Harvard Business School professors who studied thousands of daily diary entries from people at work? They wanted to understand what actually motivates people and helps them have a better day at work. And what they discovered became known as the Progress Principle. One of the most powerful motivators wasn't some massive breakthrough. It wasn't getting a promotion every week or receiving a standing ovation every afternoon. No, it was progress. Small wins. The feeling that something meaningful had moved forward. And I love that because when life knocks us down, we're usually looking for a breakthrough. We want everything fixed. We want the relationship restored.

7:19We want the business turned around. We want the opportunity to appear. We want the problem solved. But maybe you don't need a breakthrough today. Maybe you just need progress. One email. One conversation. One workout. One page. One application. One apology. One phone call. One. Next. Step. My friend, do not underestimate what a little forward motion can do for your life. You don't have to fix your whole life today. Just keep it moving. Because progress creates evidence, evidence that you're not where you used to be, evidence that the setback didn't finish. You evidence that something is changing even if it's changing slowly. We tend to think resilient people never get tired. It's just not true. Resilient people get tired.

8:21They just don't let tired make every decision. They rest when they need to rest. They adjust when they need to adjust. They ask for help when they need the help. They change strategies when the strategy isn't working. But nevertheless, they keep it moving. And there's a difference between quitting and changing direction. Just keep it moving means admitting that this particular road isn't working and choosing another one. The goal isn't to stubbornly keep doing the same thing forever. The goal is to refuse to allow one dead end to convince you the entire journey is over. Because if you keep it moving, you give your future self the chance to look back and realize how far you have come. You give yourself the chance to discover opportunities you couldn't see from where you were standing. You give yourself the chance to tell a comeback story instead of a quitting story. Think about the most successful people you know. I bet very few of them had a smooth ride.

9:22Somewhere in their story is a chapter. They probably wouldn't have chosen. Something fails. Somebody left. Money got tight. Plans changed. Doors closed. They questioned themselves. The difference isn't that they avoided hard seasons. The difference is that they kept moving through them, through the doubt, through the criticism, through the failure, through the silence. Starting takes bravery. But continuing takes resilience and maybe that's what you need right now. You don't need a brand new vision. You don't need another strategy. You don't need somebody to convince you that what happened didn't hurt. You just need enough resilience for the next step. Whatever you're going through right now, whatever hit you this week, whatever didn't work out, whatever knocked the wind out of you. I need you to hear this and hear me. Clearly, keep it moving not because it doesn't hurt, not because it doesn't matter, not because you're pretending everything is okay.

10:23Keep it moving because this moment doesn't get to have the final word on your life. Keep it moving because there's more to your story. Keep it moving because you've got somewhere to be and you can't get there. Standing still, my friend. You listen to this podcast today. You hear one very, very clear message. Keep it moving. And I've got the sinking suspicion. It's the message you need it to hear. My friend, thank you so much for listening to the Ryan Leak podcast. I hope and pray that today's episode out of value to your life. And if it did, I would just ask you to share it with a friend today. Maybe you have somebody in your life who has been really discouraged is on the brink of giving up. Maybe they already have given up. I think you're just in the stone. Yeah, we create these podcast episodes to help people reach their potential, help people

11:27keep going. And if you got somebody in life, then these are the message. Yeah, I would encourage you to share it with them. And as always, if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe, rate, review, all of those things, help us reach even more people with these short and sweet nuggets of inspiration. Until next time, my name is Ryan Leak. And thank you so much for listening to the Ryan Leak podcast.