As part of the Wellness Program we offer our local team, we have featured a race at the end of each of the last few years. In prior years, we have hosted an obstacle course race in the coffee fields behind our house. This year we took our event to the river. Then, we raced uphill from the river. We named our race: "Superar la Subida" ("Overcome the Climb").
The first portion of our race course was a particularly challenging grade of incline. That, of course, was the point. We wanted to push ourselves to embrace the discomfort of running uphill and continue climbing despite the burning sensations in our lungs and legs that were not so subtly screaming at us to discontinue this deranged physical endeavor.
All participants (our clinic team and their families) completed the course and "enjoyed" the experience as evidenced by the post-race photos below :)
Our uphill race was an apt metaphor for where we find ourselves as an organization. We have been hovering around 7K patient encounters per year for the last three or four years. Pictured below is the whiteboard I keep updated in our clinic.
We have been on a plateau.
Author James Clear in his fantastic book Atomic Habits examines this plateau.
“..in order to make a meaningful difference, ... persist long enough to break through this plateau—what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential.”
“When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success. The outside world only sees the most dramatic event rather than all that preceded it. But you know that it’s the work you did long ago—when it seemed that you weren’t making any progress—that makes the jump today possible.”
We have been building latent potential.
With your ongoing support, we look forward with eager anticipation to a period of dramatic growth in the very near future. We look forward to unleashing our latent potential and breaking through this plateau!
Top Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash