Crawl, Walk, Run

 Crawl, Walk, Run

Sometimes crawling involves
tackling.

Whenever you're starting into something, particularly something new...give yourself the time to do the thing properly.  Too often we are impatient and insist to ourselves that if we're not an expert immediately, we give up on it.  As it's been said, "Anything worth doing is worth working hard to be able to do."  With the crawl-walk-run format, you have time to take baby steps and build the requisite skills to be able to move up...toward an actual capability.  

Even knights have
to crawl sometimes.

In the fire service and military, this "crawl-walk-run" modality of training is a mantra to get baby rookies through training pipelines that get them into a working level of competence.  For example, the boot camp phase of "break you down so we can rebuild you" prepares the new recruits for the culture, morals, and expectations that they'll face in continued training.  Following that, in broad brush strokes is the individual training where you learn the basics of the craft.  From there, you're matriculated out to the "learn on the job" field training phase where you're doing the left-seat/right-seat with a seasoned professional.  Lastly, when you're "running" the edge is maintained with continuing education on current topics and refreshing the basics.

Learn from others.

All of that to say, the long pipeline and culture of learning with "don't eat your young" doesn't necessarily translate into other careers and jobs terribly well where we say "sink or swim."  This applies to volunteer roles, church roles, and about anything else.  Having a system where your new folks have the latitude to learn through trial and error, and then grow is important.  One thing to remember with the crawl-walk-run is that you can't crawl forever...at some point, you've got to get on to the run part...but that's after you have some crawl time.  

Running is good.

When we look at this model in terms of our family life - marriage and parenting...the same principles can apply.  When we talk about being newly married, there are some crawl activities that we can take like marriage counseling, learning from other couples a few years ahead of us, and reading books about marriage topics like family finance and relational boundaries.  The crawl phase may be marked by, "becoming the person we're looking for is looking for" as Andy Stanley puts it.  

Sprinklers help
running.

When we talk about "walk" level topics" before you get hitched or newly married, it could be a small group at church, volunteering together, building a proposed joint budget, or taking a trip together.  The idea is to add some stress to the topics that help build the roots necessary to fall back on when the going gets inevitably tough down the road.  As you grow in your early years of marriage, the "run" phase may shift from "be" or "do" to "lead" or "mentor."  

Learn to craw
from crabs on
a beach.

We're starting to see in the business literature the addition of "fly" as a final step.  There are things in life that hopefully each of us are to the level of "flying" with...you don't need to be "fly" level with all of them...and you shouldn't.  We have a person in our circle who was an accomplished high school baseball player, but like most humans...his athletic career ended there...not as Derek Jeter in the Hall of Fame.  The sad part became that he has refused to do any rec league softball since it "isn't flying" despite a love for the game.  There are things in life you should "fly" at. There are many more that you should just be happy to be an accomplished "walker" for life.  We likely won't hike the Appalachian Trail...but we can have a heck of a lot of fun hitting the wilds every weekend.  

Sometimes you need 
a whole team.

It also becomes important to do the "routine maintenance" in a run phase...most of those basics are activities you honed in the crawl/walk phase.  Things like a monthly (or weekly) date night, monthly budget meetings, goal setting/check-in sessions, and adventure injections.  The good news is the model or system of crawl-walk-run-maintenance can work for any new skill.  You likely aren't starting a new language lesson by parachuting into a foreign country...nor starting piano wih Bach or Beethoven.  Similarly, as you go through family life and enter new seasons give yourself the grace to be a crawler - new parenthood, kids teenagerhood, empty nester, retirement, and so forth. 

Flight pre-reqs.

Also, remember that sometimes we backslide...and that's okay as long as you get back to forward momentum.  I remember a time during college at the annual Bataan Memorial Death March marathon in New Mexico.  Somewhere around mile 23 or so the course becomes a mile or so long sand pit where you sink in each step.  I remember going from a run/shuffle thing to literally back crawling on my hands and knees beside a German solider.  We'd both get up, stumble a few paces, fall, crawl, and repeat until we got out of the sandpit.  In life, we'll have times when we have to go back to the crawl and walk pieces.  If we go into life knowing that we'll have bumps along the road, we're less surprised and more able to revert back for action.  

As we wrap up, take a minute in the new year to think about some of the items that you can become a "crawler" on this year.  It's important that we continue to inject novelty and growth into our lives as we get older.  Otherwise, we go from one year to another without much change...and consequently without much growth.  Go grow this year...as a crawler.  

With you in the arena, from ours to yours...Happy Trails!

Call to Action: 

• Pick out three things that you're going to do this year and a couple of crawl, walk, run actions (e.g. learn Pickleball, take up crochet, run a 5k, save $10k for a goal, etc).  
• 1 - ___________________ 
• 2 - ___________________
• 3 - ___________________
• Discussion: Consider what you/your family could/would/should (level of commitment) and start/stop/sustain (action) to help each other with a crawl, walk, run as a family.  

Further Reading, Motivation, and References:

- Vince Lombardi - "You block and tackle better than the team you're playing, you win."

- Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly - https://medium.com/@mmusa/crawl-walk-run-d4421ac6aabc