If you grew up in the 80’s, there’s about a 100% chance you couldn’t wait for Saturday morning cartoons. For me, Saturdays meant Pacman eating power pellets, Pee Wee Herman adding to his foil ball, and only He-Man had the power to stop Skeletor from ruling Eternia. If you were lucky, just maybe you’d have some Captain Crunch in the early morning and later, as morning faded, some spoonfuls of SpaghettiOs with Meatballs as the cartoons ended and Soul Train began.

One sunny Saturday afternoon, dad tossed my big wheel in the back of his old Chevy C-10 Classic pickup and we took a short ride down to the Hinky Dinky grocery store parking lot where they were holding a big wheel race. I was a little younger than the other kids but nobody seemed to mind too much and soon we were taking our places at the starting line. A starter pistol shot a loud blank into the sky and we were off, peddling a mile a minute. I peddled with everything in me. I wanted to beat the older kids. At about the halfway point I looked around and, to everyone’s surprise, the youngest kid in the race was at the head of the pack. Nobody was even close! In my childish mind it seemed I had victory at hand, and so I let up. I slowed down. I decided that I’d already won and it was only fitting that I coast through the finish line. And then… They caught up. One by one they passed me. I did not finish first. I did not finish second. I didn’t even finish in third place. Instead, I finished in fourth place. I was devastated. Dad just looked at me disappointed and asked, “What happened?” We both knew what happened.

Years past and I hadn’t thought about that kid’s race for who knows how long. Then, one day, as an insurance agent who’d cut his teeth working day and night for a long stretch, I looked around again and nobody was around me. I was at the head of the pack. And then, you guessed it – I coasted. I’d slipped into a comfort zone. Suddenly, I was logging more couch time than usual and four hours would slip by binge watching Netflix and that had become my new normal. Months passed and I’d loosened my belt, until one day that memory of the big wheel race came back to me and I realized I needed to start peddling faster again. “Start strong. Finish strong,” I told myself.

Warren Buffet once said, “The chains of habits are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” I’d slipped into a slow-motion way of life. All the little comforts that money affords had taken priority over long term goals I’d originally set out to achieve. So, I thought about that race. And, once I had, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Day after day the thought consumed me. Day after day it reaffirmed that others were passing me again, one by one. So, I put down the remote control. I put down the nachos. I got back to work with a renewed vigor, once again with my eye on the prize.

Aaron Lee Shigley lives and works in Omaha. He is a Realtor ® with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Ambassador Real Estate, a licensed Investment Advisor Representative, and an Insurance Agent with Harvesters Senior Benefits. Inquire directly at aaron.shigley@bhhsamb.com or call/text: 402-730-3404.