Patricia Walsh is one of those people who seems to excel at everything she does. After several years in a successful and coveted stint as an engineer at Microsoft, she left to join Austin, Texas-based mobile payment app Mozido--a job she loves--in 2013. A longtime marathon runner, Walsh completed her first triathalon in 2010 and began breaking records a year later. She launched a motivational speaking business and wrote a book.
She’s also blind.
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LIFE WILL GET VERY DIFFICULT SOMETIMES. YOU CHOOSE HOW TO RESPOND
After losing her vision, Walsh could have gotten angry and bitter, but instead turned to running to help her deal with those emotions. Later, her father was ill and her apartment was burned down by an arsonist. Meanwhile, she had to finish her book, train for her sport, and protect her spot on the national team. The only way to keep going was to focus on what really mattered to her--changing the perception of athletes with disabilities from “participatory hobbyists” to hardcore competitors who are to be taken seriously. She says she could never do that if she got mired in negativity.
BIG ACCOMPLISHMENTS ARE OFTEN A COLLECTION OF SMALL ONES
When Walsh first ventured out onto that Ontario running path, she never could have dreamed that she’d compete in the Paralympic Games one day. She says that accomplishing the big goals is a matter of faithfully doing the work toward achieving them every day. It’s getting on a bus at 5:30 a.m. to go work out and jump in a pool of cold water, even when she doesn’t want to. But the only way to get better is to keep working. Stay in touch with what motivates you.
“The only way to [keep going] is by reminding yourself frequently why this is important to you, and it can’t be something superficial, it has to be something that honest-to-God means something to you at a heart level,” she says.
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