You got to do what you got to do!
After about six weeks of break in running due to Corona Wave Lockdown, I started running again towards the end of May. As expected, there was a big drop in my fitness levels and I gradually started inching back on my fitness levels. As part of regular “maintenance” training phase, last week (13th June), my friend Rahul and I ran a 16K easy paced run — we gradually built up to this in three weeks. It should have been an unremarkable training run except it felt very difficult. In fact, even before we started the run, we both felt a general sense of malaise for different personal reasons. We generally kill time on these slow, boring runs by having some exciting conversations. But that day, within a couple of kilometres, it was clear that we will not be able to converse much as we had to contend with our mental demons. We kept at it and finally completed this “difficult” run. When I checked with Rahul at the end of the run, he said that all he thought about was to “somehow” completing the run — counting down the remaining distance. Weather was not particularly friendly as we are currently transitioning seasons but our perception of difficulty was disproportional to that. On a different Sunday, this would have been just a boring run -definitely not a difficult one. It would have been much easier. To some context around our (running) training regimen, we normally put in 50+ hours into “maintenance” running every week, when we are not training for any specific event.
As I reflected on this experience, I realized that the benefit of completing a challenging activity/task on a bad day is much higher than the benefit of doing the same on a good day. Accomplishments against the grain of ease — when the going gets tough — make our mindset much more robust than otherwise. This need not just be about difficult activities — equally applicable to mundane items such as compiling documents and evidences as we move across project phases at work, filling in our timesheets and other policy related paperwork, payments of bills and renewal of insurances, annual health check-ups, personal finance planning, etc.
Make no mistake, life will throw sufficient opportunities our way where we will have no choice but to skip pre-planned activity — think sick child, extra work load at office, travel, family functions, sickness of self etc
While this may have been a recent experience, by no means is this an isolated instance — these kinds of difficult “easy” runs happen from time to time. And it is not just in running. I have had many similar experiences at work — well even with regards to going to work on a given day. A bad night can upset the morning mood so much it gets tempting to take it easy the next day. But I hardly let go of such instances. I still get on with the work — practice indifference to the moods and emotions in order to build robustness in attitude.
I believe that the improvement in robustness comes from:
- Confidence on the back of accomplishment of delivering in difficult conditions
- Reinforcement of neural pathways — essential “habit” building mechanism
- General sense of positivity on the back of value created by accomplishing a task
- Avoidance of guilt (of not having done a planned activity)
- Not interfering in the compounding of gains
I had not been able to effectively deal with this “escapist” mentality for many years — I do remember so many Sunday mornings — Sundays are long run days — when I wake up to the alarm, let the mind run its course of coming up with perfectly logical reasons for skipping the run that morning — so sleep off the rest of the early morning on the sofa in the front room. Not surprisingly, I also used to suffer from Monday blues for all those years.
Once I realized that the only way for me to get over this was to take a detached view and just get on with the work and not let mind rationalize the decisions with seemingly valid “excuses”. I started following ‘Nike’ tag line — Just do it.
What you do when the going is good is important but what you do when the going gets tough can make all the difference when you try to accomplish those difficult, worthwhile goals.
While Monday mornings could be a great such example for many of us, do you also face such predicaments — how do you do deal with them?
