Running does a lot of things for us physically. But some of the greater things that it does for us are the things that it does for us mentally. Today, on this episode of Runners High, ?? 0:11> back here to join me again, and I want to talk a little bit about the things that running is taught me about life.
I think in our culture of instant gratification, it's easy to let go of the idea that we need to work hard, we want things right now. But the biggest thing that running has taught me about life is that hard work pays off. What you put in is what you get out. Even though we may not see what we put in, come back out immediately, it does happen.
So, that actually leads me to the easy and number two, is it patience is the key to life. When we put that hard working, we want it to come out immediately. Especially now we're addicted to our phones, tablets, you're on your newsfeed and companies are giving you that infinite scroll where you get more and more reward for sticking around and it's immediate.
But when you put a hard work in is something be it your body through running, or a new hobby, you're not going to see that for a little while, and you need to be patient. That patience is key to succeeding in whatever it is you're going to do.
This took me a little while to realize but number three, you got to have a larger scope of what life is. It's not just the weekend. In running, especially if you're a high school athlete or college athlete, it's all about the weekend, you know, what race do we have this weekend. And the scope of life comes down to, you know, five days, seven days and that's all you focus on.
It's great that you focus on today but when you don't have a larger scope of what your life is, you become trapped in today, in the suffering of today, and you have an inability to reach higher goals because you don't have that larger scope.
One of the best things that happened to me was my college coach telling me, now that you're getting ready to graduate, you have the ability to to think longer term. I was no longer bound by the training seasons, I was no longer bound by cross country season and indoor track, and outdoor track, and triathlon. I had the ability to look at my life on the whole. Now, it's a little much for a lot of 22 year olds, I suppose.
But when you think about it, when you're no longer constrained by those time boundaries, you can think, okay, what do I want to accomplish in this year, or the next five years or the next 10 years, and put an action plan together to do that.
But without the larger scope about what you want to do, you're going to be stuck spinning your wheels in this microcosm of today and maybe thinking about tomorrow, if you get that far, where you don't actually accomplish the things that you want to do.
Number four, rest is key. It's easy for us to work hard, especially when you're motivated. It's time to you know, get to work, get it done, keep going harder, harder, harder. That's the mantra of the athlete, whether you're running, or you're hitting the weights. Whatever it is you're doing to try to become a better runner you want to work hard. But you gotta give yourself time to recuperate. And for those of us that are a little mania driven, and you know, want to be the best, it's hard for us to step back and realize that's the best time for us.
That's the most important time that we need, the time or we're not doing something that allows us to recover, become stronger, be able to go harder the next time when we are driven to move further. So, rest is absolutely key.
But the biggest thing, and I kind of touched on this earlier, you only have today. When you have a larger scope of what reality is you can make that plan. You can make that plan for the next year, for the next five years, like I said, which is great. But you can only act today. You know, what can you do about changing the past? Nothing. What can you do about the future?
You can plan but you can't yet act. And a race is really a microcosm of this. Once the gun goes off, you have to act, you have to go. Well, if you go out too hard, you can no longer change that beginning, you've gone out too hard.
Now you have to deal with what you've done. You didn't follow your plan. But now you can act right now. What are you going to do to change that plan to reach your goal? Knowing that you only have today and that sometimes things go off track will help you stay on track when you have that larger scope of life. So, let me know down in the comments below.
What have you learned about life through running? What are the deeper mysteries that you've discovered about yourself? Don't forget to subscribe, to stay tuned for more episodes of Runners High. I'll see you next time.