Then, What?

Why? What? How?

Why? is the first question you should answer before signing up for an event. I wrote about the importance of answering that question in a previous post. The next question to answer is What?. What do you feel about the experience? 

Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and transport yourself to some time after a successful event. All the training, planning, and thinking about it are over. What do you feel about it…not, what do you hope to feel about it…what do you feel about it now that it’s over and in the past? 

If your answer is tied to the excitement and fulfillment of crossing the finish line or checking a box next to your adventure ‘to do’ list, then you may find yourself unsatisfied in the long term. The euphoria of the finish, and even the associated sense of accomplishment, can fade quickly. 

The answer to What? is the persistent psychological and emotional reward of the complete experience. What you feel about your accomplishment in the weeks, months, and years after the event is the true outcome; it shouldn’t be tied to a singular feature of the event such as finishing. Otherwise the planning, training, and the event itself will have been in pursuit of a single moment. If you failed to cross the finish line, was it all a waste of time? Of course not. Therefore, the answer to What you hope to feel is based in something that must be attainable even if you do not finish.

What you hope to gain from training for, and participating in, the event is something intrinsic to the journey itself rather than its culmination. It may be the joy of planning the adventure, the camaraderie and feeling of community as you share the training and racing experience with others, the confidence gained from persisting over the long term, the pride of setting an example of discipline and drive for your children, learning about how all the elements of your training have come together, etc.

With the answer made clear, you can view the event as the last step in a segment of your larger life journey, which puts all the preparation and execution within a psychological framework to help you to a successful completion that has long term meaning. That’s what we’re trying to build here, a psychological framework that helps you to bring more long term joy to your life.

The answers to 'why are you doing this?' and 'what do you expect to feel about it later?' may be closely related or surprisingly different. The important thing is that you've done the work to know and understand those answers. Be open to the possibility that you can’t find an answer to What that will give you long term fulfillment. In that case, you might consider not signing up for the event.

Once you can articulate What you expect to feel and gain from the accomplishment, identify the steps in training, planning, and racing that contribute most to feeding those feelings and manifesting those gains. If it’s setting an example of discipline for your children, then maybe you go for your run at 7 am every day, no matter what. If it’s the camaraderie and feeling of community, then maybe you commit to running with a club or group of friends at least twice each week. Funnel the decisions you’re making about your training, planning, and racing through your What so that you do deliberately gain what you set out to gain. When you cross the finish line, or even if you don't, you'll have a deeply meaningful and lasting experience to recall with happiness.

Along the way, recognize and celebrate those components as you train, plan, and race. Savor the process. There should never be a training run, for example, that you ‘just get done’. That run is the most important part of your physical training because it is now…the past is passed, the future may or may not come - all you have is now. Get it right, you won’t be given another chance at this moment.

Creating your mindset and re-setting your mind in the moment is an important skill that takes a lot of time and practice to master. Techniques for mastering your ability to do it quickly and seamlessly throughout your daily life are among the things we’ll be uncovering and dissecting as we continue our journey together in exploring training of the mind in future installments of Science Of Ultra.

There are three interconnected facets to your training: mind, body, and craft. We’ve now explored the first elements of training your mind. Specifically, you must know the answers to your Why and to your What. I recommend writing them down so that they are undeniably and fully articulated. Then, with those articulated first, you can move to the next step in developing the architecture of How to train your mind.

Throughout this series on training your mind, we’ll explore concepts such as confidence, trust, calm, grit, optimism, control, and focus. Stay engaged, there’s a lot more to come.