Let purpose chase you- lessons training for a marathon.
Credit- Science of Fitness
I have always wanted to run a marathon.
In January 2022, I made it my New Years' resolution.
With no deadline, it was only 3 months before the end of the year when I began training. But…
There was no event I could join
It was summertime in Australia
I had no one to join me
There is never the right time and more excuses than reasons to take action on your goals.
To take a step back, I initially considered running a marathon because it seemed meaningful. It spoke of someone determined, consistent, and had the power to withstand stress. Every part of that spoke to me.
Other than that, I knew that others before me had done it. Most of them had a positive experience- is that not enough to give it a try?
We are told we need a reason.
We need a purpose behind our goals, otherwise when tested we will fail because our “why” wasn’t strong enough.
But what if we flipped it?
What if we started on a journey, and then found meaning in the pursuit of a goal?
David Goggins said it best, “perform without a purpose”.
We are all trying to chase purpose, but what if you let purpose chase you.
I choose to run my marathon on the 11th of December 2022.
The day was arbitrarily chosen based on a three-month timeline (from a training program I found online-yes it was that basic).
This meant I had no ‘event’ to stick to, I wasn’t training with anyone, and everything was reliant on one thing: my word.
It was just me vs me.
The end of the year was fast approaching and a fire began to catch. Only after starting my training did I begin telling those around me about my goal.
Interestingly it became more real the more I spoke about it. Fear began to creep up as now others were expecting me to achieve my goal.
And naturally, those around me asked me ‘why’?
Even after a month into my training, I did not have an answer.
The only thing I could notice was that by starting I began to discover new motivations, which fuelled my research into how to perform better.
I understood that moving toward a goal was better than staying stagnant and waiting till the ‘purpose’ found me.
No one told me to do it, better yet I could stop and it wouldn’t matter.
But I made it matter and that is where the meaning began to grow.
The fact I did not have a 'why' was me training my mind to push through ambiguity. To refocus my mind to overcome the mental barriers that I set. An essential skill to tackle my preconceived ideas of how far I could run.
Isn’t this why we set ambitious goals? To remind us that we are so much more than the stories we tell ourselves?
Despite not having all the answers to start this journey, I stuck to my training because I believed in the goal. That is all it took.
Self-belief.
Yes, a cliche. But once you believe in yourself and put your dreams into action, you begin to understand why time after time the main message of all our favourite movies carry the same message- Just believe in yourself!
Using the movie analogy, our life, like a story, follows a narrative. The difference between reality and a story is that you are the author. Films and books have an ending already. Your story does not.
You just have to be willing to pick up the pen and start writing where you want your story to go.
And so I changed my story to take on a challenge that I believed would grow me.
Only when I completed a 30km run (the furthest point I’d go before attempting to run the 42km marathon distance), could I answer the excuses that I posed at the start of the blog:
“Why don’t you join an event?”
I didn’t want an event to keep me accountable. I wanted to prove to myself that I can stick to my word.
“Why would you do it during Australian summer?”
There is never a right time. There are better times. But if the weather is the one thing to stop me then I will always have an excuse. If it’s so bad I will run in the night. There is always a solution, just maybe not the solution you want.
“Why are you doing it alone?”
Being able to do it by myself was the best way to learn every step of the journey. That’s not to mean you can’t have guidance, but since I wasn’t trying to break a world record, I believed I could learn it myself. I want to learn to be alone. “I want to be reminded of the importance of being at the centre of my own life in the course of my journey”- Erling Kagge. In other words, I want to write my story.
Don't chase meaning, let meaning chase you.
In summary, I decided on a goal that I believed was a worthy endeavour. I knew others had done it and enjoyed it. I thought of what it would mean if I were to be a marathon runner and listed out its qualities. It resonated with me and so I got to work. I put in the time and before I knew it I found my ‘why’.
Next week's blog will be all about me running the marathon and how when achieving a goal you will be tested on all the lessons you learned along the way- to determine whether you are ready to conclude your journey.
