Learning to Enjoy the Path

I always find it interesting when the NBA season comes to a close and the buzzer sounds to end the finals. The players start to celebrate and invariably you will see one or two players who just don't know what to do with themselves. This is it. They've just won it all. An 82 game season followed by the playoffs and now they are about to be crowned champions. It's as if, at that moment, they realise that this is what all the hard work and commitment has been for.

There's no doubting that we live in a society that is obsessed with results and winning, with a heavy bias on success stories and standing on top of the podium.

Yet we know that winning, defined in this way can only be reserved for the few. We know that many businesses fail. We know that there are more medals handed out that aren't gold than there are gold.

This focus on goals, results and winning comes at a heavy price. For many that price is disappointment and a sense of failure. For others it's non-participation.

Exercise is a great example of this non-participation. Fewer kids are participating in regular exercise than they were 20 years ago. It's tempting to blame the reduction in kids' physical activity on the new computer age. I'm as guilty as anyone of this type of thinking. I look around at the incredible number of open spaces and parks in my area and puzzle at the emptiness of them. I think back to my child hood and smile at the games of footie played every day after school until dark. 'Must be the ipad' is my initial reaction.

Yet, there may just be another reason for this.

Plainfield middle school in Indiana adopted a 'no cuts' policy to school sports. If you turn up you're in the team. Numbers more than doubled across the board. Interestingly performance also improved with eight local championships across multiple sports.

'Kids love exercise and turn out in droves when they know they will not be humiliated or rejected.'

We've become too focussed on results and winning and elitism that it's stopped becoming fun for a large number of people.

The Way of the Process

The alternative way is the way of the process; becoming connected, both in mind and body, to the activities that make up the journey. The idea and challenge is not to eliminate goals, rather that....

the path becomes so enjoyable and absorbing that you would happily trade the goal for the path.

This requires a connection and focus to the tasks at hand and granting yourself the freedom to find maximum enjoyment in the pursuit. It becomes an inner competition, one of finding more enjoyment, better form, more mind- body integration and more 'flow' experiences.

It is not the marathon that becomes so important anymore, but the training runs that you undertake to help you get there. How can you find stress relief, rejuvenation and enjoyment in each training run? These are the 'times of your life'. You can't afford to waste them for the sake of a run that may or may not happen in the future.

This process focus requires a mind-body connection that also enhances performance. Put simply, if you are fully absorbed in what you are doing it is more difficult to become distracted. Distractions are the enemy of high quality performance. 

Impacts to Exercise

When John Douillard (see references) studied in India and asked scholars what the purpose of exercise was according to ancient Vedic texts, three responses were given.

1. To rejuvenate the body and cultivate the mind
2. To remove stress
3. To develop mind-body coordination.

Reading the above probably conjures up images of yoga or meditation. Yet these practices don't have the sole rights to a more mindful approach to exercise, it's simply that other forms of exercise have done a great job of losing sight of the above principles, replacing them with the 'stress-recover' philosophy.

People run to train for a marathon or to meet a weight goal. People lift to get bigger and look trimmer. People play sport to compete and win.

The alternative way is to simply get back to the enjoyment of exercise without goals or constraints. To focus on breathing through the nose to maintain a sensible heart rate that encourages a mind-body connection. To stop keeping score or counting laps and instead feel your way to a healthy workout.

 Impacts to Work

With work it has to be about more than just the promotion, the pay rise or the next achievement. How can you find a connection to your daily work and those people that you interact with? How can you embrace each individual challenge with full focus and connection?

We're constantly bombarded with stories of super-successful people as if this is what we are all aiming for, but there has to more than that or else disappointment looms. It starts with meaningful work and playing to your strengths. This provides the platform for natural interest and motivation. These ingredients will help you connect better with what you are doing.

Let's say you are writing a book. The success of such cannot solely be determined by the sales of the book. What about all the steps along the way. How can you find enjoyment and learning in each step so that when you look back it is that which you remember. Maybe you just designed a new web page. How satisfying was that? Each creation, each interaction, provides its own opportunity for focus and enjoyment.

Personal growth and progress will always involve a direction and some form of goal or altered state. But the altered state has no guarantee of arriving and comes with no guaranteed 'feelings'. The smarter approach is to learn to enjoy the path and live each moment with focus and connection.

References:

John Douillard, Body, Mind and Sport (Harmony, 2001)