Running and Corporate Life Chapter-3

Its that time of the year where I make one post that compares my running thoughts with corporate life. I have done two such posts in last two years, here is the third, I hope it resonates to some of you, I would love to hear your thoughts on the same. So here it goes, my run comparison with corporate life

1. Ask for help

Let me start with what changed drastically for me in last one year. I have been running for past 12 plus years now, I wouldn’t call myself an expert runner, rather call myself a struggling recreational runner. Covid took its toll on my running just like all other activities, once Covid got over, my running continued to deteriorate and reached a level where I was not enjoying my runs. In corporate life it often happens to us, with all our experience and skills, we suddenly start faltering, the reason can be any, personal, professional, something else going on in mind. Under these conditions, please identify and accept you are not doing as well as you used to and then next big step is ask for help. There is no shame in looking around who can help you and reaching out to the person asking him/her to be your mentor, preferably someone who is doing better than you and you know the person well. I decided to get trained under a running coach and I can tell you in last two months of running under coach, my runs have improved and most importantly I am enjoying my runs. Feels like my mojo is back.

2) Hang out with like minded people

In personal as well as corporate life you will find positive mindset people and negative mindset people, help those with negative mindset, if you spend too much time with negative mindset, they will eventually bring you down too, so while help them, try to hang out with positive mindset people too, these are the people who will pump in energy for you which will help you do wonders in corporate life or running. One of the reason training under a coach was also to be able to run with the Coach trainees group, when I started hanging out with these people who had mindset tuned towards running and running better, I automatically tuned myself to do the same.

3) Time vs distance, whats important?

All practice runs start with a plan, each day plan has a certain goal. Just like at work, everyday is not same, sometimes you are bursting with energy and want to give your 100% plus, and there are days when you are down and even 60% efforts drains you out. In corporate life, we often have goals, let us say to get a certification done in next 3 months. Goals should be time bound, or else they are of no use, but lesson to learn here is while time bound is required, don’t be disheartened if you miss the timeline, give your best in the timeline you gave to yourself, but if you were not able to complete, then continue, continue till you achieved the goal, don’t give up because time has passed. Running often has same comparison, when you say I want to do 10 miles run in 96 minutes, if you are at 9th mile and 96 minutes are over, don’t give up, its ok to complete 10 miles in 104 minutes, but doing 9 miles for a goal of 10 miles is not good. Keep that in mind, in corporate its ok to miss time goal, as long as there is perfectly valid reason for it, you identified you are missing the time much early and well informed others that you will need extra time, Just don’t give up on your goal.

4) Run slow to run faster (Start small to go big)

Marathon runs can go as much as 2 to 5 or even 6 hours, this means your start or approach to the run will decide your success. Never ever start with so much energy that you can’t sustain, identify the amount of time your project will take to complete, divide that into a smaller milestones (tasks) and track one milestone at a time, When I ran my full marathons, I often broke down 42Km distances in to 4 parts of 10Km each and ran each part with right level of energy.

5) Motivate others to motivate self

People often look for motivation from others, the fact is outside motivation is limited, only source of unlimited motivation is within. One way to tap in that source of motivation is to motivate others, when you motivate others and encourage others to take the path that helped you, in order to “Walk the Talk” you will never falter from your path, I encourage everyone around me to run, I helped many to get started. I feel so proud that there are many runners who started to run due to my push and are now doing much better than me. Similarly in corporate life when you see someone struggling, even if this person is not part of your org, please try and help, when you help others, it makes you better human being.

I will stop at 5 because 4 or 5 are magic number points for everyone to remember, anything beyond that and we start dropping packets. I look forward to your feedback and comments. When I run I often think of my life, personal and professional and it helps me be a better human being.

Wishing you all a very happy new year, have a healthy and prosperous personal and professional life