Unleashing Your Inner Hero: 5 Life Lessons from an Ultra-Marathon Journey

Ok, it has been 4 days since my ultra marathon. I am coming out of the painful daze and am slowly regaining the spring in my step.

Alas some missing toe nails, my body seems to be recovering well.

To say that this was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life would be an understatement.

It was also one of the most humbling experiences of my life—the courage and determination of some people to persevere through enormous pain leaves me in awe of the human spirit.?

A natural response to seeing this is to just cry.

I must say this—there are heroes walking among us and they are more often than not hardly noticeable, very quiet and humble, speak softly and don’t mind when you cut in front of them in the line for the cash register.

With that in mind, I wanted to add value to my community by highlighting some lessons learned. I think they can be applied to any setting; business, life or otherwise so I hope you find it useful.

Here goes…

1.??????Never run someone else’s race:

This is a very important realisation and one that has been following me through my life. When I was doing my PhD, there were always students in class who knew the subject matter on the first day of the semester. Seeing their hands up in the air thrown so vigorously made me think that I am not intelligent enough for the journey that laid ahead.

Fast forward a couple of years of gruelling study, you find yourself surprising everyone, including yourself, with the academic you are becoming.

The same happens when you run an ultra-marathon. The moment you begin following the tempo of another runner is the moment you start cementing your own failure.

How much someone is making; how much social media engagement they manage to generate in a short period of time; how much their business has grown; or how fast they run at a particular section of the race is never a measure of YOUR aptitudes.

It is also most certainly not an indication of whether or not you will succeed.

Comparison is the kill of joy.

Head down and focus on your own steps—the only competition you have is one with yourself.

2.??????Surrender to the immediate nature of pain:

This one took me by surprise. Its gravity and profoundness is unparallel.

When you run for 9 hours straight in cold and rain, on an unforgiving terrain of a mountain, you experience levels of pain, at every centimetre of your body, that you have never experienced before. The nature of the pain is so profound and immediate that there are no strategies, mantras or motivations you can deploy to diminish the suffering. And with every step, the suffering becomes more intense.

The only thing you must do is to accept it. You must embrace it.

I guess I only now understand what Marcus Aurelius meant when he said: “death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back”.

When you welcome the pain as a gift, it purifies you allowing you to find limits within yourself that you never knew existed.

I had to subject myself to such pain to understand what it means to embrace your cross.

3.??????Your body is a source of wisdom:

One of the most valuable tools in any sport is learning how to listen to your body.

Your body is a field of information about the external world, and if you learn to hear it, you can adjust your behaviour so that it is more in synchrony with the environment.

Becoming one with the environment, you start to move seamlessly and with ease.

The caveat to this superpower is that you have to move!

You have to run towards a finish line to hear your body responding to your feet hitting the pavement.

In the same way, you have to act towards a goal to develop perfection.

The more you act, the more information you will have about your actions and the more information you have, the better you become at doing.

What you can do today, don’t leave for tomorrow. Just move. Just do it.

I guess Nike was onto something...

4.??????The race never ends:

An ultra-marathon teaches you how to persevere on your path under extremely intolerable conditions.

It helps you realise you can do things you never thought possible.

You can quit smoking, you can abstain from certain 'pleasures', you can say no to abuse, you can beat depression and anxiety.

But how?

If you do not want to eat chips, you simply do not enter the isle in the supermarket where chips is stacked.

Isles represent your belief systems while a pack of chips represents your thought triggers.

Do not entertain beliefs, thoughts and behaviour that reduce your likelihood of finishing the race.

Do not speak to them. Do not argue with them. Pretend that they don’t even exist. Indulge in a diet of the mind, as John Nash would say.

Soon enough, these thoughts will feel left out and rejected, and they will slowly but surely dissipate.

Now onto the next thing you want to change… ?

5.??????The more you break away from the group, the more alone you will be:

There is a pervasive paradox about living—we want to achieve greatness and transcend our immediate circumstances and yet we find safety in numbers.

When you run, you run alone. When you run fast, everyone else is behind you.

To achieve what we desire, we will find ourselves surrounded by those that think we are insane.

You will not get the support; you will not get the affirmation nor approval; but that is the price of discovering new lands.