Joy in the Journey.

I wrote this blog a year and a half ago and was never really happy with it. This morning, (27 March 2020 / day 1 of the Coronavirus lockdown in South Africa), I had a chance to rethink the blog and hopefully improve on it.

The principles of training for an event, studying for an exam or getting a large project done at work, are all the same. However, there are a number of things that we often get wrong in the process. Crucial to getting anything done, is the process of goal setting, execution and then the completion of the actual task. However, there is a problem.

Here is the Problem with Goal Achievement.
The sense of achievement and accompanying joy after you have achieved a goal does not last long. It has in fact been likened to the sense of relief you get when you remove a rucksack after a long hike. You get a smile on your face, and a feeling of relief, but it doesn’t last very long.

So let’s have a look at goal setting, and then toward the end of the blog, try to sort out our hiker’s dilemma.

 

Here are some of the wrong ways of attaining a goal:
– Take diet pills. You might lose weight with them, but at what cost to your health. Not only that, but you won’t learn the lessons about healthy eating and exercise that will sustain you in the long run.
– Use banned performance-enhancing drugs as an endurance athlete. Yes, you might get a bit quicker, but again, at what cost to your health, and, will you be able to really celebrate your achievement?
– Cheat and backstab your way to success.

With the above in mind, let’s look at some of the better ways of getting things done.
It all starts with a goal. That goal might be athletic, and certainly, for many of my readers, it will be just that. It might also be a course of study, or a financial goal: whatever it is, define your goal and write it down.
Next up, try to figure out the steps that you would need to take to get you there. At this point, you very often need help from someone who has been there already. That help might come from a financial advisor, a coach, a teacher etc. You can, of course, go it on your own, but that route is always more difficult, and can lead to all sorts of problems.
Make sure that your goal is reasonable. For most, it’s pointless writing down your goal as running a four-minute mile, or overtaking Warren Buffett on the wealth front. You might get there one day, but, it’s going to be a long an complex process that will unfold over time.
Now comes the really important part, and it’s this part that I want to work through more carefully. We will use the example of someone who wants to do a sports event:

Write out on a piece of paper what the event is and the date.
Next, work out how many weeks you have.
(At this point, you can come up with a self-written plan, download a generic plan from the Internet, or chat with us and see if we can help. We established SBR Sport Coaching to help you achieve your Swim – Bike – Run goals).
Here comes the key point – you now need to forget about the goal, and you need to focus on the daily steps to getting there. You can’t become a Doctor by focusing each day on your graduation. You simply move from one subject with its exam to the next, and those singular successes combined will get you to your graduation. An Ironman athlete cannot focus daily on that red carpet moment. He or she needs to do a whole bunch of things first. From getting equipment correctly sorted, to getting efficient in the swim, to nutrition – the list of things that you need to pull off is large and complex and needs to be tackled systematically. Then you will need to swim your first nonstop kilometer, do your first 10 km run and 50 km ride. Week by week you add to those things until you are at the start line.

Harmonized Passion vs Obsessive Passion.
I am really not sure who coined the above term, however, it really does deserve to be unpacked. The concept goes as follows – if you focus only on the end result you become a slave to achievement. Focusing on a long-term goal will cause anxiety, burnout, dissatisfaction, and depression. You might have made a decision to run Comrades marathon next year. Obsessive passion says that you should go out immediately and test yourself over a 50 km run. That run, at this point, will destroy you. Harmonized passion will get you out the door tomorrow for a slow 5 km run/walk. Then you can focus on your first 10 km run. After that, you still focus on 10 km runs, but now you look at ways of getting quicker over that same distance. This is where the fun is. Did you get your pacing right, what about heart rate, how did your nutrition go?
Get that right and you will live with a sense of achievement. Now you start to look at a 15 km run and then at a half marathon. People will often say that the fun was in the build-up to the event, the steep learning curve, the successive milestones ticked off.

You can’t do a big endurance event and focus on the finish line. Your mind will explode with anxiety. Just swim to the first buoy, get the first 10 km of Comrades done and then the next, ride to the first water point at Transbaviaans and then to the next. Endurance sport is as much a mental game as it is a physical game. Those that get good at the mental game do this by simply ticking off the program on a week by week basis.
There is a song written by Jon Mabe and Jessi Alexander called “The Climb”. The theme is both simple and profound, it’s not about what is waiting on the other side, it is simply the climb in front of you.

Psychologist Richard Davidson describes two types of positive effects found in the process.
1, Pre-goal attainment positive affect. This he describes as the positive feeling you get as you pursue a goal. The joy of small marginal gains, of projects completed, a chapter written, a workout recorded.
2. Post-goal attainment positive affect. The feeling of contentment as you cross a finish line, attain a qualification, reach a new position in your company, finish your book, or in this case, your blog. This feeling of contentment he argues, does not last long. It’s much like our hiker taking off his rucksack at the end of the hike.

So, if you don’t find joy in the journey, you won’t find much in the achievement.

I have chatted to lots of athletes who in fact get a bit depressed after they have achieved their Comrades run or have run over the red carpet at an Ironman race. A way to avoid that is to set micro goals beyond your event. You can decide to take your race number and mount that in a picture frame, maybe with a photo of you running. Decide which wall that’s going to go up on etc. Plan a recovery run with a friend a few days after the event. Whatever it is, set up a series of small goals after you achieve your big one. This will always be a process, not a destination.

Hope that this has been helpful. I wrote this blog originally after interviewing Ann Ashworth after her Comrades victory. The short interviews can be found here.

Regards,

Mike Roscoe.