DO HARD THINGS!
Knowledge of others is wisdom, Knowledge of yourself is enlightenment…
The time is 5:30am, It’s a chilly 51 degrees Fahrenheit outside and the four hours of sleep I got is weighing heavy on me. Every thought that protrudes is buzzing in my ear like a mosquito in a quiet room. Voices seducing me to go back to sleep and enjoy the comfort of my warm blankets. As much as I want to, I know that deep down if I do go back to sleep I’m going to regret not going and proving myself capable of being able to do the harder thing. I escape the comfort of my blankets and transition to a seated position at the edge of my bed. The transition to the edge of the bed didn’t make it easier, the more I looked back the more enticing the idea of going back to sleep became present. I thought about the clients I train, I thought about how hard they’re working to be better, I thought about my mothers strength, I thought about overcoming my injury, the promise I made to myself to be stronger than ever. I thought about what I stand for, my values, to be 1% better everyday, and to be the 1% who tackle the hard tasks. With that I threw on my shorts, chugged some pre-workout, grabbed a black hoodie (I’m batman), laced up the shoes and shot out my front door.
• With all the lessons i’ve learnt over the past few years, I’ve learnt that there is something beautiful about doing hard things. Doing the harder thing is enlightening to me and there are studies to prove this other than just basing this off of my personal experiences.
• DOPAMINE, DOPAMINE, AHHH DOPAMINE the neuro-transmitter we’ve come to know and love. We love dopamine because this is the chemical that is correlated with pleasure and tells our brain “yes I love this, lets do it again”. Whether you get it from drugs, sex, ice baths, food, or exercise, dopamine encourages motivation to repeat the action. A study out of Vanderbilt University found that dopamine plays a huge role in birthing positive and negative motivation depending on which part of the brain the dopamine is produced. Dopamine can either work with us or against us depending on how you get the stimulation; it can either motivate us towards something grand or it can motivate us down a sink hole. This is important because it tells us what goes on in the heads of the high achievers like David Goggins, Kobe Bryant and Tour De France cyclist Tadej Pogacar.
• I believe most people want to work harder, be better at their jobs, and in their life as a whole. To achieve personal goals you have to take the time to understand your values. For example, I value consistency, ambition, and health which mirror how I go about my day to day life, and the actions I choose in order to honor those values. It all comes down to training the brain so that dopamine acts more on the centers that enhance motivation and less on the centers that deter it. The easiest way to achieve this is setting yourself up for achievable goals. We should all have goals that transcend beyond the self, but in order to get there we need to take baby steps and focus on the little wins/small goals. The little wins set the stage for motivation to keep striving for more. Inspiration leads to motivation, motivation leads to discipline, discipline leads to habit and finally habits lead to automaticity. The main focus should be training the brain circuits to get most of our dopamine from the right sources such as: Exercise, reading, meditating, nutritious meals, and practicing mindfulness.
I set my apple watch (Garmin please sponsor me) to track my run and within the first 200 meters I started thinking about how nice my bed would be right now. I took notice of some thoughts like “What if I just turned around right now?”, “Ugh I’m so tired, why am I here”, “Shut up and just go”. Majority of the noise coming in was noise that I don’t want to be hearing when I’m trying to run but it reflected what I really wanted to be doing which was to go back to my apartment, enjoy my blankets and cuddle my body pillow. I normally have lots of thoughts when I’m on my runs but everything was so amplified due to the lack of sleep. Thanks to my pre workout it was making the run just a little bit easier. I kept track of my form: Back straight (check), chest up (check) , arms swinging (check), balls of your feet (check). The cars race pass me as I turn the bend to begin the journey uphill, “how nice it would be to be in a car right now”.
• Our current world has become a pool to ubiquitous amounts of negative energy. There is a lot of unwanted noise and distractions coming out of various platforms from social media to apathetic people that tax our view of the world. Framing is a valuable exercise to implement in our lives. A highly driven person who sets a goal for intrinsic reasons has the ability morph work into becoming like play. Positive thinking is trainable, so instead of saying “I have to do this thing”, say “I get to do this thing”. Reframe the goal as a task that you want to accomplish. Optimistic thinking is incredibly valuable when it comes to being a healthier and motivated individual. Have you noticed that optimists are generally always smiling, encouraging, and exuberant? Optimism has protective properties for both mental and physical health, mainly due to its effects on health promoting behaviors. Optimism is NOT a hardwired personality trait. It’s a skill that CAN be trained, the only challenge is TRAINING it.
• “Know thyself’ is a philosophical maxim inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the Ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. This simple but profound statement holds the key to a better life if you search deep enough. The more you know about yourself, the clearer the skies become. Knowing more about yourself allows you to access what you truly value in your life. Do you value ambition, knowledge, consistency, health? Amongst the people in your life who do you notice that is always elevating themselves? Who are the ones that might not be entirely good for you and do they suggest ideas that THINK is best such as: “one more drink”, “lets binge this show”, and “forget about it, lets get drunk”. If that is how you deal with situations, I’m sorry to inform that those are just temporary fixes that provide you with no long term benefit. Find that person who encourages you to elevate your mind, body, and your soul. We need people who want the best for us. In order to get what’s best for us, we have to challenge ourselves. It may sound harsh but there is beauty in all of it and It’s up to your interpretation.
• Voluntarily putting our mind and body through stressors such as intense exercise will naturally boost your resilience to stressors that come with everyday life. The more you practice this habit is the more prepared you will be for future challenges. Life can get difficult with relationships, exams, and deadlines but by voluntarily practicing hard things we can rewire the circuits in our brain to relax and handle discomfort in an efficient manner.
Roughly 2 more miles to go till I reach the finish. It’s funny I’ve been running for a little over 20 minutes and I still have voices in my head telling me to stop. Running gets easier the more you do it, and although I’ve been a runner all my life I don’t enjoy it like most people think I do. I just love the feeling when I cross the finish line. The endorphins send my brain into Utopia like the first time I heard Lana Del Rey. I know I don’t enjoy running as much as I did in middle school or high school, but that’s why It’s so good for me. It’s hard because I don’t enjoy it. I have no problem jumping rope for 45 minutes because I love it so much. The same goes for cycling, I love it way more than running and i’ve always had a love for two wheels. Running is never something I get ecstatic about. I chase the feeling after my run is complete and that I accomplished something challenging. Its’ benefits provide me with something that transcends the body; It enriches my core and enlightens my soul. I hear the faint noise of a train approaching, I kick my ass into another gear to beat the barricades that block the road. I race past the barricades and down they fell. Only 200 meters to go and my mission is complete. My lungs are cold, heart is racing, adrenaline is pumping, I have more to give so I click a higher gear. I turn the bend that leads me to the bridge to cross the lake. The fog caressing the surface of the water, I elevate my pace further to drive me uphill to where I meet the finish line. I look down at my wrist to see my stats: DISTANCE - 5.13 MILES, AVG MILE PACE - 6:16, TIME - 32:10. Not my personal best but I was shocked to have ran that pace on 4 hours of sleep. I walk up the stairs to my apartment, I tell myself “you fucking did something 99.9% of people wont do, be proud of what you did, you won your morning, and beat the sun rise”. I kick off my shoes, my clothes, and I turn my shower knob to the coldest temperature. I bask in the water and feel the cold shock proteins send shivers down my spine and the hairs on my arm saluting me. The endorphins now rushing, I’m reminded why I keep returning…
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