is fixing your thoughts is a waste of time?

In my last post I had a bit of a realization about my running:

“I had a lot of internal dialogue that was rooted in feelings of inadequacy about my running performances. In order to quell those voices I figured I could take one of two routes…

I could sit with my thoughts in meditation and let go of my made up expectations, or I could use my frustration as fuel to optimize more of my life around my running.”

If you know me personally then I don’t think you’d be too surprised to find that I ignored the first option and instead buried myself in podcasts, peer reviewed journals on endurance, and catered almost all of my free time towards becoming a better runner.

I discussed that second option in my last post titled 1% Better, so this post will focus on why I chose to ignore that first option.

Now this isn’t to say that I have anything against meditation. In fact when I was in the Navy on deployment I would regularly meditate for 2-3 hours per day.

One might think that someone who was so engrossed by meditation and mindfulness would have become a champion of it and sing its praises, but herein lies my argument against using meditation to fix my own thoughts of inadequacy in ultra running (and/or life in general):

I still have problems.

Vague, I know but let me clarify. Even after months on end of mediating for hours per day what I found was that the benefit of the practice was that I became less reactive to my own primal instincts and thoughts. What it did not do was make me someone with heaps of self-esteem and endless contentment in my life. Although trust me, I tried.

I spent years trying to get that through meditation and constantly told myself that to be more complete I needed to forego my goals that felt so far out of reach, and instead take the stoic route of accepting that some things in life will just suck and no reaction is necessary.

I’m slightly exaggerating here so I can back up my clickbait-y article title, but I actually have begun to change my tune on meditation slightly.

To be clear - It does have value, I’m not saying no one should meditate.

BUT the point I am trying to make is that our minds are fickle and sometimes deceptive. We as ultra runners should be aware of that. When you’re 80 miles into a race and your brain says, “I simply couldn’t go another step,” the correct response is usually, “I walked 4 steps in the time it took me to have that thought so  I can go at least one more.”

I found that it was actually faster to just work to get the things I wanted rather than spending years in a mental hyperbolic time chamber (Dragon Ball Z reference for those of you who aren’t nerds) to make myself not want those things.

There is the sentiment in some corners of mindfulness practices that having something and not wanting it derive the same level of satisfaction. Thus there are a lot of philosophers who decided it was simply better to not want things.

Well I decided that since I only get one short stint on this planet then there are some things that I want, and I’m not going to spend hours per day working to change my mind when it would be equally, if not more effective, to use that same amount of time and energy to fully pursue the outcome that I want.

I recognize there is likely a point at which this argument would no longer hold water if I spent the rest of my life chasing a new goal post that constantly moved, but my goal with running has both finite and infinite components.

The finite components revolve around performance. To be in the top 10 at races or get to the podium eventually. I recognize that with some of my chronic health problems that may be a goal that is permanently out of reach if I can’t get a handle on them.

I also recognize that my brain saying that to me has every possibility to be its feeble attempt to get me to remain comfortable where I am, so I will continue to try anyways. Side note: I messed up my back in the Navy and that has a lot of downstream effects.

The infinite component of my running goals is to be able to move freely through the mountains until the ripe old age of whenever my consciousness ceases to exist. Striving for aggressive race goals has the added benefit of feeding that infinite component and (hopefully) giving me more years to be a dirtbag in the mountains long after I’ve stopped toeing the start line.

So yes, I should probably continue to meditate with some sort of regularity, but no I don’t believe that at this point of my life the best option is to simply resign myself to accepting the world as it is.

While I believe it is important to understand one’s own place in the world and that we in fact have very little control, there is a fine line between accepting that and giving up on yourself before you even begin.

To wrap this up with a metaphor… I feel as though with all the access to free information I have about running and how to optimize training performance, from sources like elite athletes who are very open about their training, podcasts, and books, that I hold in my hands the map to buried treasure.

My options are to start digging or convince myself I don’t really want any buried treasure just in case it isn’t really there.

Guess I’ll grab a shovel.