Marathon without training

I asked my therapist, “What if I tell myself that it is okay if someone responded in a bad manner? They might as well be suffering, right?”

She said:

Of course, it is a good thing to run a marathon.

But the best runners, train themselves before the event.

However, if you go haven’t trained yourself at all and you get up one day and go run, can you imagine what all pain will you endure?

And now imagine how long have you been running this marathon!

So the way to be actually able to run that marathon is to train our brain, to understand our emotions first, and why we feel in the pain.

Otherwise, it is only a continuous run of pain, not a marathon in reality.

Something really deep to reflect upon.

Are you moving in the right direction?

With WFH in place for almost all of us, how do we know if we are going in the right direction?

Yes there are our coworkers who will constantly give us feedback, support us when we need, and also appreciate us when we perform well.

However, to know if we are on the right track in our lives is a different ballgame together.

Here’s how we can know it: By looking at the best in the world at it. (Online of course!)

When we set our standards at best, we get to know what we need course-correct on, and how we can execute it.

For example, yesterday my cousin and I decided to have a micro workout challenge. One game of arm wrestling, 10 push-ups and 10 jump squats – best of two. Since I have been working out for more than 8 years, I won. That’s not the point, however. Point is, when my cousin was doing push ups and jump squats – he was performing an incorrect technique in both of them. So let’s say he was able to perform only three repetitions, his next step would be to be able to perform four of them – without being aware that the first repetition itself needed course correction.

This wasn’t a remark on his skills at all, because he is phenomenal at a lot of things that I am not. However, I could point this out because I have small bit of understanding around it.

Imagine what would happen if we set our standards in whatever we did – against the best people in the world!

How would that change the trajectory of our learning?

How would that make our learning curve better?

How would we be a better person if we had such high regards for our standards, instead of simply using our previous skills as a barometer – which weren’t remarkable anyway?

What’s your weight?

This lockdown came along with gyms locked down.

Till March, I had reached a great weight resistance. Then began the workout at home.

Today I brought in weights from my old home, and lo, the resistance which I could carry initially wasn’t there. The reason, obviously, was lack of practice with weights.

In life, the more we continue to live with goodness, the more resilience we develop against what’s isn’t right – without losing on who we are.

If we remain where we are without increasing that quota of goodness, over time, we’ll lose it.

Over time, we will lose ourselves.