Welcoming “The Beast”
In my first review post, I wrote on a central theme of the book, the “secret to their success”, which is bringing a sense of joy to your life. This sense of joy is what the author largely credits to the Tarahumara Indian’s ability to run 100 miles or more, all with a smile on their face.
With this post, I’d like to focus on a short segment in the book that I found particularly inspiring. It’s about The Beasts the ultra-distance runners in the book encounter and how they respond to them. While the stories in the book are told by these runners, they nonetheless have just as much relevance for all of us. Even as most of these runners do what they do because they love it, a point that really stuck out for me is that when they race, they are challenging themselves by not only attempting something most rational people would think verges on the insane, but doing it while pitted against some of the best in the world that do the same thing. It dawned on me while reading the book that this is an apt metaphor for our own most aggressive, visionary and challenging goals, whether business or personal. Some use the term BHAG to stand for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Those goals that will truly stretch us, where there is a good chance if not high probability of failure, and which (unfortunately) we are usually up against some world-class naysayers.
So, whether you’re running 135 miles through 130F heat, or tackling your own personal or professional BHAG, eventually you’ll bump up against The Beast.
What Beast?
For ultra-distance runners, The Beast is often fatigue related to pushing the fringes of human physical endurance. For you and I, The Beast is usually more personal. For some it may be self-confidence, for others, it may be competing priorities. Even more nefarious are subtle Beasts like impatience and unrealistic expectations.
You don’t confront The Beast by joining Toastmaster to work on your fear of public speaking; you confront The Beast by agreeing to be the keynote speaker for a conference of your peers to work on your fear of public speaking before joining Toastmasters.
So what lessons did Born to Run teach me on how to fight The Beast? I took two lessons out of the book.
Lesson #1: Learn to love The Beast
Lisa Smith-Batchen, who trained through blizzards to win a six day race in the Sahara, gave me the most direct lesson is dealing with The Beast: learn to love it. In her own words:
I love the Beast. I actually look forward to the Beast showing up, because every time he does, I handle him better. I get him more under control.
The author adds his own commentary:
Once the Beast arrives, Lisa knows what she has to deal with and can get down to work. And isn’t that the reason she’s running through the desert in the first place – to put her training to work? To have a friendly little tussle with the Beast and show it who’s boss? You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as ever great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.
Lesson #2: Believe Know the Impossible is Possible
Lisa’s comments came within the broader context of a story about Scott Jurek, an elite ultra-distance runner who was looking for a new challenge. He found that challenge in the Badwater Ultramarathon – 135 miles through some of the most brutal conditions in North America, perhaps the world. Having conquered virtually every ultramarathon available, Scott was nonetheless humbled by Badwater 60 miles in, and collapsed to the ground:
…Scott was vomiting and shaky. His hands dropped to his knees, then his knees dropped to the pavement. He collapsed by the side of the road, lying in his own sweat…his friends didn’t bother trying to help him up; they knew there was no voice in the world more persuasive than the one inside Scott’s own mind.
Call it fatigue, call it exhaustion, call it the limits of human endurance, The Beast had arrived. His thought process to pick himself up off the ground went like this:
There’s no way, you’re done.
You’d have to do something totally sick to win this thing now.
Sick like what?
Like starting all over again. Like pretending you just woke up from a great night’s sleep and the race hasn’t even started yet. You’d have to run the next eighty miles as fast as you’ve ever run eighty miles in your life.
No chance.
Yeah. I know.
When The Beast arrives, there can be no doubt as to the goal and whether it will be reached; the only question can be what needs to change to get there. The result of this race? Scott not only finished the race, but with a new record time.
Change in perspective
The real message in this particular chapter though I found in Lisa’s comments about The Beast. Literature abounds that prepares us to fight The Beast. Whether it’s Nietzsche’s concept of the overman always fighting, always struggling; or your annual performance appraisal identifying “areas for improvement” – we seem to be programmed to view challenge as something to overcome.
The important change in perspective here is to view challenge as something to look forward to and welcome. What a change in perspective – not to view overwhelming challenges as a battle, but something to be welcomed, even looked forward to. The Beast then becomes a real-life laboratory to put into practice all that self-development you’ve been working on. The Beast becomes an opportunity to grow and develop even further.
More importantly perhaps, learning to welcome The Beast puts YOU in control, not The Beast. Oh, you may lose a battle here and there, but welcoming The Beast means you have already won the war.
This change in perspective also helps me put words to describing my concept of “personal excellence” I reference here on this blog but have never felt like I could adequately describe. Learning how to do things better, even becoming an expert, is personal development. Welcoming The Beast is personal excellence.
Your thoughts?
Does this resonate with you? What Beasts do you encounter? Do you welcome them or fight them? Does the distinction between development and excellence ring true with your experience?
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