So this week i went to see this guy speak at the Apollo in London - Ant Middleton. Ironically he covered some of the areas I spoke about a few weeks ago in post #82 about committing to what you want to do.
He discussed his own life experience as a soldier, a family man and someone who's had his fair share of fuck-ups, in a very honest and frank manner. I like that. As someone who is depicted as a hard-as-nails-ex-special-forces-operator, it was refreshing to see his honesty and that he's put himself up there as fallible and human, despite the public perception of him.
Don't get me wrong, he's been to hell and back in his life and that builds a deep resilience in a person, but you can see he does what he does because he cares about getting more from others than they believe they have to give of themselves. Definitely something I can identify with.
Now, the big part of what he was talking about was commitment, and he hit on something I talk about with regards to goal setting, which is breaking it down into small steps. Commit to one thing at a time. Confucius said 'the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'. What he didn't say was that that step needs to be followed by another and then another, and so on....
Just as a thousand miles is taken one step at a time, goals are achieved one commitment at a time on that journey. If you fail to complete your target, you learn why, correct the problem, and then go again. I've literally spent this last year living that way with regards to injuries and training. Test, measure, learn, change, test... in a continuous way until you figure out what works best to get the job done. That builds the resilience and that carries you towards where you want to get to.
Truth is that most people seek comfort rather than challenge. We'd all prefer it if everything was easy, right? ...Maybe not. Middleton spoke about lockdown, and how despite his newly found fame and wealth (i.e. comfort), he was a basket case through the period as he was not moving forward any more. So he said to himself to 'stop fucking around' and commit to something that would help him take another step forward. It was only fear of stepping out of his comfort zone (which for him, comfort was climbing up mountains) that tied him up in knots.
Despite all the achievements, he felt fear about getting out of his comfort zone and writing a fiction novel. He also discussed fear when breaching a Taliban compound building while an enemy combatant was shooting through the door he was meant to be first to go through. While the latter is perfectly understandable with most people, he explained the former was fearing exactly the same things - The unknown, not being good enough, and failing.
He used an example of how to overcome this and talked of one of his recruits that had an overwhelming fear of being trapped while submerged in water and how they were about to quit over an exercise that involved being strapped into a Land Rover and lowered underwater. After which they had to release themselves and swim to the surface out of the back window. It beautifully illustrated a concept of how to overcome fear. He had them sit in the vehicle on land and strap in. Then spend a few minutes unstrapping and strapping in to get comfortable with that action. Then to hold their breath for 40-50 seconds while doing so, until it was comfortable. And then to actually do the task... which they achieved!
This is a process called 'Habituation'. It's a powerful psychological technique to move beyond fear and to progress. It is getting comfortable with each step before moving to the next one. I'll write a specific post about fears shortly as it's huge and one of the most important topics to tackle when taking on any big challenge. I have A LOT of knowledge and experience in this and it deserves it own post to break it down. Fuck... it deserves its own book, but you'll just have to make do with a post for now. For now though, one of the most powerful approaches to move beyond fears is to take small progressive steps, and to get comfortable with each new stage you reach before moving to the next one.
Now, I've just mapped out my 45 week plan. It is fucking scary for someone like me. Remember that I am rapidly approaching 50, I weigh as much as a small moon, and I am dogged with longstanding injuries. I am not a marathon runner. I am certainly not built in any kind of optimal fashion for this type of activity. It is so far out of my comfort zone I can't begin to describe to you what that feels like for me. But I will do this.
It means I need to stop fucking around and commit to the first step - Week 1 training. Then the next step, week 2 training and so on... It's actually a journey of 1586 miles (2359 km) I am on, and the first step has been completed in week 1 (actually 23,100 steps to be accurate), which means 44 steps to go (or another 2.6 million actual steps to go)
Using the above points to illustrate this first week, I had two 5am runs on Tuesday and Today where I was tired, cold and absolutely did not want to go out into the freezing darkness where I live. Even the dog (who is a batshit bonkers cocker spaniel that can run all day) looked at me this morning with a look that could only be telling me to 'fuck right off with that nonsense'... But we did it. I was irrationally fearful about doing so (as I utterly detest pavement running), but I did it anyway. Tuesday I was enthusiastic, but today my wife guilted me into doing it (as she wanted to run too), simply on the fact she knows I'd not let her run the streets alone at 5am in the pitch black of winter.
This is me getting comfortable with one commitment at a time and just doing it and stopping fucking around...
Thanks for reading.
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