You Don’t Know, What You Don’t Know

Last week I talked about comparison being the thief of joy.  If you haven’t read it yet, go have a read because, as I mentioned, it is the single most important piece of advice I can give you and the basis for basically everything else I believe about mindset.  If you’re comparing yourself to others, using what other people are doing to drive what you SHOULD do or deeming your accomplishments as less worthy due to another’s accomplishments then you are not getting anywhere.  Simple, right?  Right.

This only gets complicated when we start to think about inspiration and that is when I get a lot of push back from people; because being inspired by others is often an integral part of being motivated…and only a fine line away from comparison.

Have you ever been inspired by another person’s success?  It can be an awesome feeling seeing someone else that we knew, or thought, to be a normal human being and maybe even similar to us, accomplishing something we also want to do; often it makes us feel like our goals are attainable.  Our defeated “I could NEVER” mentality is challenged because hey if that other ‘normie’ with seemingly very similar circumstances can do it, then why can’t I?  

The alternative to being inspired and excited by someone’s success is that we could see someone whom we thought was a ‘normie’ accomplish something we THINK is superhuman and it could make us eye that person more suspiciously and just decide instead that they were never “like us” all along.  They were secretly slumming it and not living up to their potential.  It’s almost a betrayal.  You may even resent them a little and become firmer in your conviction that you cannot do that thing.  Maybe your resentment pushes you to rush unprepared into trying to do that thing too, even while still believing it’s actually impossible, and without a plan you aren’t successful and now feel like that person is just trying to be better than you.

And here is where there is a big difference between being inspired and comparing.  If you are inspired you think “Hey maybe I can try something similar!” if you’re comparing you think “I can’t do that? What do they have that I don’t?”  

As I discussed last week, no one else can POSSIBLY have exactly the same experiences, reactions, physical health conditions and preferences that we do and ALL of those things (and many more) go into a goal.  Saying “because they can, I can” may seem only motivating but it can be dangerous territory if you hit a roadblock that, as far as you know, your muse did not.  

I say ‘as far as you know’ because the other part is that you only know what people share.  I posted a lot while training for my first half-marathon and people were very encouraging.  The “amazement” was flattering and definitely fed my drive to fight through when it got hard (which is exactly why I made it public in the first place!)  But what I didn’t post much about were the much less flattering parts…like the reality that tackling a new difficult goal meant a very large time commitment and that time has to come from somewhere.  So there was no run selfie the time I cried through 5 km of a 10 km run because just beforehand I lost my mind on my husband when he casually asked me something about the laundry, not knowing I was already internally panicking about not being able to get everything done a nd also keep up with the training.  And I didn’t post about the times that I got home late and had to cut a 12 km run to 4 km because I had another commitment I couldn’t miss.  And while I did lightheartedly share that I had seriously injured my IT band while training, I didn’t publicly advertise the fact that for the last month I ran only my long run each week and was otherwise spending any time I would have been running in physiotherapy and riding a stationary bike. 

At the time when another woman came to me and told me that I had inspired them to start running I was excited and offered some cursory advice – make sure you had shoes that fit properly, start slow, make sure you have a good playlist.  Then they would say “Does it get easier!?” and wanting to be encouraging I’d say “Totally!  I’m injured right now, but before that it had gotten easier for sure! Now I love it!”  No mention of spending 3 hours a week in some sort of physical therapy and actually ending up having a very tough time running at all.   So later, that same woman (with probably better boundaries than I had) might come back and say “How do you run so far?  I can’t do more than 10 Km before my knees hurt!”  Thinking this is a problem with HER, that she is the abnormal one, when in reality, 10 Km is not a distance to be taken lightly and a HUGE accomplishment; particularly for someone who has never run in their lives.  The fact that I didn’t want to look weak (or lets face it, stupid) for having set such a crazy goal (no running to running 21.1 Km in 8 months) and then sincerely struggling to accomplish it could have had real impacts on others perceptions of how attainable running 21.1 Km is.  If I could go back and do it again I would post about those things but at the time I felt like the difficulty I was having was some sort of failure.

Lets face it, captioning a triumphant post race photo with something about blood, sweat and tears is NOT the same as honestly sharing those “blood, sweat and tears” while actively experiencing them…the focus isn’t on how hard it was when you’re grinning ear to ear with a shiny blanket around your shoulders and a medal hanging from your neck, it’s on the ‘HOLY SHIT LOOK AT HOW AWESOME THIS IS’ factor.  

If someone else is looking at that photo and all they know is that 8 months ago I couldn’t run more than a couple minutes and now I just ran a half-marathon, with no other information, while they were currently struggling to get past 10 km, (or 1 for that matter!) what they think when they see that will depend on their mindset.

• if they are in a good headspace about it, setting good and healthy boundaries and looking at the big picture then they may think “Wow, she must have had to put a lot of time and effort into that and sacrificed a lot of other things to accomplish that goal.  Good for her.”  
• If they are looking to others to figure out what to do differently to make it work they might say, “How?  How does that even happen?  What’s the secret? What am I doing wrong?”  
• And if they are ready to quit and want to just downplay the value of the whole thing they might resent it and think, “Who cares. Why would anyone even want to run that far?” (TBH, fair question and I wonder that same thing myself sometimes!)

The difference is whether we’re comparing or being inspired.  Inspiration allows us to feel good about someone else without feeling bad about ourselves, and maybe even increases positive feelings about our abilities. Comparison means we’re either putting ourselves or someone else down; chances are someone is the negative, the less than.

When I spend time analyzing what other people are doing and accomplishing, without remembering that I can’t possibly know everything about all of their circumstances, I am unhappy and end up feeling like there’s no point in doing what I’m doing because I’ll never be as ______ (insert desired adjective here – good, fast, strong, pretty, brave, fit – etc).

But when I look at the big picture and remember that other people have different circumstances and therefore will have different results, two things happen.

1. I am able to just be happy with my own progress and celebrate it for what it is.
2. I am able to genuinely celebrate others for their successes too.

Absolutely go to someone that has done something for advice.  But take everything that comes into your life with a grain of salt.  If the die hard runner you know tells you, “The absolute only way you’re going to get that run in, is if you do it first thing in the morning”, as a morning person, who goes to bed early and has no children and a fairly flexible work schedule…look realistically at your situation and decide if that’s true for you. Do you hate getting up in the morning and feel lethargic?  Do you go to bed at midnight?   Do you have a lot more energy at 7pm?  Do you have kids that are awake at the crack of dawn but go to bed at 7:30?  

That half-marathon was absolutely the proudest moment of my life, and for me, making the commitment to doing it with a scary-short timeline was the pressure I needed to train as hard as I did.  But the reality is that in order to achieve that goal I had to put an excessive amount of pressure on myself, neglect other things that were important to me and damage myself physically and mentally.  And that sounds a lot less romantic and inspiring than “blood, sweat and tears” right?    Had I been more realistic I probably wouldn’t have gotten injured.  And I probably would have found the training more manageable and not felt so frantic in the rest of my life.  And I probably wouldn’t have been in physical therapy for over a year afterwards.

Do I regret doing it?  No.  I learned a lot about myself and fell in love with pushing myself physically.  Would I ever approach another goal exactly the same way again?  Hard no.

I’m still proud of myself.  I still use that finish line moment as inspiration when my motivation is lacking; it is my reminder that I can do hard things.  But it was also stupid and I would not recommend THAT WAY of doing it to anyone.  What I would recommend – have a solid plan that you research thoroughly, figure out the best and safest way for you to do the training that is manageable for you, get a coach to help you and keep you accountable and listen to your body – but don’t give up at the first sign of difficulty.

No one knows you better than you , so stop trying to fit your square peg into a round hole.  Do the research.  Figure out what you want, and what experts recommend for getting it and then do it however you need to do it. Get inspired and fight through when things get hard, but stay true to yourself. And if you need to stop doing it, then do that too – you don’t answer to anyone else except yourself.