The direction that you are headed is more important than the speed at which you are moving.
You have to learn to do both, think strategically and take consistent action.
In their book, The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion, sports psychologist Dr. Simon Marshall and his wife, World Triathlon Cross Championships Lesley Paterson, describe our self-judgment system using a tree metaphor. The tree comprises a deep root (self-worth), a sturdy trunk (self-esteem), a thick branch (self-confidence) and leaves (self-efficacy).
Our self-judgment systems are hierarchical. The deeper the problem, the more you’re f*cked.
Self-worth – deep roots.
Your self-worth is based on deeply held feelings about your value and worth as a person. It is not about what you do but who you are—your values, morals, passions, and fundamental beliefs about yourself. The extent to which your emotional and psychological needs were met as a kid largely determines your self-worth.
From a young age, we start to express psychological and emotional needs that we are highly motivated to meet: the need for love, security, safety, affirmation, belonging, and so on. If these needs are not met, we try to figure out why. Because our young brains are not capable of analyzing the causes logically and exhaustively, our focus often turns inward. We start to blame ourselves, and the conclusions we settle on are pretty damning: We are not good enough, not worthy enough, not competent enough, and so on. After all, why else would we not get attention, get rejected, or not feel encouraged or protected?
The end result is usually the same: I must be a bad person of little value. The seeds of low self-worth take root. These biased beliefs grow and infect our adult brain like viruses.
A healthy self-worth means that you know your life is valuable and important and that you are loveable. Because self-worth is a relatively stable characteristic of our personality and it affects virtually every self-perception we have, changing it often requires the help of a mental health professional.
Self-esteem – sturdy trunk
Self-esteem is the trunk of the tree because it supports everything above it. Just as a bad root system (low self-worth) can’t create a healthy tree trunk (self-esteem), strong self-esteem is required to support self-confidence (the tree branches). It’s extremely rare to find athletes who are supremely confident but have low self-esteem.
Self-esteem reflects generalized emotional judgments about yourself based on what you believe you’ve experienced, achieved, or accomplished. These “achievements” can be real and tangible (e.g., you’ve done well at school, at work, in sports, etc.) or they can be imagined (e.g., you’ve been told that you’re successful).
Self-confidence – thick branches
Because self-confidence is defined by your perception of your ability, it has a future orientation and predicts what things people will attempt. Self-confidence is the first area in which your self-judgment system can appear differentiated, meaning that you can have strong and weak branches on the same tree. You can have high self-confidence in one area of your life but low self-confidence in another area.
“Even though low confidence can affect other aspects of your life, it rarely affects everything if your underlying self-esteem (tree trunk) is healthy. When you lack self-confidence across the board, the problem is most likely low self-esteem.”
Self-efficacy as leaves
Self-efficacy is a task-specific form of confidence. Technically speaking, self-efficacy refers to your beliefs about your capability of producing a very specific level of performance. Because self-efficacy is situation specific, your confidence to execute a given task may vary depending on the circumstances.
“Self-efficacy is about what you think you can do in very specific tasks, not what you can actually do.”
All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.
In Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior…and Feel Great Again, American Psychologist and founder of the Schema Therapy Institute Jeffrey E. Young describes eleven chronic, self-defeating personality patterns known as lifetraps. The authors draw upon actual clinical experiences to explain life schema. Based on various therapeutic approaches such as cognitive, behavioural, psychoanalytic, and experiential therapies. They share strategies for changing major life patterns called Lifetrap therapy. They describe eleven of the most destructive problems in life that they encountered in their practices. How to recognize them, their origin and how to change them.
Self-schema refers to the thoughts people have about themselves in different areas of life—a sort of mental blueprint of who they are, what they can do, and how they think others perceive them. Think of a self-schema as cognitive scaffolding or a self-stereotype—how your thoughts are assembled about aspects of yourself.
“Athletic self-schema is the cognitive scaffolding of thinking and feeling like an athlete.”
You have self-schema about many different spheres of your life—your identity as a romantic partner, as an employee or student, as a parent, a friend, an athlete, or whatever. All these identities feed into your broader “self-concept,” an overall sense of who you are, what your attributes are, and what and why certain things are important to you.
“The strength of your overall self-concept is determined by the relative importance you give to each of your identities.”
Predictably, your individual self-schemas are interconnected—they talk to one another. After all, thoughts and feelings don’t exist in a vacuum. Feeling crappy or amazing about one aspect of your life can contaminate your other identities. It’s quite unusual to find athletes who suffer from self-schema knots in only one aspect of their lives. This is actually good news because it means that improving the way you think and feel about yourself as an athlete can have a positive knock-on effect in other areas of your life too.
Your athletic self-schema develops from memories of your experiences but is also influenced by expectations of what you think your future self will be like in certain situations. For example, your self-schema as a runner would likely be strong if you ran track and cross-country in college, but you might also have a basic self-schema of being a triathlete even if you’ve never been one. Why? Because you know the discipline and commitment needed to be an athlete and you currently swim and bike to keep fit. In areas where you have little or no experience or you’re simply indifferent, you might have no schema at all.
Your self-schema shapes your expectations of what you think you can do, what you attempt and persist at, how you explain your success and failure, and how you want others to see you in certain areas of life.
Understanding an athlete’s self-schema is important because it helps us make predictions about the sorts of situations that are likely to feel stressful, challenging, and rewarding to you and, critically, what things we need to focus on to help you improve confidence and grit, take responsibility, and learn acceptance skills (“owning it”). This means that building a mature athletic identity requires that your athletic self-schema is relatively free of bugs and gremlins.
Your athletic identity is not about your speed, placings, leanness, or amount of training. A mature athletic identity is simply a special configuration of thoughts about emotions.
Athletic Identity
Athletic identity is all about thinking and feeling like an athlete. Athletic identity has nothing to do with how fast you are, how much racing you do, or how much you train. Although these details can all be signs of having a mature athletic identity, they’re certainly not required. We develop our inner and outer athletic identities when we do endurance sports—we learn skills and techniques, we develop fitness, and we interact with fellow athletes. A sign that our internal athletic identity is maturing is our use of the sport to define our athleticism. I’m a triathlete. I’m a CrossFit® athlete. I’m a runner. A sign that our outer athletic identity is getting stronger comes when we notice others are calling us that too.
“Changing your self-schema is an inside-to-out strategy (targeting thoughts to change feelings to change actions)”
Personal Experience: My Marathon Journey
I started my marathon running adventure in 2013 after losing my closest cousin, and I was looking for an outlet for the pain, grief and disillusionment I was experiencing in that period of my life. I stumbled upon a marathon race in two months and participated in much training. My time for my first marathon was 5 hours plus, and it was tough, even brutal, at the time. I ran, walked, limped, but I ultimately finished. In the past ten years, I have since run 25+ full marathons, with fifteen full marathons finished in the past two years. I ran six full marathons in 2022 and nine full marathons in 2023. My journey to developing my Athletic Identity and Self-schema has not been smooth. It has been filled with ups and downs, self-doubt, failures, dejection, triumphs, insights, personal records and self-confidence.
One of the identities that I have developed in the past ten years that I am most proud of is being a reader (life-long learner) and a runner. I run multiple marathons yearly, not because I have to but because I love the lessons I learn and the person I am becoming as a result of participating in these marathons. I have learned more from my ten years of experience running marathons than my over 3 decades of formal schooling. Marathon running has helped me become more precise in my self-schema, and developing an identity as an athlete and go-getter makes it worthwhile.
I reduced my full marathon personal best time from 3 hours 44 minutes to 3 hours 20 minutes last year at the 2023 GMS Queen City Marathon in Regina, Saskatchewan. It was a great moment, as I had been training hard before breaking my record. I had logged 108 hours of cross-training time in the gym and also ran almost every day in July covering a distance of 809 KM. By breaking this record, I had a renewed resolve that I could achieve anything that I set my mind to do.
One of the great lessons learned from running multiple marathons is the value of hardwood and preparation. As the saying goes, you can outplay your training. We play the way we train. The marathon is a great metaphor for life as your input ultimately determines your output. If you training at a sub-3 hours marathon time in training, executing during race day is not going to be hard. By running these multiple marathons, I have a clear self-schema that makes me believe I could run a time that I have trained for and can execute,
Since breaking the sub-3:30 marathon time, I have run three full marathons with great times:
My self-schema is changing because I am putting in the work. I intend to run a sub-3-hour marathon time in 2024. I know it will be tough, but I know what to do. Put in the same amount of time, energy, commitment, and dedication as I did in reducing my personal best by 24 minutes in 2023. Remember where I started in 2013, not athletic to clocking 854 hours of training time in 2023. It took over a decade to define my self-schema and develop my athletic identity.
The story’s moral: You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. To achieve any goal whether it is running a marathon, writing a book, learning a foreign language, becoming financially independent or learning a programming language, one has to keep pushing and never doubt yourself. To achieve my sub-3 hour marathon goal, I will have to recalibrate my self-schema as someone who can run a sub-3 hour marathon.
You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.
I have been a premier tier subscriber of the Apple One subscription bundle, which gives subscribers access to Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud, Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+. Although I am a fitness enthusiast, I have surprisingly not been using the Apple Fitness+ feature of my Apple One subscription until recently. I started listening to the Apple Fitness+ Time to Walk Series, and it is one of the most exciting audio experiences I have had in a while. I could call myself an audiophile as I listen to at least one hour of English and French podcasts daily.
Whether you think you can or you think you can’t—you’re right.—Henry Ford
No one is going to doubt you more than you doubt yourself. As American industrialist and Automobile pioneer Henry Ford once quipped, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t—you’re right.” The nature of aiming for great things beyond your reach is that people will doubt your ability to pull it through. It is not that you will be doubted; the question is when. The bigger your goal, the bigger the opposition and the doubt you will experience from others. You’ve got to believe in yourself and why you are doing what you want to achieve. Most of us suffer from possibility blindness, which is the tendency for people to project their fears towards someone who is aiming for more than they think is possible.
On your path to greatness, there will be a lot of struggle, strife, trials and tribulations. There will also be plateaus, valleys of distress, peaks, valleys, and rollercoasters of ups and downs. It is part of the process of figuring anything out. No matter what your aim or objective, the start seems smooth, the middle is messy and filled with struggle while the end is always evolving. Success is never guaranteed but the struggle, pain and discomfort is guaranteed but if you give during the strife and challenge; failure is guaranteed. If you are not feeling a bit of pain, struggle, discomfort and stretching while trying to achieve your goals, you are probably not aiming high.
British-Indian podcaster and life coach Jay Shetty interviews former first lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama, on his podcast –On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Michelle and Jay are two of my favourite people in the world. Michelle’s memoir (Becoming) was very illuminating, and I listen to Jay Shetty every day on the Calm.com meditation app (Daily). They discuss Michelle’s philosophy on relationships, managing fame, mindful technology usage and her recent book (“The Light We Carry.”).
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Whenever you try to do something beyond your reach, it will be scary and require a bit of bravery to pull it off. Scary is subjective, as what is scary for me right now may be a walk in the park for you. Growth is on the other side of your fear. Being scared indicates that you are human and that red blood cells run through your veins. Putting yourself out there, leaving your comfort zone, setting a challenge for yourself, attempting the somewhat impossible, trying to break personal records, and stretching oneself can be scary. As ancient Rome stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca once quipped, “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.'”
Oprah Winfrey first came across American author and academic Arthur C. Brooks through his column in The Atlantic, “How to Build a Life.” Oprah read Arthur’s column throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and she was fascinated by the subject matter he was discussing: Living a life with purpose and meaning. Oprah became a fan, and they ultimately collaborated to write the Build the Life You Want Book. One of the common themes that always came up in Oprah’s interviews during her 25 years of running the Oprah Winfrey Show was her guest and the universal desire to be happy.
Oprah on Arthur Brooks: “Arthur exudes a kind of confidence and certainty about the meaning of happiness that’s both comforting and galvanizing.” In Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey share tools, strategies, research and tips for leading a happier life.
Books Theme:
Idol (n.) mid-13c., “image of a deity as an object of (pagan) worship,” from Old French idole “idol, graven image, pagan god” (11c.), from Latin idolum “image (mental or physical), form,” especially “apparition, ghost,” but used in Church Latin for “false god, image of a pagan deity as an object of worship.” This is from Greek eidōlon “mental image, apparition, phantom,” also “material image, statue,” in Ecclesiastical Greek,” a pagan idol,” from eidos “form, shape; likeness, resemblance”. The word “idol” implies what we worship or look up to. It could be a god, religion, or role model, and in the age of social media, our idols are fast becoming our attention-grabbing gadgets, screens, apps and platforms.
“The relationships that impact us the most are those with family. The wounds are deep, and the relationships are filled with expectations.
In Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships, licensed therapist and author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself, Nedra Glover Tawwab, provides a guide for dealing with unhealthy family dynamics and relationships. Her first book, Set Boundaries, is one of my favourite books on boundary setting.
Drama Free Book’s Theme:
Ava DuVernay—the first Black woman director with a film nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award—takes you behind the scenes of her new feature film, “ORIGIN.” She shares how to identify, develop, and execute your vision to achieve extraordinary goals and direct the life you want.
Ava DuVernay switched careers at 32 and is now a virtuoso in the film world. She was the first Black woman director with a film nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, and her newest feature, “ORIGIN,” received a 9-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. Now, she takes viewers behind the scenes to share how to identify, develop, and execute your vision to reach your goals—and direct the life you want.
There may be setbacks and challenges along the way, but you’ll learn to pivot for even better outcomes.
It is that time of the year again when we analyze the direction of our lives. The new year is synonymous with a new beginning, goals, wishes and intentions. The challenge for most of us is not the starting part; the most significant challenge we all face is maintaining the momentum when the initial motivation wanes out, and we need the self-discipline to execute our goals. As the saying goes, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” Starting is great but finishing what you is also better. The art of finishing is very satisfying and joy-inducing. It is like the joy one encounters when you finish a marathon. I did run nine full marathons and two half-marathons in 2023 and it is by far one of the most joy-inclined activity that I have experienced in my entire life.
Messy and Finished beats perfect and incomplete every time.
The word intention is derived from the Middle English entencioun, intention, from Old French entencion, from Latin intentiō, intentiōnem. Intention (n.) late 14c., entencioun, “purpose, design, aim or object; will, wish, desire, that which is intended,” from Old French entencion “intent, purpose, aspiration; will; thought” (12c.), from Latin intentionem (nominative intentio) “a stretching out, straining, exertion, effort; attention,” noun of action from intendere “to turn one’s attention,” literally “to stretch out”. Also in Middle English “emotion, feelings; heart, mind, mental faculties, understanding.”