enJOYing The Approach to The Destination
On doing a half marathon, finding the pain you can endure, process over outcome, never being finished, and enJOYing doing it.
Sunday morning, I awoke at 4 AM to prepare myself to go for a run. I did not intend to wake up this early but I was wired. Wide awake and ready to go. I felt fully rested despite only sleeping for six hours. Typically, there is no way I would get up this early on a Sunday morning but I had a half marathon starting at 6:30 AM in the Sunday morning plans. It was time to go.
The race came and went. I ran for an hour, 42 minutes, and 11 seconds. Inevitably, running for as long as I did, I had some time to think. Well, a lot of time to think and a lot of time to not have my thoughts disrupted.
Whenever I run, I don’t listen to any music. I don’t want to cancel out the noise of nature. There is something to be said about listening to what the world has to say. I either run without headphones or enjoy the company of someone else. However, Sunday was me against me with some huffing and puffing along the way.
During the run, you try to consume your mind with happy thoughts and not the thoughts of “Why did I ever consider this to be a good idea” or “Boy, this is not enjoyable”. You hope to push out the bad thoughts but naturally, they are going to be present no matter how hard you try. The negative thoughts seep into your mind and compound on top of the heavy breathing, lactic acid filling your legs, and yes, you are covered in sweat. To some, running is voluntary torture but to others, it can be a joyous process, a necessary torture almost. Runner's high exists for a reason. Running is a very black-and-white pursuit, you have a distance and you have a time, end of story. Some people love it, some people hate it.
You look around during a race and you see people just like you, people who can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday morning than churning out a few miles before the sun even rises. People who have found the pain they are willing to endure that others won’t. People who have found what is play to them but seems like work to others. Play is taken with a grain of salt because a half marathon is quite the pursuit and naturally, at times, a painful pursuit. But pain is part of the pursuit of excellence.
Isadore Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, has a quote,
”Excellence is the capacity to take pain.”
Now obviously, running can involve physical pain but pain here does not need to be literal. Excellence extends beyond the physical pain you are willing to endure. It extends to all types of pain. It is more of what you are willing to sit through and endure that may be deemed to be uncomfortable, boring, or monotonous by others. What hard things are you willing to do that others may not. Anything ever achieved with excellence was a rollercoaster of a ride where the highest high doesn’t compare to the lowest low. No one ever started a business and said, “Oh yeah, it went great. No issues at all along the way, it was a completely seamless process.”
A lot of excellence is achieved in life by finding things where, no matter what is thrown at you, you keep showing up. When others would quit you just keep churning along. It is about enjoying the process, not shooting for an outcome. The joy found in the process inevitably leads to better outcomes. Jimmy Carr has a quote,
“It is not the pursuit of happiness, it is the happiness of the pursuit.”
It is about who you become on the journey. Getting stuff isn’t fun, it is pursuing stuff that is. The pursuit is done without the recognition in mind because the process, or pursuit, of doing it is enough. The process is the win.
It is about waking up early before work and running before the sun even rises. It is about staying true to yourself and even after a long day of work, still completing the run that you needed to stay on track. It is about showing up for yourself each day. Self-esteem comes not from the person with chiseled legs who does the half marathon. It comes from the person who runs every day, runs three times a week, or doesn’t miss a strength training session. It is where excellence is born. Born out of being less outcome-oriented and more process oriented.
“But if we stay in process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we aren’t thinking of the finish line, we’re not looking at the clock, we’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing the very act we are in the middle of. No, we’re in process, the APPROACH IS THE DESTINATION… and we are NEVER finished.
Bo Jackson ran over the goal line, through the end zone and up the tunnel — the greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it.”
The doing of the deed is the reward itself. There is no destination because the fulfillment lies in the process. The finish line is a man-made construct.
As much as we like to think it does, the validation of doing a half marathon does not come from scratching it off a list or showing the world we do cool things. Completing something in search of external validation is something that will feel good at the moment but washes away shortly after. The validation comes from the joy of doing it, the process of completing a difficult task. I wasn’t showered at the finish line with praise of people telling me how great I am or how I can do such cool things. Lasting joy doesn’t come from that. It comes from realizing the pain I just pushed through and looking back and saying, “Wow, I did that for me. I enjoyed the run and had fun while doing it. Let’s do it again next year.”
I look back on crossing the finish line and it was great, it was really great. I am proud of myself but I think what I am most proud of is the 10, 11, 12 mile runs where I was out there by myself pushing to prepare. Or the last 1.5 mile stretch of the race where my legs felt like I was inching along cinder blocks but I stayed true and I stayed on pace. Or even the joy I just got from being out there, the support and the people at the race were phenomenal. I took joy in the process, which led to the desired outcome. The process is the win. You don’t go searching for an outcome, you stay true to the process and success is a byproduct of it.
Victor Frankl talks about success in his book Man’s Search for Meaning,
“Again and again I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and in America: ‘Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”
The irony of this quote is when Victor Frankl wrote this book in 1945, he had none of this in mind. He wrote it in nine days and just wanted to show to the readers that life holds meaning even under the most miserable conditions, Nazi concentration camps. Writing a book in nine days is an absurd task, not to mention it is a high-quality book that has sold over 10 million copies and been translated into 24 languages. The joy was in the process of writing the book, it did not seek a particular outcome. The joy was found in what he was meant to do. Matthew McConaughey talks about it too,
“Personally, as an actor, I started enjoying my work and literally being happier when I stopped trying to make the daily labor a means to a certain end — I need this film to be a box office success, I need my performance to be acknowledged, I need the respect of my peers.
All reasonable aspirations but truth is, as soon as the WORK, the MAKING of the movie, the DOING of the deed became the reward in itself — I got more box-office, more accolades and respect than I’d ever had before. See, JOY is always in process, under construction — it’s in the constant approach, alive and well —in the DOING of what we are fashioned to do… and enJOYing doing it.”
Find what you enjoy doing and where doing the deed itself is enough of a reward alone. The pain, so to speak, that you can endure or will endure that others might not. Joy is in this and it is always under construction.
The following few days post-race, I felt weird. I had beaten my goal time. I was a bit sore, tired, and run down maybe. I moved through the days wondering why I felt this way. The race was over. One piece of the puzzle is behind me. But it’s only a small part.
I began to realize what I was feeling. It wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t soreness. It wasn’t relief. If anything… it was regret?
Certainly, not good. It was regret.
Because I wanted to do it again.
Nothing had changed despite completing a half marathon. It was the process that brought me joy. The pain that brought me pleasure. The “boredom” that brought me the excitement.
That is when I realized you just have to move toward the pain that you are willing to endure. The destination was not the finish line. The approach to the finish line was the destination.
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
One of my favorite quotes from Kobe:
“Those times when you get up early and you work hard; those times when you stay up late and you work hard; those times when you don’t feel like working, you’re too tired, you don’t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway; that is actually the dream. That’s the dream. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”
Congrats on the run, and here’s to falling in love with the process!