How is this going to work?
Is it going to work?
What have I gotten myself into?
The adventure has begun as soon as these questions start coming to mind.
Less cold feet or nerves, this is curiosity kicking in. Wondering what lies ahead on the known but uncertain path.
If it were more certain it’d be boring and less known it’d be scary.
This is adventure.
I happen to like adventure. Okay, love, adventure.
Not exploring the Amazon by myself kinds of adventure, but the running-a-216-mile-relay-race- on-a-team-of-10-strangers-and- 1-friend-kind like I did last weekend.
Or running a half-marathon.
After I signed up for my first half marathon in 2008, the next thing I did was go to the library and get some running books.
If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
The beginner’s marathon training books had some pearls of wisdom about running, and about life. Once you’ve set a training schedule, then determine your goal:
Are you going to be a competer or a completer?
A competer is someone who trains for a certain pace or overall time and then seeks to beat. Perhaps seeking a personal record. This is what we think of as “winning.”
A completer is someone who seeks to reach the finish line through running, walking, hell or high water.
The most important step: setting your race goal and being satisfied with it.
This is harder than it sounds.
There are two kinds of decision-makers according to an article I read in Real Simple magazine in 2008:
- Satisfiers just want to make a decision and move on.
- Maximizers just want to make the absolute best decision possible. This feels like winning.
Unsurprisingly, the article concluded that generally “satisfiers” are happier people through their ease of decision making.
Whereas the “maximizers” may have the occasional euphoric decision-making successes, they are generally stressed out all the time due to an acute case of perfection.
For my first half-marathon adventure back in 2008, I settled on being a completer—to train and make it across the finish line.
Read the story about this adventure in my latest blog post: When 2,364th Place is Winning.
What I’ve learned since then is that it’s actually really difficult to be a “completer” when you have a “maximizer” mindset.
It takes truly being satisfied with making the decision, any decision, and moving on with it, in order to truly complete things, come what may.
Otherwise, you’re still competing with yourself. And unless you’ve made that perfect decision and achieved the perfect outcome, you’re not actually satisfied.
Not that competing is bad. It can be very motivating. It’s just not necessary for winning.
And definitely not necessary for adventure.
What have you gotten yourself into lately? Are you ready for adventure?
Everything about that half-marathon had taken me outside my comfort zone and into my courage zone.
This is what I love about adventure: it’s fun and we learn a lot.
When we’re in our courage zone, life is an adventure.
May this week bring you to the edge of your courage zone.
Love,
Jules