5 ways to find ease & resilience in the big challenges
Mark - having Big Adventures on Average Talent - during an overnight ultramarathon
In this post I’ve pulled out 5 ideas from the webinar ‘Big Adventures on Average Talent: Ultramarathons, River Rescues and YOU’, that can help build confidence, resilience and endurance when taking on big challenges.
Thank you to everyone who joined us last week for the webinar with Mark from Big Adventures on Average Talent, where we discussed his upcoming Fastest Known Time ultramarathon attempt: running the 136 mile Wye Valley Walk. The webinars and the FKT attempt are raising money and awareness for the efforts to protect and restore the River Wye (thank you to everyone who has already donated so far).
We heard about Mark’s plans, goals, training, previous adventures and mishaps. We also explored, bringing in insights from psychology and conversations that I’ve been having with changemakers and adventurers, as well as Mark’s experiences, how he and others are able to take on such big adventures and what helps them have the resilience and endurance to ride the inevitable ups and downs.
I’ve just pulled out 5 things from our webinar conversation, that Mark does, and that you can do, when taking on big challenges as an adventurer or changemaker (or just as ‘you’), to help ride the inevitable ups and downs that come with going ‘beyond your ordinary’. If you missed the webinar, you can access the full conversation to hear Mark’s stories, the rest of the ideas we discussed or more about any of the ideas I’ve included in this blog post here (the full webinar is available free of charge but we request that you please donate to the Friends of the Wye Citizen Scientists here if you are able to). Come along to the next webinar to find out whether Mark achieved his ‘A’ goal of completing the Wye Valley Walk in 32 hours, the triumphs and trials of his time out on the trail, lessons learned from the experience, and hear more insights from psychology research, changemakers and adventurers about doing ‘big things’.
Here are 5 things you can do:
1. See yourself as someone who has ‘big adventures on average talent’
‘Big Adventures on Average Talent’ is Mark’s moniker and Instagram handle and it works really well as a philosophy on life! It means not having to wrangle with yourself over whether you are good enough, whether you are ‘ready’, or putting yourself under pressure to achieve a certain level. Instead you can free yourself by acknowledging you are as normal as everyone else (apart from the elites, perhaps!), letting go of the outcome, accepting you’ll never be ready, assuming some degree of talent will develop along the way - and get out there for some adventures. With this approach, you can’t help achieving things worth celebrating, and having experiences worth remembering. It aligns very nicely with what psychologists call growth mindset.
2. Get familiar with the unfamiliar
Many of us with our human brains are cautious of the uncertain, the unknown and the unfamiliar (although we might also get a thrill from novelty!). Uncertainty itself can become the thing we dread more than the thing that we are uncertain about. But the more we experience uncertainty and the unfamiliar, the more we get used to the discomfort it brings, and the more we build experience of having got through it. So, when you step up beyond your known ability, beyond your comfort zone, enter an experience you haven’t had before (and let’s face it no matter how carefully we attempt to control life, there will always be unknowns) – you will come across is a lot of uncertainty, but what becomes familiar is this process of entering the unknown itself - and making it out the other side. This can be a real confidence boost and source of reassurance in a life where the only certainty is uncertainty.
3. Gather evidence to fuel your optimism
Although adventuring and changemaking naturally require a leap of faith and attempting challenges with unknown outcomes, focussing on what you do know, can help ease the way. When you are challenged about whether you can do what you are trying to do, or when you doubt yourself, instead of asking yourself a rhetorical question (“Why would I think I can do this?” meaning, “I can’t do this”), actually ask yourself: “Why do I think I can do this?” Then follow the thread to come up with some answers, which will form your evidence. For example: What do you already know about this? What do you know about yourself? What have you experienced before? What examples do you have of people who have managed similar? You are providing yourself with some concrete evidence to fuel your optimism and belief that there is a reasonable enough chance of success to make it worth giving a go.
4. Hold on loosely to everything
Make plans but adapt them along the way. Set goals, but adjust them along the way. Be consistent with your training / efforts / practice over the long-run, but don’t hold onto consistency too rigidly in the day to day. Pay attention when things don’t work as planned in case there are lessons to be learned, but don’t pay too much attention because bad performance can just be a ‘fluke’. (I’ve summarised this a lot here so you might find it useful to refer to the webinar!).
5. Slow down or stop to go further
If you don’t slow down or stop to rest, recover or resource yourself, you put yourself at risk of injury and burnout, which will slow you down a lot more in the long-run. In contrast, taking the time to rest, recover and resource yourself, you become stronger, more able, increasing resilience, endurance and ensuring that you can perform better for longer.
Were you at the webinar? Or have you listened to the recording? Would you have picked out these points or were there others that you took away with you? What would you add from your own experience? And what challenge are you taking on for people, planet, or yourself? Get in touch if you want any help deciding on your challenge, getting started or keeping going: christina.transformational@gmail.com
