Running Toward My Problems
What I'm Up To (Doing), What I Reflected On (Goals), and What's Occupying My Mind (Anti-Fragility) - all part of Allen's Friday Flights
Hello - it’s time for Friday Flights!
These are a flight of personal updates from me and it’ll be centered around what I’m up to, what I reflected on, and what book (or even thing) occupies my mind. Makes sense why I’d have a different selection of topics since I often choose samplers and flights when I go out to eat and drink.
Ciao!
Allen
Inside:
What I’m up to
What I reflected on
What thing occupies my mind
What I’m Up To
TL;DR: Figuring out the movie summer list.
The Things:
Top Gun Maverick is an incredibly fun movie. So begins a summer of movie watching.
I met reconlion - Zach Al-Kharusy. He makes maple syrup and NFTs.
I did not answer the question “So where do you see yourself in 5 years”.
I’m doing some product testing of my Action Passion product. Signup to be on the whitelist.
I learned about here.co, a way to invest in vacation rentals and get paid monthly.
I’m trying to get a pallet, so I can start a talent collective. It’s difficult.
What I Reflected On
TL;DR: When it comes to trying new things, the goals you set will determine your future relationship to it.
Running Toward My Problems
I started running daily since January 1, 2021.
On February 14, 2022 - I hit 1,000 miles.
As of the time of this publication, I will have ran 1,288 miles.
It took me well over 10 years for me to adopt running, yet it took me less than a month in 2021 for me to do it everyday.
I’ll give you a confession.
I hate running.
Since my college days, I would try running as a means to losing weight. I’d run around CSULB at night since I dormed there, or run around the indoor track at the SRWC.
I could never develop a consistent habit out of it. I would get annoyed that “I didn’t go that far” with the amount of effort I felt like I put in.
I would get annoyed at the cadence of my running.
I would get annoyed by my sweat.
I would get annoyed by how little progress I’ve made.
Running was terrible for me, and I most definitely did not lose weight doing it. In my mind, it was objectively the worst physical fitness I can think of, compared to HIIT classes, tabata classes, or cycling.
Throughout my life, running would make a comeback - inspired by new shoes, new gadgets, great weather, or to justify my eating habits.
Here’s a look back on how my story, and relationship, to running has evolved.
THE SPEED METRICS (circa 2016)
In 2016, and the before times of college, I was occupied by speed-based goals. I would focus on how fast I could run - at the beach, in the neighborhood, or at my alma-mater. I would make it a goal to constantly answer the question “how fast I could sprint”, or “how agile I was in pivoting directions”.
This fixation on speed wasn’t sustainable.
I never developed a healthy habit out of it - speed is fun the first time you do it, but not so much the 5th time. And if you are a competitive individual, you’ll beat yourself over the head for not breaking your own record.
THE DISTANCE METRIC (circa 2017)
I switched my approached to a new goal - how far can I go?
I ended up running the Disneyland Star Wars Half Marathon (~13 miles), and I was filled with pride in how much I ran and what I got to see. After running that marathon, I proceeded to never run again for the next two years.
There was something about knowing that I only had to do it once, to prove to myself once, that caused me to never run again.
THE TIME METRIC (circa 2020)
The next metric I tried was a time-based metric. I tried running a set amount of time, disregarding speed and distance. I would focus on running for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and even 60 minutes, 2x a week. Maybe 3x.
This sort of worked, but I faced inconsistency and developed a feeling of anxiety before I started runs. I got exhausted before a run even happened. It’s quite the time commitment to be telling yourself “I have to run 1 hour today” or “30 mintues today”, when even 10 minute feels like an eternity.
THE FREQUENCY METRIC (circa 2021)
I switched to another metric - I focused on how many runs I can do per week, regardless of duration, length, or speed.
1 minute run.
2 minute run.
5 minute run.
10 minute run.
A run was classified a run even if it was “slow”, “short” or “not really a run”.
This worked incredibly well for me. But the conditions to start were very different than before.
400+ runs later, and I’ve crossed 1,288 miles.
LESSONS LEARNED
Metrics are important as they are a representation of your goal. The goal you set will immediately determine what you do, how you’ll do it, and how you’ll perceive the activity. It will dictate your relationship to it.
Speed goals burn me out from progressing from further, because it simply wasn’t fun for me.
Distance goals made me guilty for not achieving it consistently.
Time goals made me exhausted before I even began.
Under the guise of speed, distance, and time, my previous relationship to running become one of competition through optimization.
Optimization metrics are fine, but there is an assumption made about it:
You have recurring performance history
Your goal is to out-rank someone else, even yourself
It basically assumes this is a recurring habit, and you’ve solved all issues so that its an irrefutable habit.
To someone that’s new, and never got the hang of running, these kind of metrics are vanity metrics. They aren’t indicators of a healthy relationship, a sustainable habit, or any substantive meaning.
Vanity metrics are useless when you are in the adoption phase, starting something out for the first time.
When it came to building sustainable running habits, what I focused on is my emotional relationship to running - at the very least, removal of any negativity.
THE ADOPTION GOAL
I adopted running because in 2021, I was enduring too much anxiousness derived from my constantly firing brain. Basically, thinking yourself to paralysis. A 2020 pandemic, WFH, living in a tiny apartment, with basically terrible societal news all the time, will do that to you.
To get my brain thinking a little bit better, I started going outside and running. It began with wanting to be outside in general, after spending 99% of the time indoors.
I told myself, this 5 minute run I’m doing today is 5 minutes for me to think about stuff, while running.
Those 20 minutes? That’s my 20 minute on the run meditation.
That 40 minutes? You’re going to run, and you are going to completely think out whats on your mind, and when you’re done, you have a decision, or it didn’t matter to begin with.
My relationship to running evolved, originally intended for weight loss and physical health, to one of mental health. Basically, if I don’t run, I get anxious.
Running contributed to my mental wellness, because every minute running, was a minute spent out doors existing in nature.
My best, random, and energizing thoughts often appear in my runs. My best thinking energy comes within a 3 hour window after I run. I also get physical energy to last the days, even the busiest days. Its my source of energy; I don’t drink coffee in the morning.
Though as an FYI, most of my runs are recovery runs. Physical recovery? Mental recovery? You name it, it’s it.
HOW DOES THIS CROSS POLLINATE?
When it comes to trying new and different things, I often hear people set their goals as:
Wanting to be the best
Be the strongest
Be the fastest
Have the most views
Have the most likes
These vanity goals do not matter when you start, nor do they matter in the long term.
If you’re serious about starting anything, the goal you need to set are goals that are goals that change your relationship to the activity or skill at hand. Taking a page out of Adlerian Philosophy - all problems are interpersonal problems - problems of relationship. Change your relationship - or your derived meaning from something - and you’ll find yourself in a different place.
Anyway, this is all an elaborate ploy for me to extend an open invitation to challenge me on Apple Fitness or Nike Run Club.
What thing occupies my mind
TL;DR: Achieving happiness indirectly - Watch the video but if you can’t I transcribed some of it below.
Pursuing Happiness Through Hardship
Tal Ben-Shahar is focused on an emerging study of happiness psychology. He takes Nassim Taleb’s Anti Fragile a bit further, and applies it to individual human psychology.
The concept of Anti Fragile goes like this:
Resilience 1.0 (Existing systems and perception)
When you put pressure on a system, the system reverts back to how it started.Resilience 2.0 (or Anti-Fragile) - How we should be looking at, and developing things
When you put pressure on a system, it grows bigger and stronger, similiar to how your muscles work.
When it comes to individual happiness, how can trauma lead to growth? Specifically, What are the conditions we can put in place to increase the likelihood of growing from hardship?
When it comes to being happy, Tal Ben-Shahar mentions the Paradox of Happiness: Those who choose to pursue happiness directly, end up being less happy and are more likely to experience depression.
A way to overcome the paradox is to chase happiness indirectly and treat happiness as a state of wholebeing, achievable through the development of 5 dimensions that he refers to as SPIRE:
Spirituality - A purpose gives you the motivation to overcome all barriers.
Physicality - Stress isn’t the issue, its the lack of being able to recover.
Intellectual - Research shows that people who curious are not only happier, but live longer.
Relational - Quality time spent with people you care about, and people who care about you. The quality of your relationships are an indicator of how well you can overcome hardship.
Emotional - The emotion of gratitude is the most important virtue, as it allows you to see the good in life, and not only that, but have more of it (because you are able to see it).
I appreciate this different take on what happiness is. A lifelong journey supported by the constant growth of the 5 dimensions.
Happiness is pretty hard concept to describe, and sometimes can only be described by stating the absence of its opposite. Often times, happiness is taught as the desired emotion, at the suppression of all other emotions. Check out the Pixar Movie Inside Out to learn more about that.
Anyway, just one of those random videos that sparks my interest.