As many of you know, I take a holistic approach to solopreneurship.
It isn’t just about business strategy, tactics, etc.
It’s about being a happy, successful person – in whatever way you define it for you.
A huge part of that, and a part that I think is often overlooked, is the health side.
Physical health (eating well and exercising) and mental health can have a huge bearing on how you – and by extension your solopreneur business – operate in the short and long term.
Why am I saying this?
Well, I’m segueing into a topic I’m really excited about these days – I’m training to run a marathon at the end of May.
And the more I train and the closer I get to race day, the more lessons I learn that can also apply to entrepreneurship.
I don’t want to spend days writing emails about running, but I’ll keep you posted once in a while on my marathon training and lessons learned along the way (Marathon Monday perhaps?).
To give you some perspective, I’m about 2 months from race day and this week I have 46km to run (over 4 runs – the longest being my 24km run this weekend… please send help!).
What I’ve quickly learned is that our bodies are capable of doing much more than we give them credit for… if you treat them right.
Yes, I can run 46km in a week – if I am eating enough (healthy) calories per day, stretching/doing yoga, sleeping enough, etc.
Side note: eating enough has probably been the hardest part so far. I know this might sound like a first-world problem, but my body is screaming for nutrients if I don’t put down a minimum of 2,500-3,000 calories per day at this point.
And our brains probably are too. If we live a healthy life, get the right amount of rest and also training, we are probably all capable of so much more.
And there’s no one who preaches this more than David Goggins. If you haven’t heard of Goggins, he’s a former Navy Seal who can quickly be described as a physical freak.
He runs ultra-marathons, holds crazy records for things like most pull-ups in a day, and wrote a pretty great book that I read a few years ago.
Ones of his core messages is that he doesn’t train like an animal for the physical benefits – he does it for the mental benefits.
Or in his own words, he trains to “callous his mind”.
You know how when you start bench-pressing often, those callouses start to form as extra skin on the inside of your hands?
They’re there as an extra layer of protection for your skin.
Goggins pushes himself to the limit, physically, so that his mind has that extra layer of protection.
So when shit hits the fan in life (pardon my French), he’s ready for it. Because he’s already put himself through about as much pain as anyone.
As I continue to train for the marathon in May and also think back to my competitive sports days, I couldn’t agree more.
Yes, exercise and sports are great in a physical sense. And you should do them to stay healthy, physically – the benefits are endless.
But you’ll also train your mind to be stronger.
When you’ve pushed yourself to run that extra 5km after you thought you had nothing left.
When you’ve lined up against 300 pounders trying to rip your head off.
When you and your opponent have pushed yourselves to the brink of exhaustion… but you need to give that much more to pull off the victory…
Then all of a sudden, that 5-page report for your balding boss doesn’t seem so intimidating (not trying to offend anyone who’s bald!!).
Or that presentation for that random client isn’t as nerve-wracking.
What I’m getting at is this: the more you push yourself physically, the stronger you’ll be mentally, and the better off you’ll be as an entrepreneur, employee, you name it.
And the more intense this marathon training gets, the more I can see it in action.
So do yourself a favour and start pushing yourself to workout more, harder, or give yourself a new physical challenge of any kind.
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