The other day I posted about a running benchmark and captioned it:
“Do impossible sh!t. Then try to beat it. Fall short and still be proud.”
I didn’t get my best distance ever, but I completed a truly hard run.
The tongue-in-cheek “do impossible shit” wasn’t meant as a flex, some form of unbridled toxic masculinity, or an unhinged run-through-a-wall mentality. What I really meant was: do something that a previous version of you couldn’t do. Then keep working on yourself and see what you can do next.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve become a runner. Of all the stereotypical midlife crisis responses, running has been an unexpectedly healthy one.
It has helped settle my own hypervigilance and helped me regain a sense of stability and confidence through doing hard things. Not because running magically fixes your mental health, but because it has repeatedly given me opportunities to challenge myself and find out what I’m capable of. (In different ways then my career)
I have increased confidence now but only because there was a time when I had very little. I earned trust in myself slowly, by gradually challenging myself to do things I didn’t think I could do.
Here’s the thing, though:
I still very often don’t think I can do stuff.
My routine before a benchmark is now telling anyone at the gym who will listen that I don’t think I have it today. Then, almost immediately, I’ll explain my exact plan to run X speed for Y minutes and what I’m hoping to accomplish.
I plan for what I want despite initially believing I probably can’t actually do it. The self doubt is underneath but not the reality.
And then I try anyway.
The attempt comes first. The plan comes second. The belief comes last.
I think we often imagine confidence working in the opposite direction. First you believe in yourself, then you make the plan, then you confidently go do the thing.
That has not been my experience.
The belief came from repeatedly attempting things before I was convinced I could do them. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I fell short. But every attempt gave me a little more evidence about what I could handle.
Running has also become a pretty good illustration of my own cognitive process and, specifically, my all-or-nothing thinking. In a matter of minutes—maybe even seconds—I can vacillate between thinking I am unstoppable and thinking I am way too out of shape for this.
I suppose neither is true.
The truth is somewhere in the healthy middle.
I am not unstoppable. I can’t do the impossible. There are things I will attempt and fail at. There are goals I won’t reach and days when I genuinely don’t have it.
But I can do hard shit.
And maybe confidence isn’t believing that you’re going to succeed every time. Maybe it’s trusting that you can attempt something without knowing how it’s going to turn out.
That trust has been earned slowly.
One run. One workout. One race. One benchmark. One uncomfortable thing at a time.
So when I say, “Do impossible shit, then try to beat it,” I’m not really talking about doing the impossible.
I’m talking about doing something that feels impossible to you right now.
Then seeing what you can do next.
Rational Psychotherapy 