Building your super power: 14 Lessons from endurance training - Part 3 of 4

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7. You deal better with emotions, especially negative ones

Those negative emotions are not going anywhere during your journey. You’ll just be in a much better state to deal with them. It’ll take hard work to keep reminding yourself what you’ve set out to do – and those reminders are important. Especially when you’re sacrificing “other fun stuff” for your journey. There will be days when you’re completely down in the dumps and you’ll just not be in the “zone” to do anything. Those are times when you need to show up for yourself. Of course, when we’re talking training, rest days for physical recovery are extremely important. And at times, it’s just good to cut yourself some slack from whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve. A break day can help you re-focus and you come back to it, stronger and more determined than before.

You’ll realize another thing. When you put in effort into anything you set out to achieve, each session of “doing it” will improve your mood.

8. Training sessions can drive away negative emotions

A training sessions (or any sports session) can really drive away a lot of blues. It is probably the best cure for bad moods and negative emotions. Athletes are generally a happy lot. I certainly don’t have data, but I have enough anecdotal evidence to say that for myself :)

Most of my training sessions leave me smiling, happy and generally positive.

9. Learning/ training time is precious

You’ll soon realize that the time which you spend learning a skill or training for sports is high quality time which you spend with yourself. You’ll understand yourself better and you’ll connect with yourself better. No better time than this to recuperate.

10. Understanding what is good for you – in the short term, medium term and the long term

You realize what works for you and what doesn’t. I like the thought of long terms sustainable good rather than instant gratification. This is a gift I’ve received from endurance training. Be it the bigger aspects of life like relationships and work or the seemingly “smaller” aspects like eating, drinking etc. Endurance training has taught me how to make choices which are good for me in the long term. A lot of them will not give me instant gratification – it’s still worth it. It’s taught me that anything worth achieving is worth the hard work that it requires.

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