We have a nice saying in our Estonian office “Paneme hullu!” #panemehullu. This might be translated into something like “Let’s go crazy!” and is said to indicate that we would go through the closed doors and concrete walls to achieve what we have planned.
It is a nice and motivating cheer, usually giving a small extra boost but never very literally taken. So the question is about the limit, how crazy can you actually go to achieve something that you want or that you have promised to deliver.
Suffering makes you stronger?
Kestutis suggested a couple of weeks ago an interesting book to read, “Can’t hurt me” by David Goggins. The guy is a US special ops guy, describing his mental and physical challenges in life. How he made through his rough childhood, the challenges he had when he was training to be US Navy SEAL, that included weeks and months of hard survival training in the roughest nature possible. Due to his medical conditions, he had to start the program several times over again, since after quitting you could not continue where you left off. And this was not enough suffering for him. He started ultra running and triathlon training, became one of the best ultra sportsmen in the world. And even that was not enough, because he thought it would be a great idea to break the world record for most pull-ups in the range of 24h. And on his third attempt, he made it as well. Can you imagine a guy who is an ultra runner and beating the record for pull-ups at the same time? This seems to alter the rules of physics.
He is the guy who lives and breathes to suffer or so you’d say. If you read his book you will feel something totally inhumane and totally crazy, because I am not sure how many people in the world are willing to do those things to themselves. The book shows for sure that there is almost nothing impossible but you have to put a crazy amount of work into this. I am not totally sure if you need to put that crazy amount of suffering into this as well like he did, but it certainly reminds that a lot of people stop going after the second mile of when the going gets tough. Most of the people are operating on the 40% level of their maximum capabilities, is what the author repeated several times. Yet everyone says they are doing their best. You can actually get so much more out from yourself than you think your maximum is, the question is how much are willing to push yourself to get better.
David Goggins, the author of the book, describes how you have to survive the first couple of waves of suffering and just focus on the visible target ahead and at some point you will see the second wave of energy coming from somewhere - from the fact that all others have quit, or the impossible suddenly starts seeming possible. This second wave will help you get through thick and thin and reach your goal.
Training your will-power is like any other training
Psychologists say that your will-power is a capability with limits, it is said the same about your attention span. Do not waste those resources, cause they are limited, is often said. Decision-making takes a lot of mental energy. On the other hand, seems that those capabilities are more like muscles that you can train as well. I used to make the bench press with 40 kg when I was 15 and started going to the gym somewhat regularly and did 130 when I was 21 and a competing decathlete. Most likely I could have pushed my limit above 200 if I started as a weight-lifter at that point. So with this one single exercise that I practised moderately, I made a lot of success in 6 years and could have made even much more if I would have set that as my goal to pursue. Everything can be developed the same way.
I don’t know how about you but every time I read a book I am searching parallels with my own life. I was not treated badly by my family like the author of the book was beaten by his father and suffered almost daily. But still having felt how cruel some of the older kids can be, I think I can still somehow relate to the feeling that rough childhood gives you some extra boost and motivation to push yourself through life.
Not that I would recommend this to anyone, so I actually believe that pushing your comfort zone further and further to even unimaginable distance for most people can be achieved as a grown-up as well. I believe that long-distance running and other endurance sports competitions are really good ways of doing this, just as the book describes. The adventure race series Xdream in Estonia is definitely a perfect place to go if you are a novice “sufferer” and want this to be interesting as well.
Push and then pull back
We all know that with muscle training you need some recovery as well. I was reading and thinking how can this be possible that this guy does not give himself a break - at least this was how the book described the situation. In the end, it made sense to me because he broke down as well and found out that stretching the muscles and giving them time to recover actually makes him better than just pushing all the way every day.
So the secret sauce in every training and achieving every life-goal is to find the magic formula of how hard and long to push and when to pull yourself back a little to be ready to start the new push just at the right time.
And as I said, I do not think this is only valid for physical training but pushing your boundaries and comfort zone mentally as well.
I am not sure how well this essay describes you the ideas of the book, cause mostly it was about the no-brainer fact that you need to push yourself hard if you have high goals and you want to achieve them. Again written mostly to amp up my own learning curve.
But I guess the book is really worth reading to get the better understanding where human limits are and since I bought the e-book I can share with you guys as well. Just let me know if you are interested and I can send you a copy, so you can have your own personal feeling about it.