Obstacle course races, craniotomies, and mind games

I used to be into obstacle course races.

I still am, but used to too (cue Mitch Hedberg impression).

Anyway, about 5 years ago, I was doing my first Spartan Beast race.

Now, this race is intense.

13+ miles in the mountains, and over 30 obstacles (barbed wire crawls, mud pits, twisting monkey bars, and 8 foot wall climbs.

The works.

For this particular race I wasn’t in optimal shape.

Around mile 8, I got these horrendous cramps in my legs. Hamstrings, glutes, quads, calves, the works. All at once.

And in the middle of a forest, in the rain.

Quite debilitating.

To the point that another 5+ miles and 12-15 more obstacles sounded downright impossible.

My first thought was that the old medical gurney was sounding pretty good.

My next though was of my dad.

See, my dad had just suffered a stroke at 48 years old, only a few months before.

He was home by this point, but he couldn’t walk and was missing part of his skull from an emergency craniotomy (fancy way of saying they saw a hole in your skull to let your brain expand without killing you).

Before this, he was the picture of health. Super active guy, etc.

So, here I was, standing in front of an obstacle called “Stairway to Heaven” (a 7ft wall with another 8 ft of rock climbing above that) with ALL of my leg muscles locked up, considering telling the obstacle attendee to call the squad, when all of a sudden, I had the thought about my dad.

And I remember this like it was yesterday.

I thought “My dad will probably never get to do something like this ever again. But I get to do this.”

And I went over the wall, then finished the race.

My legs still hurt, but my mind was able to power through.

There’s two lessons I learned from this:

1. Framing is so powerful.

2. Most of life is a mind game.

The frame of “I GET to do this, even though it sucks” is a mind-bender, once you fully embrace it.

This works for posting content, going to the gym, or driving 2 hours one way to a job that sucks.

If you use that context, your attitude will improve, you’ll start to see opportunities where you didn’t before, and your energy will change.

The energy change will be the biggest difference.

When other’s around you see and feel this change, they will be more attracted to you and want to work with with you/be around you.

Once you accept that you have power over the situation by reframing in your mind, everything changes.

Optimal.

Swanagan