But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.
Interpretation
Embrace challenges with ease rather than resistance for better results.
This quote emphasizes the importance of approaching arduous tasks, like a long run, with a relaxed and open mindset instead of forcing oneself through the experience. It suggests that easing into challenges can transform them from daunting to enjoyable, allowing for a more fulfilling and successful journey.
In practice
In a marathon training seminar to explain mindset approaches.
Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We're awful sprinters compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They're endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it's run now, it's not an endurance contest.
I have the idea that running shoes are based on a kind of cult idea - that our feet are flawed and we need shoes to correct those flaws. The shoe companies are in the business of selling shoes. But there's no evidence from running shoe manufacturers that they're right. There's no scientific data that running shoes reduce injury.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.
Know why people run marathons? …Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human — which means its a superpower all humans posses.
Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.
Anyone can do running. Running should be easy. It should be fun. It should include everyone. It shouldn't be a punishment for eating cheesecake, which is what we've turned it into.
I implore you, I entreat you and I challenge you to speak with conviction. To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it. Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply question authority—you've got to speak with it too.
You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. ... Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.
Companies, however_x000D_ unintentionally, choke the motivation out of their employees.
Our dreams have to be bigger. Our ambitions higher. Our commitment deeper. And our efforts greater. This is my dream for Reliance and for India.
I used to think that losing made you more hungry and determined but after my success at the Olympics and the U.S. Open I realise that winning is the biggest motivation.
Good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you won’t even have to tell yourself, because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say, “Take me away.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.