Introduction
Since joining a running club recently, I’ve learned that exercise builds resilience. Strong in body, strong in mind means that when you build muscle and endurance through exercise, this mindset transfers itself to other areas of your life. Exercise not only benefits you physically, it also benefits you mentally.
I run with a few of my fellow co-workers. We meet weekly after work to run for about 40 minutes along the lakeshore downtown. I also jog in the park whenever I can, though at a slower speed and shorter distance than with this club. As a result, whenever I run with my co-workers, I’m pushing myself to keep up and to finish the run no matter how much I want to stop running and walk instead.
Sometimes my mind is screaming at me to stop running because I feel like I can’t do it. But these runs are like practice for pushing myself to do things when I want to throw in the towel and give up and take the easier route.
1. How to implement exercise to build strength and resilience
To implement strength-building in your life, start with something easy, like walking, jogging or running. Choose an activity with a low or no cost to start. It should also be in a low stakes, low pressure, and non-competitive environment. Whichever activity you choose, you have to keep up and do it consistently or else it won’t work. The point is to start building mental resilience with a gentle activity, then increase your endurance until you can move onto the bigger goals, whether it’s in your career or business.
This takes a lot of discipline. Now, I don’t have the greatest endurance. I can run for only so long before I’m winded. But during my run club, I found that I was able to keep up even though my mind was begging for me to give up and walk instead of run.
Exercise trains your brain to do things that it thinks it can’t do. It benefits your brain by building those muscles. You experience the mindset of persisting when everything is telling you to give up. The more times you do this, and the more practice you get, the easier it is to strengthen that mindset. It will become a habit that you do automatically.
2. Running trains your mind to do things you don’t want to do
To get over my reluctance and discomfort of running until I reach my limit, I began to tell myself to acknowledge the fact that no one likes to exercise. Same for selling to clients, eating vegetables, or whatever it is that you don’t like to do.
Telling myself this is like accepting that everyone has things that they don’t want to do, or keep putting off.
I found that when I was running, I reached my breaking point, or the point when I just wanted to collapse on the ground and not get up. But I didn’t quit, because I knew that that’s when I would start to see results. Running is really a practice in discipline. You strengthen your mind to focus and achieve that goal of getting to the finish line.
3. Exercise teaches your mind to be resilient
Whenever I run, there are many moments when I want to give up and walk, but I push through it. Through running, I’ve taught myself to not give up.
You might’ve asked yourself these questions: how do you get through it when you feel like giving up? How do you train yourself to be persistent?
The way to do this is to practice. I’ve mentioned that the voice in my head is begging me to give up and stop running. Learn to tune down the voice that says you can’t do something. It’s a bit like meditation, how you focus and tune out noise that can distract you from your goal.
Conclusion
Strengthen your mind through strengthening your body. Exercise, like running, makes you mentally and physically strong. Exercise also builds resilience. Life itself can feel like an endurance test, like it’s testing your limits to see how much stress or hardship you can handle. Sometimes what you’re trying to accomplish feels like running a marathon. By building exercise into your everyday routine, you get used to pushing through and reaching your goal.