Mission Commitment Part II

-By Jaime Willis

"Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda

As many of you know, I am currently working on a goal to complete fifty 10Ks in 2011.  Today is the last day of January, and I have finished six 10Ks!  I am really happy with my progress and am (not so) secretly hoping to finish this goal much earlier than in December, as I'd originally thought.  But, when people find out I'm running multiple 10Ks a week, they are usually incredulous.  The number one comment I've heard so far from folks is "I couldn't do that." 

WHY NOT?

A 10K is 6.2 miles, and I consider one 'run' if I complete that distance walking, jogging, or running indoors or outdoors on a treadmill, elliptical, crosstrainer, or road all at one time.  To me, the only really challenging part is the "all at one time" rule.  If I got to aggregate my time on cardio machines throughout the week, it would be a lot easier.  But there is no "race" deadline.  I could literally take a three hour stroll and that would count.  So when folks say, "I couldn't do that," I think to myself, "someone needs a lesson on mission commitment." 

Terol Pursell, Sean Feehan, Ryan Darling and Jared Walker lead the pack as they run through pouring rain during a cross country practice Sept. 23, 2010, on north Icon Road, bordering the campus of Northwest Missouri State University. (Darren Whitley/Northwest Missouri State University)

Mission Commitment can be loosely defined as "Relentless pursuit of your goal." I think the real key to mission commitment is being relentless. No matter who or what gets in your way, you will work around or through each challenge to make your goal happen.  If you are not relentless by nature, don't worry.  You can learn it! 

Build your Mission Commitment muscles by:

1) Priming yourself to succeed.  You have to believe achieving your goal is possible to be able to pursue it relentlessly.  Your inner dialogue needs to match what you are trying to do.  As I am going to bed, I talk to myself about what I am going to accomplish the next day.  "I am going to run a 10K tomorrow." When I wake up, I continue priming myself by preparing to run -- getting a gym bag together and taking it with me to work, planning out my schedule so I know when I have to leave work to have enough time to run 10K, etc.  

Pro Tip: You may not actually believe what you are priming yourself to do when you start your goal.  That's ok.  Just keep repeating the 'unbelievable' and eventually, you'll 'fool' yourself into believing!

2) Make it easy to begin.  With my goal, I didn't have to ramp up to the 10K distance because I was already in the gym doing cardio for about that long to begin with.  For me, the 'easy' win was the fact that I wasn't racing.  I am a s-l-o-w runner, and I knew the 10K was going to take me 1 - 1.5 hours each time I did it, more if I was walking.  Since the only rule is that I finish the race, I don't have to worry about how slow I am, any finish is a win! (Of course, now that I am doing this multiple times a week, I'm racing myself, but that just makes it fun for me.) 

Whatever your goal is, you need to make the first few steps stupid-easy to complete so you rack up the wins.  If you are having trouble getting to the gym at all, your first win should literally be to show up to the gym.  No workout requirement, no crazy lifting goals, just show up.  The next time, your goal could be to get at least 10 minutes of exercise in.  Stupid-easy.  Once you start racking up the wins, you WANT to keep winning, and *bam* you have mission commitment.

3) Build in accountability.  There are two easy ways to do this: tell folks what your goal is and partner up with someone who is like-minded.  I posted my goal on this blog and on my personal facebook page. So about 750 of my closest friends know that I am running 10Ks this year.  In itself, that is pretty motivating -- I don't want to be a liar to that many people!  I haven't found anyone who wants to run 10Ks with me a few times a week, but I have found other ways to partner up.  In my first race, I got to 4 miles and felt like quitting.  I knew that I could push through, but needed some motivation.  While I was still running, I texted Matt, and he texted back a couple of cheers that kept me on the elliptical for the entire time.  I also plan on running a few 10K road races with friends, another way to stay accountable.

4) Have a Mantra.  When times are tough, when you feel disheartened and ready to quit, when your accountability partner is nowhere to be found, you have to have something at the ready to keep you limping forward.  In Matt's most recent marathon in Austin, Texas, he hit a wall at mile 17 or so.  He could have quit - plenty of people do.  But he just kept repeating to himself "Don't stop, just keep moving."  Especially in physically challenging circumstances, it is rarely our bodies that will give out first--it's our minds!  Get your mind on 'auto-pilot success' by having a mantra you can repeat over and over again until you get through it.  On a challenging section of one of my runs, I literally repeated "mission commitment" with every step to remind myself of why I was doing this.  On another run, I played Destiny Child's Survivor on repeat for the last 20 minutes of my run.  

"I'm a survivor, I'm not gonna give up, I'm not gon' stop, I'm gonna work harder,

I'm a survivor, I'm gonna make it, I will survive, Keep on survivin'" - Destiny's Child

Whatever your goal, I KNOW you can do it.  Build up your mission commitment muscles and you'll see success in sight!