Running an ultra-marathon requires endurance and strong will. Hence, in this Expert Insight Interview, Andrew Johnston talks about what marathon running can teach us in our professional and personal life. Andrew Johnston is a Director of Leadership Development at Global Medical Response, TEDx speaker, educator, and ultra-marathon runner.
This interview discusses:
- Core lessons to apply in life
- How to overcome negative thoughts
Core Lessons
When it comes to endurance training, the most important thing to know is your why. Having a compelling reason why you do something will stop you from quitting when things get hard. Compelling reasons are individual and different for everyone. However, as long as you figure out what motivates you to get up from a warm and cozy bed at 5 am and go work out, you have more chances to reach the finish line.
Another crucial factor is to stay consistent. The secret is not in doing occasional big things but in doing many little things daily. Those little things are usually routine stuff to do like eating healthy meals, drinking lots of water, practice every day, etc. They might not sound as significant, but they are essential to achieve success in the long term. The third core advice is to set a goal and to scale it. Nobody trains for ultra-marathons by running 50 miles right away. Instead, start with the first mile and embrace the mindset of reaching your goals in steps. Focusing too much on the final result can be an obstacle to achieve it. Thus, let go of the outcome and get focused on doing the work.
Get Over Negative Thoughts
When you face a setback, remember your compelling reason, and keep reminding yourself of it as long as you need to hear it. Also, accept peer support. The ability to have someone to go through the challenging times with you, to share experiences, and provide emotional support to one another is priceless.
Adversity is inevitable to experience. The journey from the starting line to the finish line includes setbacks and failures. Failure is part of the process, and it offers many valuable lessons for the future. The key is to use it as a driver to move forward. And the best way to do it is to look at the failure from another perspective. Think about blessings that you can take out from it, things you learned, and how to use them to get better for the next time.
In conclusion, what marathon and endurance training teach us is that in order to do extraordinary things in life, we need to know how to grind, persist, push through, pivot, and adapt to anything life throws at us.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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