The Courageous Path to the (Finish) Line

When I began training for the Marine Corps Marathon in 1990 in Washington, D.C., my first race at that distance, I was dreading two hills: Capitol Hill and the one at the finish line, at the site of the Iwo Jima Memorial.

I had heard horror stories of people crashing into the infamous “wall” of pain and collapsing on one of those hills. It was not a pretty mental picture.

A training partner at the time gave me some priceless advice when approaching any steep hill.

“Never look at the top; it will only demoralize you. Focus, instead, on the step in front of you. The hills will take care of themselves.”

Damn if he wasn’t right.

But to apply that wisdom, I first had to show up and run the race. There are no shortcuts for showing up. I could have stayed home and watched TV after all.

But assuming you are showing up, how can you apply my friend’s advice to the problem in front of you right now?

Here’s how even a small dose of courage can get you across your finish line.

Let’s be clear, courage won’t erase your fear or anxiety, but it can shrink it down to size.

Without courage, you are left to stare at your intimidating problem constantly in all of its grandiosity, hoping it will somehow magically disappear. That’s like staring at the top of the hill, trusting that it will somehow evaporate. Ain’t going to happen.

But if you resist avoiding your problem and show up, you have a good shot at solving it once and for all if you shrink it down to size.

Whatever you do, don’t hide. Don’t cower. If you do, your problem will still be there tomorrow morning.

Let me use my marathon training as an example of how to show up courageously to shrink your problem so you don’t become overwhelmed.

The fear I faced was crystal clear, at least in my mind. If I ran as fast as I could for over thirteen miles, and I came to a hill (actually, the Iwo Jima ‘hill’ is more like a small mountain), I would almost certainly run out of gas and quit on the spot.

Quitting would be easy - there were support vehicles all along the course who would gladly give me a ride to the finish line.

That was not going to happen.

I was going to show up for myself, every day for six months, to prepare myself to meet what I call “The Line.”

Showing up for yourself means that you are willing to confront the discomfort in front of you, you are not going to pretend the problem isn’t there, and you are going to display real courage.

The Line is that point in time when you begin to doubt yourself. You are plagued by negative self-talk.

“You can’t do this. Why are you doing this to yourself? Just quit and try again next year.”

And what’s the best way to prepare for The Line?

By visiting it over and over and over.

Standard training advice is to never train for The Line. Training that hard would wreak havoc on your body. I thought that was just crap, so I ignored it.

When I first started training, The Line showed up at ten miles. And then fifteen miles. Twenty miles. Twenty-five miles. And, for good measure, thirty miles.

Each time I hit The Line, I had a brutal conversation with myself.

“You’re gonna quit, aren’t you?” my demeaning voice would say.

“Hell no, not gonna happen, I’m not a quitter,” I would reply.

Suffice to say that I exchanged a lot of profanity with my inner demon.

As I pushed The Line farther and farther down the road, I was building rock-solid self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy = The ingrained belief in your ability to make stuff happen in your life.

The idea of self-efficacy was pioneered by one of the greatest psychologists ever to live - Albert Bandura.

If you take nothing else from this post, take this: self-efficacy can be your superpower, but you have to earn it.

By the time I was able to run thirty miles, I was totally familiar with The Line. It no longer had any power over me. I had shown up, done the work, and earned the right to be confident in my ability to complete my first marathon.

My dream was to finish the marathon in under four hours. I finished in 3:59:53, seven seconds under my goal.

And The Line? It never showed up.

Hell yes.

I don’t know what problem you are facing right now, but I know there is one. And because you have a problem, you also have a Line.

What are you telling yourself about your prospects of solving your problem? What are you afraid of? Are you fearful of just showing up?

How much of what you are telling yourself is based on fact, and what is pure fiction?

Write down the facts, only the facts.

If your problem were a race, like the marathon (26.2 miles), can you identify intermediate goals that must be reached before you finally solve your problem? These are your Lines.

If you are afraid of not being able to pay next month’s rent, that is factually based. But you have 30 days to figure it out.

Can you earn half of your rent in ten days? Just seeing yourself making progress towards your goal, no matter how small, provides irrefutable evidence that you can solve your problem.

That stupid voice in your head cringes every time you prove that it is wrong about you.

It takes remarkable courage to commit to bold action. I didn’t throw caution to the wind when I started training for the marathon—I had a plan—a strategy. And then I executed it. I showed up.

It’s worth emphasizing that nobody cared but me when I rolled out of bed at 4:00 am to train. No cheering fans, no press coverage, nothing. Just my two feet on the pavement. That was more than enough.

You also need a strategy - a plan that supports your dream. A plan that shrinks your mountain or a problem down to the size of a speed bump. Don’t have a plan? If you can’t afford to buy one, ask ChatGPT.

But a plan is worthless without the courage to place it into action.

Celebrate crossing all of your Lines, for each one provides concrete evidence that you didn’t hide and you didn’t succumb to fatigue, no, you kept hammering.

What is that problem you're facing right now? Do you need help shrinking it down to size? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And keep hammering.

If you get something out of these posts and you know of someone who might benefit from them, please share it.