Ruling your Mind

You watch a video or hear a story about someone completing an impressive endurance feat and now you are all fired up to try something similar, say maybe a half-marathon? An olympic Triathlon? A full marathon?! Half-ironman? Ironman?!?!

So you start looking into the logistics and what it will take in terms of mental toughness, time, training effort, etc. and this is where people usually back out. You realize that in order to run 42km in one bout, you need to run over 100-200km in total during your training, and now you start getting in your own head: "Can i actually do this?", "I can’t run for that long…", "I can’t run more than 5km before my legs are burning or my breathing gets too heavy."

I say to you: TRY!! And once you hit what you perceive to be your max, just out of curiosity, push a bit further and see what happens.

Story time:

My friend Josh and I are training for a marathon and when we started training, I would complete a run and then post in social media, tagging him and calling him out so that he would go for a run. He would do the exact same to me. Towards the beginning of training, I ran a 3k and challenged him so he replied by running 5km… I went to the gym with the intention of running a 5km after being well-rested, but found that I was sore by 2km and stopped there. I was so disappointed and embarrassed because of my competitive nature that I thought of quitting because I had no idea how I would get to 42km if I was having problems getting to 5km?

I went home and reflected on the run that day and realized something that sounds very simple: I had already ran 3km, indicating that I was physically capable of more than 2km, therefore, my mind must have stopped me the other day as my muscles were well-rested and I had no injuries. With this awareness, the very next day I got back on the treadmill, and sure enough by 2km I could feel the same burn in my legs. But this time, although it was the same burning intensity as the previous day, I reframed my thoughts and reminded myself that this burn was one of discomfort and not indicative of injury. It was simply uncomfortable. Out of curiosity of what laid beyond the metaphorical hill I was climbing, I decided to challenge myself to see how much further I could go if I persisted through the burn and went until my muscles were not just uncomfortable, but truly fatigued or as close to that as possible. The second I made that decision, I realized I had to distract my brain from this discomfort because your mind is adapted to make you avoid discomfort for evolutionary reasons. So what I did was I started counting bricks on the wall in front of me. When I would get bored, I started counting tiles on the ground. After what felt like 3 minutes, I felt the burn get so much more intense and realized that I was moving to the upper limits of manageable discomfort, where injury probability was higher. At this point, I looked down at the distance and realized that I had run 10km.

"Rule your mind or it will rule you..." -Buddha

Your mind is adapted to protect you from harm which is why when you start feeling discomfort, it tries talking you into avoiding the situation whether that be with physical fitness or relationships where you are unhappy but comfortable. The primitive part of the brain is a short-term planner, however, higher brain processes factor in long-term benefits and can suppress the primitive short-term planning part of the brain in favour of long-term benefits. I refer to this as: Ruling Your Mind. It is a skill like all others that develops through practice and reflection.

Your brain is a phenomenal organ that adapts to the situations you put it in. Once you tell the short-term planner part of your brain that you are going to persist through the discomfort for a long-term benefit, your brain realizes that the discomfort is inevitable in this situation anyways. As a result of self-preservation, it tries to minimize this negative experience by taking you into Flow State, the state that many athletes refer to when they say their 2-hour run felt like 2 minutes and have trouble remembering parts of their performance. In my example, this was when I zoned out of my run from the 2km point to the 10km point.

Unfortunately however, at least based on my experience, there is a discomfort barrier that you must overcome first, before entering flow state, for your mind to realize that flow state is necessary. Now that I have this awareness, I know to expect discomfort during my workouts and that it will be followed by flow-state and get easier if I persist, and then I will be able to push much farther.

Fast-forward to 3 months after that 10km run, my friends Jay and Tyler are doing a fundraising challenge with me for motioball in support of the Special Olympics. We are about to do the most physically challenging thing we had ever done, untrained: Run 20km, Swim 2.5km, and Bike 25 km in 1 day.

I was somewhat trained because I worked out at F45 where there is a large emphasis on cardiovascular training, but Tyler and Jay only trained for hypertrophy, minimally incorporating cardio into their workouts. In addition, both are very inexperienced swimmers and Jay had only learned how to swim 4 months prior to that day. Everyone who heard the story on that day could not believe it because it did not make sense unless you had been in a position where you truly took control of your mind before which unfortunately is not that common. However, we did complete the challenge and Jay did swim the 2.5km after running 20km and before biking 25km. Lifeguards were walking next to our lane watching Jay because of his very poor swimming form and were in disbelief when he completed the 2.5km swim in 2 hours.

Jay after the 2.5km swim (His longest swim to-date)

After it was over, we all looked at each other and I asked them at what point they thought of quitting? We all replied saying we thought of stopping at around the 2-3km mark for the run, which was the first part of the challenge that we did at 7 AM. However, none of us said anything because we saw the others pushing through, not knowing that we were all thinking the same thing. This served as a reminder that we all experience thoughts of quitting but are all capable of practicing and developing the skill of ruling our minds. Additionally, we also all said that as we went on with the day, the discomfort got less intense. We found ourselves going more into flow-state and feeling euphoric about taking control of our mind and doing more than we thought possible.

One last quick example:

As I told this story that day at F45, the gym I work at, someone overheard and messaged me the next day asking if we could go for a run together and I agreed. I asked her what her longest run to-date was and she said 8km. I replied by saying that we would push it to 10km. 5 days after that challenge with Tyler and Jay, her and I set-off for what was supposed to be a 10km run, but ended with us running 21km in around 2 hours.

The human brain is a powerful organ that controls how hard you push yourself, whether you quit or persist in the face of adversity & discomfort so train your mind by practicing the ability to remind yourself of long-term benefits when facing short-term discomfort.

Next time you go for a run/bike ride/swim/workout/etc., once you’re at discomfort, ask yourself if this is actually your pre-injury max or discomfort that you are amplifying in your mind to give yourself an excuse to stop. Once you gain that awareness, the next step is to develop the skill of controlling your mind. Remember that like all skills, sometimes you have off-days and cannot push past discomfort, so do not let that intimidate you, but serve as a learning opportunity for you to know what made your mental toughness weaker that day: sleep deprivation, low caloric intake, etc.?

The topic of ruling your mind is discussed in one of my podcasts where Jay is a guest. Here is the link if you want tot check that out! (audio-only versions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1qtxAoPFj0

Thank you for reading this!

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YOU WILL LOOK AT PEOPLE DIFFERENTLY AFTER READING THIS.

Do you ever witness or hear about something tragic or very unorthodox to you that another human did and you literally cannot understand why that person would do such a thing? Whether that be a terrorist attack, other non-empathic actions, a tendency to depend on alcohol and drugs, etc. The topic that this blog is about to discuss is very complex and everyone that I have discussed this with holds a unique perspective on it. Because I am curious to hear all your different opinions, I would like for you to read this blog and reflect on it. On Thursday, May 23rd at 12:00 PM ET, I will post a question on my IG (sherif_meniawy) to hear your opinions on the topic of Identity which I will repost.

In the previous blog, we discussed the importance of reflecting consistently and regularly to check in and see what your values and goals are at the different stages in your life as who you are is constantly changing, thus, these changes might be affecting your goals and values. Now, the question is: What defines you? What drives your change? Who are you?

Nature and Nurture, 2 ideas that you have heard of:

There are many different theories that explain identity, but in my opinion, the most accurate is one that explains identity using a combination of both nature, your genetics that have been passed down to you from your parents, and nurture, your life experiences throughout your life.

Nature:

You are born with genetics that you had no control over and they have a large role in shaping what you look like, how you behave, your intelligence, how you adapt to the environment, you name it… These genetics you receive are completely out of your control. For example, person A and person B are non-identical twins (have different genetics), but if they are both raised in the same household, eat the same things, go to the same schools, etc., Person A will always be more likely to develop alcoholism because his genetics make him more tolerant to alcohol, therefore, he does not get sick from drinking and repulsed from alcohol the same way that Person B does.

Nurture:

Your genetics aren’t the “be all and end all” as your experiences affect your mind (take a course about rocket science and you will know rocket science), they affect your biology (if you exercise more, you are more likely to have larger muscles), behaviour (if you grew up in a culture where it was encouraged to always hug people when greeting them, you are more likely to try that when you travel to a country where that is considered inappropriate), etc.

Case Study:

Think back to the day that you were born. Now picture that in the room right across the hall from you, another individual is born to 2 different parents. Stop there. Right off the bat, your genetic makeup is very different and you both had no role in selecting your genes. Once again, your genetics can affect your body type and shape, thus, the sports you excel at, etc. Your genetics also play in a role in your intelligence, the baselines levels of hormones and receptors for reward pathways (affecting how likely you are to abuse drugs like cocaine or consume sugar), etc. Additionally, certain gene modifications play a role in developing different diseases, play a role in different personality traits (aggression and the tendency to seek social support), etc. Essentially, you are both already different with respect to all the things listed and much more and we are just at the instant where you were just born.

Moving on... We're onto your early childhood. How much of a role did you play in picking what language you were to be taught first, whether you were to go to a high or low end school, whether you were fed nutritious foods that supported healthy brain development or not, or even what behaviours the people around you modelled to you. For example, when you are child and observing the people around you in order to mimic them, you did not get to select whether you were in a positive atmosphere filled with love and where caring for one another was common practice or an environment where individuals were living highly stressful lives and seemed to get better whenever they drank a bottle containing red liquid. You are very young, but the brain will remember that association between low anxiety and that red wine. You keep adapting and learning from the environment you are in as you grow up, learning to either always seek comfort from others because those around you do that or learning to internalize your frustrations because that is what those around you do.

You and the individual born on that same day with you finally get to an age where you are capable of making more of your own choices, but who are you at that point in your life when you are making your own decisions? You had no pick in your genetics and the environments you were placed in as you grew up that make you who you are at the moment that you can finally make your own decisions. Therefore, every decision you make as an adult now is affected by those experiences and genetics. Now, these things that were out of your control affect the relationships you choose to build, the career you select for yourself, your passions, the way you behave, and finally: the way that you react to the behaviour of others.

Years and years go by and you cross paths with that individual that was born across the hall from you. You are at a children's park. They are the only parent at the park that does not hug or kiss their child when they get hurt and you always see them drinking alcohol out of a paper bag at the park. Your first instinct is to judge them from your own perspective that was shaped by your upbringing that tells you that they have weak will power, they are inferior to you, and they should not be parents. That sounds very cruel, but we are all guilty of letting thoughts like this come into our head.

I invite you to see the world from their perspective and understand their story. The person born across the hall from you is an Indigenous individual who's parents both went to Residential Schools where they were taken away from their parents and physically abused for years. They learned to associate physical touch with violence and negative emotions from all of the physical abuse that they endured. They were lucky enough to survive the Residential School System and now have a child of their own that they love. Because they love their child greatly, they refuse to touch them because in their minds and based off their experiences, physical touch is linked to abuse, pain, and negative emotions - things that they do not wish for their child that they love so much. What they do not know, however, is that the human body naturally produces a hormone, oxytocin, with physical human contact and this hormone reduces anxiety. As a result, that person born across the hall from you never received that natural anxiety relief that you did and learned that physical touch was negative because the only time their parents touched them was to spank or hit them for doing something wrong. Now, they look to alcohol to reduce the anxiety they feel throughout their day because as they grew up, adults around them did that and their mind still remembers that association between alcohol and less anxiety.

How do you feel about that parent at the park now? Are you still very angry with them? Or now that you have taken their story and perspective into account, do you feel more empathetic and wanting to play a role in making a change?

We were all once innocent children with heads bigger than our bodies and goofy little smiles on our faces. What made some develop alcoholism and what made others violent terrorists? And was it in their control or had they already been greatly influenced by things out of their control before they could make their own decisions.

Now that you are thinking about that? How do you feel about justice systems and punishments such as the death penalty? Who is to blame for the crimes that are committed... Is it the person that directly committed the crime or the individuals that played a very large role in making them develop the behaviour that led to the crime?

Tune in on my Instagram (@Sherif_meniawy) to share your opinion and hear the opinion of others! Thank you for reading!

Why Self-Reflect and Take Yourself Off "AutoPilot"

Do you ever find yourself unsatisfied and longing for something different upon achieving a goal that you had been working towards for months or even years. This relates to all your goals, whether they be related to your career, relationships, extracurricular activities, ... You name it! It gets you thinking whether you know yourself anymore. How do you avoid this and constantly work towards what you truly want?

You Have Gone Through This, We Both Know It.

It is the day before your Midterm or your big Appraisal for work. You have been preparing for days, weeks, months, or even years with this task taking a considerable amount of your focus. Fast-forward to when you finally complete that task or goal that you have been so focused on completing. What do you do now? You celebrate and relax by spending time or going out with friends or family, watching a TV show or movie, or however you celebrate. How long does that last before you begin working towards your next deadline? Wait, scratch that! You may not even have time to relax, your next appraisal or midterm is in 3 days, and maybe it's for something completely different such as extracurricular activity or volunteer role. Your mind is always busy as you are always working on something. There is nothing wrong with this lifestyle as it is productive. However, picture all this effort going towards something that you actually do not really want and that you only realize that it no longer satisfied you after the months and years of working towards it. You would feel like the person in the picture up there.

How do you avoid this and lead a productive life where you work towards goals that you want and are aware of when to change your goals? This is where self-reflecting comes in.

What is Self-reflecting and Why do it?

I am the same person today that I was a year ago when I made the life plans that I am following today…. right? Think back to a conversation that you had with someone or something that you observed that really impacted you and changed the way you thought.

Throughout your life, you are constantly intaking information through interactions with others, through conversations, videos & posts through social media, books and other academic resources, ... etc. However, if you do not process this information, then you do not tap into the potential it has on developing you into a more experienced and well-informed individual. Self-reflecting refers to deeply thinking of your previous life experiences and connecting them to one another in order to learn and develop as an individual. Therefore, you are constantly changing when you self-reflect as more experiences as joining to help shape your mind.

"We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience." - John Dewey

You can't Self-reflect if you are on "Autopilot"

Okay, so I would like for you to sit down with yourself and reflect on your experiences. That sounds easy, but why is it that many people do not self-reflect? We are back to the day you finish your midterm/assignment or work-related task and you are about to celebrate/rest, if you have enough time, and then immediately work towards the next task or deadline. What is next? You are going to repeat this process that you set in place months or years ago when you accepted your offer to University/College, your job offer, or extracurricular activity position. You understand the message that I am trying to deliver in this paragraph, you are going through your life on AUTOPILOT.

Some of you may have already used that term, “autopilot”, to describe your lifestyle. You are using most of your focus and resources to meet deadlines that once achieved, you replace with other deadlines that are placed before you as a result of a plan that the old “you” put before the current “you” months or years ago. Even your recovery schedule is part of a routine, you do the same thing to recover: go to the same restaurant, club, watch another show/movie... Nothing is wrong with that as long as you take breaks from being on “autopilot”.

Taking breaks is important as self-reflecting requires attention and time in order for one to process experiences deeply and connect them to one another. Therefore, if you do not allocate the time and focus to reflecting, the memories of your experiences build up. As a result, if you remain on "autopilot", you will only self-reflect on the experiences that you have throughout your journey at the end and your priorities may change. Thus, you may no longer find that the goal that you had been working towards for so long to be as important to you as other things.

Therefore, you need to constantly engage in self-talk and discover who you are throughout your life as your life experiences constantly change you. Once you gain the clarity to know who you are and what your priorities are, you need to assess whether the path you are on, the one laid by the “old you”, however long ago, is still leading you towards your current aspirations or if those have changed.

The Map with the Moving "X" Analogy:

I like analogies so here’s one: You are given a map and told that you need to get to the destination marked "X" on the map. You start driving to that destination and upon arriving there, you reference your map to make sure that you are at the right location. To your surprise, the "X" is now at a different location on the map. You drove for days, months, or even years towards that set address, but you were supposed to keep referencing your map to see if the location of the "X" was changing. The "X" represents a specific goal and the action of looking at the map represents the process of self-reflecting. For some goals, the "X" may not move greatly on the map as your experiences do not really affect your attitude towards that goal. On the other hand, with some goals, the "X" might end up on the other side of the map!

Why would anyone not reference their map throughout the journey and constantly update the coordinates that they input into their GPS knowing that the "X" is moving? Many of us fear processing new information as it leads to confronting the possibility of a required change. This does not sit well with our innate fear of discomfort (refer to previous blog). In addition, we get caught up in our routines and keep our mind busy by going out, engaging in small talk, listening to music, playing video games... There is nothing wrong with doing these in moderation, but sometimes you are constantly engaging your mind and taking away from the time required to self-reflect and assess whether a change in your life is required or not.

Real-life Example

Many individuals go into an undergraduate program knowing exactly what they want to do their graduate degree in. As a result, they volunteer in many different settings to improve their application and are doing everything that they can in order to get into this program. Their mind is so busy working towards this goal and in their free time, they are keeping their mind occupied with music, small talk, ...etc in order to avoid the potential discomfort if they realize that they no longer have that same goal. However, some of these individuals get into the graduate program that they were working towards and finally take the opportunity to reflect and may realize that they have volunteered in other fields that they enjoyed more than what they are doing. This could have been avoided if they were reflecting throughout those years on their experiences. They may have come across new career paths that they would have enjoyed more and now they fear changing careers as they have invested so much time and effort. This is similar to driving to the "X" and realizing that it moved, but having used up most of the car's gas.

How I used this in my Life.

I will go ahead and share my experience with you: I was visiting my home country, Egypt, in the Summer of 2016 and we were staying at a luxurious gated neighbourhood on the Mediterranean Sea, enjoying the beautiful sandy beaches and clear blue water. One day, we left the gated neighbourhood and went deeper inland, into the town, in order to get bread and groceries for a cheaper price. There we saw the residents of that area that have lived there for generations, living at a state below that which many would be comfortable even hearing about. I am not going to lie to you and say that I immediately reflected on this moment and changed as a person because that is not what happened. I went back to the beach that day, having no idea that most of the local residents cannot access their city’s beaches because most of the coastline has been sold to companies that build gated communities. As for what I experienced that day, that was buried somewhere in my memory. One year later, I watched a Ted Talk on privilege and oppression. The speaker stated that privilege comes with power and the potential to advocate for individuals with less privilege. This was all great information, but I did not think of how it involves me until a few months later.

It was the Summer of 2018 when I connected the dots and realized what I want to dedicate my life to. There I was on a ridge in Hawaii, 3000 feet above sea-level and with no access to wi-fi. My two friends, Dawson and Kyle, and I were talking about our life experiences and the impact that we wanted to have on the world. I had been so busy with university and my extracurricular activities that I had not stopped to think of what the current "me" wanted to do with my life. I have been interested in starting a career as a healthcare professional for years due to my passion about the human body and the rewarding feeling that I receive from helping others. However, now that I was free from distractions, I was free to self-reflect on my drive to become a healthcare professional, the Ted Talk, and my experience in Egypt. I realized that I have been very luck in terms of the privileges that I was born with and that memory in Egypt proved to me that not all people were born with access to the same resources. Furthermore, it was clear to me that I had the potential to make a difference because of these privileges and I am driven to make a difference to contribute to balancing the playing field in life. Additionally, I became driven to tie this to my passion of working as a healthcare professional by working in communities that do not have the same access to healthcare that I do as a Canadian Resident. In conclusion, I truly see myself as a different individual after that backpacking trip in Hawaii where I was free from many distractions and free to see what my experiences have shaped me into. Lastly, knowing who I am helps me plan accordingly and work towards goal that will truly satisfy me.

Last Thoughts

Take charge of your life and do not fear taking yourself off "autopilot" even if it means that you potentially need to make a change in your life. Furthermore, skip the small talk and engage in conversations that challenge you, setting you on a journey of discovering your views of the world. Additionally, makes small changes such as not listening to music on the bus or minimizing the time you spend on your phone when you are "free". Instead, use this time to think about what you experienced that day and how it affects your views of the world and your existing goals.