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Have you ever tied your self-worth to a meaningless statistic? I have.
There was about a time frame of almost two years in which I didn't have a facebook account. I had been using it often, but I decided to take a break and deactivate it for awhile. I had noticed a disturbing trend in which I would connect my feelings about a topic with how many likes or comments I could get on a post about it. If a post wasn't garnering much attention, I would delete it. If it was only getting a few likes, I would sit embarrassed, especially when compared to friends who were racking up hundreds of likes simply because they loved their cat or something. On the flip side, I would puff out my chest in pride if I had a bunch of likes, because not only were other people validating how awesome I believed my posts to be, but they must have marveled at my popularity. Well this was completely and utterly unhealthy, so I got rid of it and prayed for a time. The end result was that when I finally did get my facebook back, I noticed that my posts were different. I was trying to uplift others, and not myself; it no longer mattered what the blue likes bar said or how big the red number in the top right corner of the screen was. It felt...good!
As a math guy, I'm a big fan of numbers. I can analyze a group of numbers in more ways than I'd like to admit, and running is much the same. I can memorize a list of someone's personal bests and times they've ran that season. I can recall my times from years previous, who I raced, what their times were, and what they eventually ran later. In fact, I have a memory from high school when I was talking to a teammate about a time he ran, and I was a little taken aback at the fact that he didn't know what race I was talking about- it really wasn't that important to him. Actually, I've found many people don't live and die on times.
I do.
Now again this isn't healthy. I've defined myself by my times. I routinely check my profile on undsports.com or my tfrrs.org page and wonder inwardly what people think of me when they see my times. Do they think I'm a scrub? Do they think of me as competition? Do they think of me as an unattainable goal? It literally consumes me. I see people at meets and my brain wants to think of them in terms of their times, not their personality. I might be talking to teammates about another runner, and if they say 'who is that?', I might respond with 'well, he's the guy that ran X time in Y race'. There has been times where I've been able to run a significant PR (personal record), and I feel a burden lifted simply because people won't think I'm slower than I actually am. It's pathetic. It reminds me of fantasy sports, in which the main goal is to depersonalize athletes in order to see them as statistics in order to accomplish your goal. I see other runners as their best times in order to judge my ability to race them.
One of my favorite professional athletes is Sara Hall. She is currently a long distance runner trying to make the U.S. Rio Olympic Team in the marathon, and she just this last weekend took 2nd place at the U.S. Road 12k Championships behind unarguably the best female distance runner in America right now, Molly Huddle. Sara and her husband, US half-marathon and marathon record holder Ryan Hall, talk often about the 'comparison trap'. The main idea behind this is that we get so caught up in comparing ourselves to others that we fail to see the joy in simply being at peace with our own performances. Who cares if somebody is better or worse than you? The best you can do is to do your best, not someone else's best. It's so easy to let our minds be dominated by the stats of other runners and how we stack up against the group, but in reality it doesn't matter. We need to take joy from what we do and compete at our best at all times. If we beat someone, great! If not, it's not the end of the world.
As I've mentioned in a previous blog post, I've started doing something that is both uncomfortable to me and to most college runners: approaching people on other teams and trying to get to know them. It sounds crazy, but I've come to enjoy it A LOT. The more I get to know another runner on a personal level, the more I find myself cheering for them, and the less I find myself stuck in comparison. I see other college guys chasing some of the same dreams as I am, and with their hearts set on working hard to get there. Suddenly it doesn't matter to me how fast they were at some meet hundreds of miles from where I am at a place I've never been to. Sure, seeing people run well motivates me to train hard, but I don't run a workout envisioning my rival right in front of me, sucking air as I confidently pass them down the final stretch, victoriously stretching out my arms to receive the reception from the crowd at my triumph. No, that was the old me. The new me loves what I do, not what others do.
My last point is the worst of all comparison but perhaps the most common: comparison among teammates. It is my firmly-held belief that we have all done this at some point whether we've been an athlete or not. We've compared test scores and been jealous of a classmate getting a better grade; we've compared jobs, some getting higher pay than others; we've compared stats, some teammates clearly doing better than ourselves. I will never forget the time a teammate that I trained and raced with looked me in the face and told me that it really bothered him when I beat him in a race. That's not what running is about. If we worry about teammates beating us, we miss the joy of being able to race and train at all! I know that there is pressure to make travel squads, conference teams, etc, but the moment you make a teammate into your competition, you've lost. Teammates can push each other towards new heights, but not fight each other about who gets there first, or who gets the best view at the top.
So this is my worst insecurity. I am every day fighting off the urge to compare myself to others. I instead try to live in joy and try to remember the words of the famous passage from 1 Samuel 16:7, "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." What a world we would live in if we saw people's hearts rather than outward appearances. But we don't. So, instead I have to fight and pray to love people for who they are, not what their best 5k is in comparison to mine. We all should do the same.
Blessings,
Nate
That 1430 is unattainable!
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