Self-doubt.
Taking this next step forward has been nothing but full of that. Questions I internally raise to whether my body can hold up and whether i’ll be able to balance everything have been racing through my head, even now on those days when the cards are turned against me.
But I’ve grown accustomed to dealing with this. And my solution as it always has been, is to keep moving forward. While we can plan our steps, one of the most important lessons in life is to not be held back by “analysis paralysis”. For those not acquainted with that term, it means having to plan and think so deeply about everything that moving becomes impossible. And we know that when we stop moving forward, things simply stop happening and we never chase our dreams.
I believe the only way in life is to keep moving forward.
In the most humble way I know how to express myself, I could have said that I’ve been through a lot. Having lost half of my body weight to picking up the sport of triathlons from absolutely zero base (couldn’t swim nor bike nor run) to completing multiple half and full distance races and dealing with the every day challenges of ADHD, Aspergers and Tourettes, it would seem that nothing would daunt me anymore. The truth is that while I have painful and important lessons to fall back on, we are all still human. And in any case, what kind of story would you be reading if I made it all seem so easy and doable?
And so when I decided to embark on this seemingly crazy task of doing my first Ultraman as well as other ultra endurance events past distances of a full distance race, the same apprehensive thoughts seized my head again. Only this time, I knew that the only thing I could do was to slowly chip away at my goals and to take it one step at a time, to embrace the failures along the way and to enjoy the process. Who knows where all of this will bring me to? Then again, the journey that we take always brings us to such beautiful destinations along the way and in turn teaches us so much about life all over again.
So here’s to the beginning of a new journey. The story of an ultra chasing journeyman.
Onward.
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