Celebrate the Starting Line
The Finish Line is a bit of an illusion
Why the Start Line?
When you sign up for a race isn’t it the finish line I should be aiming for?
It all depends on why you sign up for the race in the first place, at least from my vantage.
If all you care about is a finisher medal, a time on a clock, and a status symbol to hang over other’s people conception of yourself, than yes, that finish line is the one you should focus on.
But if you want a race to mean something greater, help you learn lessons about yourself, anchor your lifestyle in holistic health (body, mind, and spirit), and be about the realization of your potential, then the finish line is only half of the equation.
You can’t have the finish line without the start line. And how you show up to the start line determines what happens between the two lines and defines the meaning of the experience in far greater ways that just crossing the finish line.
How does it provide the real aim?
I’ve been reading “Hero with 10,000 Faces” by Joseph Campbell, a book that seeks to find a common narrative thread between all the disparate folk, myth, and religious tales from across the world and make sense of them through a psychological understanding of their common elements. That theme is the ‘hero’s journey.’
The hero must first hear the call to adventure, then gather the necessary competence and courage to cross over the threshold from the known world to the unknown world.
The race starting line, in the hero’s journey of signing up for and completing the race, represents this threshold. It’s the one that beckons you properly into the crucible of competition, the place to do proper battle with the unknown unconscious elements of yourself, to race against yourself to know yourself.
If you orient yourself towards the start line, you begin to embody the process of transformation through the training.
Through this process you:
reorient priorities
find new sources of discipline
engage in and engender new virtues
acquire new skills and unlock talents
recognize your internal power to overcome adversity
realize a better version of yourself by living all of the above
The start line pulls you towards you best self so that by the time you step up to the start line you are properly prepared to face the challenge of the unknown.
Campbell describes it in mythological terms “…for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades” when crossing the line from known to unknown. If you aim at the finish line only, you won’t be properly prepared and will suffer from the monsters and terrors that await you in the unknown.
But take the starting line seriously and you get to compete and complete the race with a heart full of strength, love, and courage.
Getting yourself to the line
Most important here is being able to hear the call in the first place and find the resolve to get yourself towards the start line.
I’ve written a lot in the past few weeks about finding ‘the inner signal’ through participating and playing sports you love. That movement in a joyful, curious, and imaginative sense can block out external distraction and move you closer to hearing that inner signal more clearly.
But even before that you need to feel internally a desire to change things. To break free from mediocrity, the normal, the expected, the known that others project your potential into and through. The desire to shake things up must be strong inside.
That’s what tends to lead people to signing up for big races, they want a change. The problem is they aim at the wrong line, and miss out on the entire hero’s journey they want to embark upon.
So my advice today is simple.
Sign up for a race that makes you EXCITED to get to the starting line because it will force you to change up your life in order to show up prepared and full of enthusiasm to take on the challenge.
It’s what I aim all my coaching clients towards and how we navigate personal development through sport on our Endurance Training Team: Tribal Training
If you want a guide to help you move towards and cross the threshold, message me using the button below and let’s talk about preparing you for your own hero’s journey through sport.
Happy Training Team!