How the endurance mindset helped my thrive during an international move

The truth is in the training

“You guys are really brave”

My family has been living in a tornado the past 2 months as we move from our little rural village in Ontario, Canada to the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

My wife wanted a big challenge at her work and that’s led us as a family to move countries and embark on a new adventure. But it’s been less than ideal in terms of consistency, certainty, and fluidity.

In short, it’s been a trial of epic proportions. The move is being handled almost entirely by her company and we are along for the ride. We waited months on our visas, don’t have a firm moving date, had many appointments cancelled or moved, and been given conflicting legal advice that’s stalled our ability to move through this process effectively.

I recorded a podcast yesterday describing the situation in greater detail than I’d like to dive into in this article. If you want to know what it’s been like in our house through the move, give it a listen (link at the bottom)!

What I want to share with you today is how my endurance training oriented me to the proper aim in this move and the three biggest mindset principles we use on Team Tribal and what I teach my 1-1 coaching clients to go after big goals that present tremendous challenges and force us to move through adversity.

The Big Aim

I’ve written a bunch of articles this past year on the importance of orienting your exercise from the heart on out.

I talk about the importance of joy and love in allowing you to move through adversity.

I consider the necessity of passion and expression in keeping us consistent in moving our bodies in intense and challenging ways.

Ultimately, the reason we need to locate our physical training in the heart foundationally is so we can use the training to know ourselves.It turns exercise from a rote motion we do to maintain bodily health into a subjective expression of self understanding and mastery. The training becomes a playground of experience to test the limits of our character and identify the places where we can grow and improve. The competition forces us into public to display that character and subject it to a crucible. The process reveals ourselves.

The best part, this revelation of self truth helps us determine the proper aim for our life. Through the struggles of exercise and competition we learn about our priorities and values. In turn, once revealed we can then aim the rest of our lives towards that deep purpose and meaning.

Running in the woods for over a decade taught me about myself in a deeper way than any other activity. In the solitude of the forest, my mind probed deep into my character, revealing what mattered most but also highlighting the self deceptions and lies I told myself to feel better.

Because I’ve been practicing exercise this way for so long, it’s natural for me at this point to transfer the lessons.

Early on in this moving process I decided to take an endurance training approach.

First was orienting the aim towards my deep values. If I could properly identify what the most important variable to control, then all of the ones that were out of our control wouldn’t matter. I turned out to be right!

Focus on Process, not Outcome

What was that one variable that I could control?

Stability in the home while chaos defined everything else.

Trail running confirmed to me that living by principle and on your deepest values is the proper way to live a meaningful life. I lived it fighting campus free speech battles and refusing to submit to vx mandates and covid tyranny.

This made it CLEAR to me that maintaining love and positive emotions inside the house was the MOST important variable in this move.

• I doubled down on family dinners with home cooked meals instead of packing boxes every night.

• I doubled down on being present for the kids activities and showing up for their school performances and helping with homework.

• I doubled down on creating space for my wife to take on all the challenges of work, moving, and organizing the house by picking up her chores and helping protect her sleep.

I didn’t worry about the logistics of the move, because they were always shifting and changing from day to day.

If we let that type of demoralizing pattern affect the home, we’d have strung out parents fighting, kids neglected, screens way over utilized for distraction, too much silence, too much tension, bad vibes all around. This would make tackling the giant adversity of moving countries almost impossible as a tight knit family unit. Our bonds would fray and the move would make us weaker.

That’s not an acceptable outcome. And I’m happy to say we made it through the holidays and the move without massive fights, blowups, the idea of massive regret and remorse about the decision to move, no one getting sick, hitting all the important deadlines, and making sure we got the most important things correct.

We won this one big time!

It’s was all thanks to having that big orientation, identified from exercise and training, to aim us towards the proper process.

There were three mindset frames I use in my races and coaching that helped us that I want to share, then I’ll show you how to apply in your own life.

Endurance Mindset Applications

1. Adventure requires struggle

Moving is a BIG DEAL. Moving countries is a HUGE DEAL. Moving countries with two young kids is an HEROIC ENDEAVOUR. It’s an adventure of a lifetime.

But adventure doesn’t come without risk and struggle. It’s all about overcoming something hard and moving through fear and adversity.

Signing up for trail races of 50 miles and 100 miles, running in backyard ultras, and coaching IronMan triathletes is all about embracing adventure. Doing something BOLD and DARING that others think is a bit crazy.

Every time the move felt overwhelming or difficult, my wife and I checked down to this simple frame. We asked for an adventure, we’re on it now, it’s difficult, but the rewards will be worth it in the end.

If you want big things in life, you need to be prepared to take on big challenges. And when the adversity hits, remind yourself you asked for the challenge and be grateful you get to level up.

2. Don’t focus on the outcome, stay within the process

Once you recognize the challenge, forget the end goal and keep committed to the small steps that stack together to get you to the finish line.

When you run an ultramarathon, you don’t cover all the distance at once. You make it one step at a time. Eventually, you get to a point where you start to doubt if you can make it all the way to the end. But you’re never too out and down to take another humble step forward. And if you stack single steps enough, eventually you get to the finish line.

With this move, we had an end goal, but it was contingent on things out of our control, just like a race. Our process was simple. Hit the deadlines, keep the peace, forget the rest. Our process was smooth, life was not. We shrugged off difficulties, we laughed at the comedy, we might have cried a tear or two quickly wiped away though.

If we worried about ALL THE THINGS we needed to do we would have become paralyzed in inaction. Keeping in process made the move bearable, we were always moving forward.

3. It’s ok to be ok

The idea of thriving in a season of tumult and uncertaintly is the real crazy idea here! Sometimes just standing still and not moving backwards is the real victory. Imagine you’re on a rock in the middle of a crazy storm in the ocean and waves and wind are crashing down all around you. The expectation is you get swept away and taken backwards. Maybe you need to hop a few rocks to get back to shore, but it’s too dangerous to move forward. The solution: stand your ground firmly and wait until the storm passes to move forward again. Standing still is the victory. Holding ground is progess.

We didn’t need to be happy about the move all the time. We didn’t need to fool ourselves into over positive thinking when things were difficult and demanding. Instead, we recognized that we were in an unideal situations with no optimal conditions and total uncertainty. In that situation, just being ok is a victory.

This is sage wisdom from one of my heroes, my tribal teammate and brother Louie Ruvolo. “It’s OK to be OK” is a mantra he’s used to run 100 mile races as he approaches his 60th birthday.

When you’re in an endurance race there shouldn’t be any expectation you feel good the whole race. So when you’re not in the best shape, it’s ok to admit it and accept the position. It doesn’t define your ability to keep moving forward, but it’s a realistic understanding that now isn’t the time to push hard, and instead check down and find something a bit more manageable to keep moving forward, or not fall backwards.

Your turn to apply

Ultimately, what I want you to recognize and appreciate about how my family and I have used these endurance principles to steward this crazy move is the value of placing your heart at the foundation of your exercise, training, and competing.

My values are mine, but I identified them clearly through years of conscious exploration through exercise and training. When I live by them, I live the good life. When I abandon them, life gets difficult and my happiness and purpose drift away.

The objective and subjective nature of training provides the perfect arena to know yourself. The challenges you overcome form your character. The things that matter most to you emerge and you being to reprioritize your life. Endurance training moreso than any other type of training teaches us deeply about life because it most resembles our lives and how we experience them. This move is a perfect illustration of that ideal in action.

So here’s my challenge to you, reading this. GET INTO ENDURANCE.

• Sign up for a race you think is too long.

• Train from your heart.

• Focus on daily consistency, let the small wins stack.

• Keep on process, find faith and belief in yourself.

• Show up to the start line transformed and ready to celebrate the day.

• Have fun and learn something new about yourself through the challenge.

Helping people know themselves deeply through exercise to become better in all areas of life is my coaching aim. I’ve helped many people find their deep values and meaningful purpose through training and competing. If you struggle to aim correctly at your values, to know them, to understand yourself, and to push heroically towards your true potential, stop going at it alone. Use the button below to send me a message and let’s connect and talk about how my 1-1 coaching can unlock your ability to go hard after your dreams without letting the world knock you off course. This move allowed me to live it dynamically, we can all prosper this way together.

Happy training friends!

The Athletic Philosopher Podcast Episode #22 Links

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