Do you think I'm mental?

“You must be mental,” is a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot recently.

You see, I have a fascination with pushing my body’s limits. I took on a 100-mile ultramarathon in early September, the latest in a series of increasingly arduous endurance challenges. Just to clarify, that wasn’t 100 miles in September or even across the first week of the month. It was 100 miles in one go – a little shy of four marathons, back-to-back. It took me just under 22 hours.

I fully admit that taking on something like that warrants at least an eyebrow raise, so I never take offence to the ‘mental’ moniker. It’s always meant in jest. For most it’s attributable to a lack of comprehension as to why anyone would subject themselves to such a ‘mental’ undertaking.

The answer is precisely because it’s mental. Let me explain.

Taking on any endurance challenge requires more than just physical fitness. Add in a fairly complex formula of ensuring you’re taking on enough calories, fluids and salts, as well as pacing yourself and the personal admin of looking after your body, and you’ve got a number of plates to keep spinning. But more important than all of these is mental resilience. 

Five years ago, resilience was something I was struggling with; I was in a dark place. After a serious neck injury, sustained on a rugby field, I was told my playing days were behind me. But this news represented more than the loss of the sport I loved. The loss became all-consuming; a loss of motivation, a loss of identity, a loss of purpose. I took to drinking to fill the void and fell into a tragic spiral of alcoholism and depression.

Fitness saved me. In April 2016, I found myself, one hungover Sunday morning, watching the BBC’s coverage of the London Marathon. I was enraptured by the positivity of the event and I’m not ashamed to say that the stories of its participants, the hardships overcome and the collective desire to push limits, had me crying into my coffee. I resolved to run the Marathon the following year and poured myself into recovery.

Since then sobriety and fitness have gone hand in hand. Running is a form of mindfulness for me. It fires me up and energises me. But it also calms me down. It’s a release from stressful situations but also gives me focus. I do a lot of personal problem solving and mental organising on my training runs. It’s the purest form of exercise – a means of survival for hundreds of thousands of years – and there’s a whole load of science, such as the release of endorphins, that links physical fitness with improved mental wellbeing. Then there’s the camaraderie of events, the sense of achievement, the list of benefits is endless. 

Credit: Stuart March Photography

For me, that sense of achievement is particularly important. A U.S. Navy Admiral once said, “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” His reasoning was that by accomplishing the first goal of the day, the sense of achievement will encourage you to complete another goal. And another. It’s a boost of your self-esteem.

Similarly, the more grueling the challenges I take on, the more mentally resilient I become. I want to push myself further and further. I ran the marathon and thought, “What else am I able to achieve?” A marathon became 50km, 50km turned into 100km, 100km was then 100miles. But I’m not in it for the medals or ‘likes’ on Instagram – although they’re nice – rather the intrinsic satisfaction of accomplishing a goal. So, despite sitting here icing a swollen ankle and with lashings of Sudocrem on various areas of chaffed skin, I feel a sense of achievement in having crossed the finish line of my most recent challenge. It’s a way of channeling my addictive personality into something that makes me better and stronger as a person because learning to summoning the mental resilience required to complete an endurance event helps develop the tools to cope with other difficulties that life has a habit of cruelly throwing at us.

In contrast, I am fascinated by the irony of another common response I get when I tell people what I’m taking on: “I could never do that.” After all, if you’d have told me five years ago that I’d be running ultramarathons today, guess what I’d have said: “You must be mental.”

But why give up before even contemplating the challenge? It’s a sub-conscious blow to our self-esteem. I’m not suggesting that everyone should go out and run ultramarathons but I am suggesting that everyone should set themselves goals and feel the sense of pride at achieving them. Everyone should believe they are able to achieve. 

Of course, it’s not just exercise goals that should motivate us – relationships, work and finances are some of life’s often most challenging areas but smaller dimensions like getting enough sleep are also incredibly important. 87% can help your employees examine their physical wellbeing as well as monitor the various different stressors in other areas of their life. Staff can understand how to measure and improve their mental wellbeing through personalised guidance and build a framework to believe they are able to achieve.

James Gwinnett is the Marketing and Communications Director of 87%.