Choose Challenges

Do you ever feel stuck? Do you find that the unexpected bumps and turns along your journey consistently cause you anxiety and stress? Do you ever wish you were just a bit more flexible or had more grit to endure the unknown challenges that come your way? If you answered yes, then I propose to you that one of the ways you can improve your resiliency and flexibility to the unknown is to choose challenges. I will illustrate what I mean and provide you with three ways that choosing challenges improves you.

“Those people are crazy,” I once exclaimed to a friend. A year or so later, I had become one of “those people.” I had entered the world of endurance sports. My foray into this world occurred in an unusual place: Baghdad, Iraq. I deployed to Iraq for the second time in August 2006, and unlike my first deployment where I was constantly away from base patrolling the road, this one had me at a desk for 6.5 days out of 7 days working 12-hour shifts of tracking and supporting current operations for our units located throughout the entire country training Iraqi Police. Generally, my job was not dangerous. But you may recall the term “the Surge” and that was this timeframe. It was very dangerous “outside the wire” or off the base where we lived. I received and reported the casualty reports from our unit as part of my job, and it was tragic the losses we were taking. Because of heightened tensions, it was not unusual to have mortar and rocket attacks on base, or stray bullets come over the wall. Honestly, those attacks didn’t cause me that much stress.

The stress of this deployment was not the danger. My friends on patrol were facing that every day. My challenges were simply very long days, in a windowless office, as well as some quite mean people (stories for another day) being very unkind to me, an egotistical top boss, and a very strange roommate who snored like an elephant. I did have a couple of very good guy friends that kept me sane. The base we lived on was very large as it was part of the Baghdad International Airport complex, and it housed many of the US forces largest HQs on it. Again, I can’t complain about any of my living conditions or danger. In fact, the base offered some fun events and was going to host a “shadow Army 10-miler” race in November of 2006. One of my friends happened to be an officer that I had also deployed with during my first deployment. We decided we needed something challenging to do and we picked running the Army 10-miler.

Mind you, as a cadet at West Point, I was convinced I would NEVER be a good runner with my short legs, long torso, and more muscular build. Nothing about me says, “I bet she runs well!” The standard at West Point was above the Army’s standard, and in comparison, to my peers, I truly was not the best runner. But, when I graduated and was preparing to lead soldiers, I overcame the mental hurdles that were keeping me from developing into a better runner. I discovered that I’m an endurance runner. I needed the first 3-4 miles to get into the groove, but I never really ran further than that as cadet. On this deployment, with those mental hurdles behind me, and after serving as a confident and successful leader of my platoon for three years, I was very comfortable with running. While I had “ruck marched” (walking quickly with a heavy pack on my back) 15 miles before, I had not run more than a 10K. So, my friend and I started training. We woke up early, put in our miles, and then headed to our long shifts. We ran the race and beat our goals and I LOVED it. I loved the training. I loved the commitment. I loved the effort. I loved the race.

This sparked my desire to start becoming one of “those people.” I wanted to keep running, and I wanted to run further. Another co-worker of mine was also using his time in Iraq to get into longer distance running. We started meeting early in the morning, before our 12+ hour days in a stuffy room, to tackle many miles. We started with the idea of doing a half-marathon when we got back home. However, our 12-month deployment turned into a 15-month deployment and our goal shifted to the marathon distance. In a real sense, we were doing one marathon (the deployment) while training for another. There were times, while running, that we had to duck into mortar bunkers (covered concrete boxes) in the middle of runs, and a couple of times that we heard a few stray bullets impact along our route. But that didn’t matter, running was life for us regardless of horrible air quality and heat. I ran my first half-marathon in Baghdad, a shadow race for the Indy 500 Festival Mini-Marathon. Because we stayed there for 15-months, I ran the Army 10-miler in Baghdad for a second time, and I had cut a minute per mile off my time. Baghdad is where I became an endurance athlete, and it was good for my mind, body, and soul!

While I was churning out the miles on the road, it so happened that my best friend, a US Navy officer, was deployed to the exact same place I was! She says I prayed her there, and I was praying for a friend to show up. I needed another woman to endure those months with. I did not pray for her by name, but God chose her and I’m still so glad. She had started to do triathlons before deploying and she was very convincing on their worth. I had grown up swimming, and I had developed into a capable long-distance runner, but the idea of those bikes with “skinny tires” was a bit daunting. After a lot of very good peer pressure from my friend, I was bought-in and began adding some different routines to my workouts both strength wise and on a stationary bike. I also discovered a great online community of beginner (and seasoned) triathletes that not only became huge encouragers of me but also became real friends.

Upon redeployment in November 2007, I met my best friend in Austin at her favorite bike shop and purchased my first triathlon bike, “skinny tires” and all. In February 2008, I ran my first marathon in Austin and, thanks to all the training Iraq, I finished with a Boston Marathon qualifying time (I would not be able to run in 2009 due to an injury). In March 2008, I did my first sprint triathlon (400m swim, 12-mile bike, 5K run) and began increasing my training to progress towards a half-ironman (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run). I would do two half-irons that year, and I would go cheer on one of my new friends, from my new triathlon community, at Ironman Florida in November 2008. To say I was hooked was an understatement. Outside of work, I lived and breathed triathlon. I had learned, after my first deployment, that I needed a life outside of the Army. Long distance running and triathlon not only gave me something to commit to, to grow and develop in, but it also gave me a great community of people, across all skills, abilities, and life stages. The challenge of the sport, along with the great encouragement of so many people, forced me to grow in ways I did not know I needed to grow.

I competed in my first Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) in Arizona in November 2009. I was scheduled to race Ironman Florida earlier in the same month, however, the unit that I was commanding at the time tragically had one of our K9 Teams, soldier and dog, killed in action in Afghanistan, and his funeral conflicted with the race. I was not going to miss attending and speaking at his funeral. Thanks to that amazing network of triathlon friends, I was able to transfer my race entry to Ironman Arizona later in the same month. I had the time of my life. I had the best Ironman race I’ll ever have and finished 9th in my age group. I was so well trained and so well cheered for by friends and family. It was an experience of a lifetime. I had become one of “those crazy people!”

There were many more races of various distances, both running and triathlons, in between and after, to include two more Ironman races. Since getting married and becoming pregnant shortly thereafter, I have not really been back into racing triathlons. I have completed several half-marathons, one marathon, and many 5ks. I do miss it, and maybe someday I’ll give it a go again. Regardless, the lessons I learned in that 6-year stretch of endurance sports were so rich and, fittingly, enduring. It has been over 11 years since my last Ironman, but the lessons of embracing endurance sports perpetually live on in me.

One of the most important lessons I learned through all my endurance sports journey was the value of voluntarily choosing to do challenging things. I will be the first to admit that what I’m discussing is a luxury for most of the world. Most of the world lives in difficult and trying times every single day. Endurance, perseverance, and perspective are part of so many people’s daily lives that they have no need to train for it. I’ve seen this on my deployments and my many travels throughout the world. But, for those of us with much more secure, stable, and comfortable lives, it is necessary for us to find ways to voluntarily challenge and grow ourselves. We need to choose to do hard things that stretch our capabilities and push us out of comfort zones. You don’t have to pick triathlon, running, or any sport for that matter. Maybe you want to learn how to knit, fix cars, play an instrument, learn a new language, or decorate cakes, but you have no background in it and you’re afraid you’ll fail. Pick those things! Go watch YouTube videos, do the Google searches, and/or find a community passionate about it because those people like to help others share in their passion because voluntarily choosing challenges is healthy for you. Here are three ways that challenging tasks improve you:

1.      Building resilience & grit. We may not want resilience, and the reasons for being resilient may not be “fair” or “kind” but they are a reality of living around flawed humans (which we all are). Developing an ability to learn, be flexible, and try new ways of doing things helps us mitigate unpredictable challenges. We all know, now, what it is like to have the unexpected sprung on us (thanks, COVID). Choosing to do hard things will not guarantee resilience, but it does play a part in building our grit when we allow it. Angela Duckworth, in her pivotal book entitled Grit, discusses how grit is a trait we can improve. Her research uncovered four areas of gritty people that help them get back up again when they are knocked down: interest, practice, purpose, and hope. She writes that interest is “enduring fascination and childlike curiosity.” Practice is “the daily discipline of trying to do things better than we did yesterday” and “to be gritty is to resist complacency.” Purpose is seeing and understanding the “conviction that your work matters.” She notes that work goes beyond a job, it is what you “do” on a regular basis. Lastly, hope is “a rising-to-the-occasion kind of perseverance” that motivates someone to “learn and keep going even when things are difficult, even when we have doubts.” (Duckworth, 2016) We know hard things will happen in this life. Loved ones will pass away. Tragedies may occur. Jobs may be lost. Relationships may fall apart. The known and unknown will knock you down. When you voluntarily choose to challenges, you exercise your interest, practice, purpose, and hope and you build up your resiliency and grit so you may better endure the unknown to come.

2.      Growing healthy brains. I’m sure you can look all around you and find people in your life who are not inclined to growth and learning. They are either vehemently wed to their current ways or they are apathetic and simply passing through life. Both of those are unhealthy ways to live and have contributed to the divisions that exist in our society. Science shows that choosing to pursue challenging tasks helps in “building and maintaining cognitive skills.” (Harvard, 2021) In an article titled “Train Your Brain” by Harvard Health Publishing, health researchers point out three components of tasks that help the brain grow. First, the task should be challenging to you and force you to raise the bar. Maybe it is not something new, but rather seeking significant improvement in a skillset you already have. Second, the task should be complex in that it requires you to truly exercise your creativity, thinking, and actions in ways that are not familiar to you. Lastly, the task you choose should require you to practice it, not that you must become an expert, but that repetition helps the brain make permanent the growth you’ve pursued. (Harvard, 2021). Choosing to do hard things not only develops a stronger perseverance in your soul, but it also improves the ability for your brain to be agile and healthy, and I’d like to think we all want that!

3.      Cultivating curiosity. Choosing challenges opens us up to discovery and curiosity. We uncover new understandings about ourselves, and we develop different perspectives from which to see our lives and the world around us. Regardless of the task, taking on a challenge puts us in a position to think about new concepts, to problem solve in different ways, to take some risk, and to experiment. As much as we learn about the challenge we chose, we also learn about ourselves. How do we react to success and failure? How good is our self-discipline? Do we know how to make good goals? Do we know how to find the resources and support necessary to achieve those goals? When we intentionally take on new challenges to grow, we will gain rich self-awareness through the process. What we find out about ourselves, and what we do with that knowledge, greatly helps us shape the way we respond to the challenges and difficulties that we do not seek out. Being intentionally curious and choosing challenges gives us tools to use when the unknown strikes. Curiosity and discovery widen our world, if only about ourselves. It gives us perspective, milestones, and understanding from which we can anchor and stand firm in the face of adversity.

I hope, by now, that you are convinced that voluntarily choosing to take on a challenge is greatly beneficial. As leaders, we know others look to us to both cast vision and to direct to the ship when storms arise. Our teams expect us to be calm amid chaos and capable of making decisions. We are best postured to do that when we have developed a sense of resilience, learning, and discovery. I would argue that most of us would like that same level of “grit” in our personal lives as well. All around, we become better people in this world when we are more prepared to weather life’s storms. We cannot be prepared for everything, but we can improve how we adapt to and engage in challenges. When we have challenging experiences, we are able to lean on those as anchors and use them as milestones. This applies to both voluntary and involuntary past hardships. Anything difficult teaches us if we allow it, but picking something difficult to do on your own accord gives you agency and a more controlled learning environment in which to practice and grow at a life-fitting speed.

I will close this discussion with how two difficult events in my life, combat and triathlon, served me well in facing a difficult experience. Giving birth to my second son was not the speedy affair that my first son, Peter, blessed me with. No, Luke joked around with me for a couple of weeks with on and off labor. Even when we were in “go” time, labor started to stall out one point, and so the doctor, with my consent, administered Pitocin to me. Initially, it had very little effect, but it just kept flowing so I ended up having a lot of in my system. By the time the last part of labor finally kicked in, the Pitocin contributed to a rush of contractions and pain that far exceeded anything that had already happened that day with Luke’s birth process or in Peter’s (I chose and was able to have a natural birth) four years earlier. Through the entire ordeal over the first 3 weeks of May, and those crazy hours of labor at the hospital, besides continual prayer, two things kept me strong and focused. First, I kept telling myself that I was a combat veteran, and I wasn’t getting shot at or blown up, I could do this. Second, I kept telling myself “This is an endurance sport, it’s just like Ironman, remember the pain of the Ironman? The joy of the Ironman? This is like this. You can do it.” And I did. Unlike the euphoria of finishing an Ironman that leads to signing up for another one, despite feeling the pain of 140.6 miles over 12 hours, the euphoria of holding my sweet (but crazy) baby boy did not have me ready to sign up for a third. But I know for a fact that the incredibly challenging experiences of combat and Ironman gave me the will, strength, and perspective to persevere through the most physically difficult and painful experience of my life in giving birth to Luke. Both those experiences, and so many more, continue to provide me with grounding, courage, and a willingness to take on new challenges. A lifetime of these types of experiences serve as a great foundation for me as I continue to move into the future and take on new challenges of all types, not the least of which is being a Mom to two wonderful and crazy boys!

Go choose challenges! They matter deeply in helping you become the best version of yourself!

Works Cited
Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. New York: Scribner.
Harvard, H. P. (2021, February 21). Mind and Mood: Train Your Brain. Retrieved from Harvard Medical School: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/train-your-brain