Keep doing the work anyway.

[00:00:10] Yo, what's good? This is Rich, and you're listening to The Mental Wealth Show, a podcast about health, healing, and high performance. And this episode has a little bit of everything because it's also the Q1 wrap-up episode. Now, I understand that it's May. I understand that it's Mental Health Awareness Month, but I had a goal to release six episodes in Q1. I got to five, and then I got sick, wasn't able to record, and then I was recovering from everything that happened pretty much.

[00:00:40] For the month of April. And so here I am in May, finally recording that Q1 wrap-up episode. So the first thing I wanted to talk about was the World Indoor Masters Track and Field Championships that took place in Gainesville, Florida at the end of March. And so going into this competition, I had a few goals in mind. Number one was to have fun. Number two was to smile before and after each jump, or I guess maybe that's a practice and not so much a goal.

[00:01:08] And then number three was to set new personal records or new personal bests in both the long jump and the triple jump. And prior to this, I had a goal to make the finals, but I realized I couldn't control what other athletes jumped. And if I jumped well, I jumped well.

[00:01:26] If I jumped well and didn't make the finals, not making the finals doesn't mean that I didn't jump well. So I removed that as a goal because I couldn't control it, but I'm proud to share that I did end up making the finals in both the long jump and the triple jump. And I also set a new personal best in the triple jump at the World Championships. And that was an incredible feeling to be able to have that type of achievement there.

[00:01:54] Now, I didn't set a new personal best in the long jump and, and, and I was disappointed. I was, I'm not gonna lie. I was a little bit disappointed about that, but not a ruin my experience. This, this whole trip was unsuccessful.

[00:02:08] It was more of a frustration because I did all the work and I still didn't get the results. And you might be able to resonate with that. Maybe with something that's happened in your life where you feel like you did everything, you did all of the stuff that you could do. But when the time came, you still didn't get the results that you wanted. No matter how grateful and appreciative you are, that shit still sucks.

[00:02:33] I want to be clear about that because I did all of the gratitude. I appreciated the moment, everything that it took to get to that World Championships, being able to get back in the track and field. I appreciated all of that. But doing all the work and not getting the results still sucks. And it's okay to feel that way. But what you can't do is stay in it. You can sit in it. You can sit in it for a period of time. You can sit in it periodically.

[00:03:02] For the days or weeks that follows, just like I have. But you can't stay in that feeling of that sucks. It happened. The feeling of it sucking is over and now it's time to move on so that you put yourself in a better position to succeed that next time around. That's the whole thing with track and field. It's an ongoing journey. Didn't win this particular day. Well, I'm not even going to say win because it wasn't necessarily about winning in this particular context.

[00:03:32] But I didn't achieve what I wanted to do this one particular time. It would have been really awesome to have that happen at that particular moment or during that particular event. But it didn't. So now, what can I do? And I've since decided that there are some things I definitely have to do differently or approach differently. I've reached out to a jumps consultant, gotten some external perspective, brought that back to track practice.

[00:04:00] And I'm finally starting to see some progress with this technical glitch, this whole last few strides that I've been struggling with, this whole slowing down at the takeoff board. I'm finally starting to see some light with that. But I had to move through the feelings that I had and the thoughts and processing from the initial experience. Again, I still had fun. I still smiled before and after each jump.

[00:04:24] I still appreciated the whole experience. But man, I really wanted that long jump PR. I've been wanting that big long jump PR for years now. Since I've gotten back in the track, I'll say probably a year and a half to two years into it, once I accepted my age and what my full realm of capability may be, I've known what I'm truly capable of jumping and just haven't gotten there.

[00:04:52] And I felt this before. I haven't felt this way in college where I'm like, man, I'm capable of such a bigger performance than what I'm putting out there. I've done this. I've jumped this in practice. I've done all the work and didn't quite get the results that I wanted. So it's almost like experiencing that all over again. But this time, there's no sitting in it. And I do truly believe that I'm going to have that big performance. It just didn't happen at that particular meet. And I don't know when it's going to happen.

[00:05:22] It may happen at my next competition. Because I feel like I'm ready to have that big performance right now. Obviously, if I felt that way at the indoor championships, but even more now, just based off of some of the additional things that I've worked on.

[00:05:35] And now that I actually know what it feels like in those last few strides to hit them correctly, and to hit them correctly on multiple reps in a row. So I'm a lot more optimistic. And even in this moment, I'm kind of smiling and looking up and looking outside at these clear blue skies and thinking about the next competition or the next opportunity that I'm going to have to achieve this potential goal.

[00:06:00] But yeah, it sucked in the moment. And generally speaking, doing all the work, putting all the effort and energy in, investing in yourself, the resources, all the tools, and still not getting the result you want sucks. And you can apply that to a lot of different areas in life. I think particularly around this time of the year. And man, you know what, I'm having this realization in this moment of why I've been kind of in this funk pretty much through April and even in the start of May.

[00:06:29] And it's not like a deep emotional funk. It's just kind of a, I don't feel like I have like my full creative energy and I haven't had my full creative capacity. I've just been kind of, I guess, deep in reflection. And I'm realizing there was a part early in my trauma healing journey. I want to say it was after, let me see, it might've been 2022. Yeah, it would have had to have been 2022 around this time. It was approaching Mother's Day.

[00:06:56] I had this conversation with my mom where I got to a place where I could tell her about some of the things that happened during childhood and the way that those things impacted me. And I went into the conversation making the very typical mistake of expecting a certain response, expecting an apology, expecting understanding, expecting to be seen in that conversation a particular way. And I wasn't, or I didn't get seen that way or my mom didn't respond the way that I hoped.

[00:07:27] And that was really painful. That was a deep and painful experience. It was one in which I thought I did all the work, even though I was really early in the healing journey. And this is part of the process, having this experience. I had did the work. I've been working with my therapist. I'd been, I started working with a EMDR therapist, have this, have this conversation with my mom. It's a big step.

[00:07:53] I'm thinking this is the final boss. It actually wasn't even close to what the true final boss was. And I didn't get the result that I wanted. And I sat in that for some time. I sat in that for probably a year before I was able to start making true progress on that again. And it took a while to get to that place of acceptance. And even with what we're talking about here of track and field, it's the same thing. It's accepting that you didn't get the result that you wanted. You could feel how you felt about it.

[00:08:23] I still feel how I still feel the way that I felt about that conversation. It's not as deep. It's like it's still painful, like thinking about that, like that still sucks. But it was a necessary part of the experience and a necessary part of the journey to get to where things are now and to get to where we are now. And to the point that I could make a trip home to upstate New York for the first time in six years, for the first time since I quit alcohol.

[00:08:50] And for the first time since I started this whole trauma healing journey, because even after not getting what I wanted, I kept doing the work. And I'm proud to be able to say that didn't get the results that I wanted, didn't quit. I kept doing the work. And that's that's that's the way that it's been, at least for these last however many years, these last what almost five years. It'll be what? Yeah, coming up on five years since quitting alcohol.

[00:09:18] That'll be on July 1st. So all this time has been doing the work. And I've seen time and time again that when I do the work, I ultimately get the results. I may not get them in the instance that I want them to, just like I didn't get them or I didn't get it in the long jump at world championships. And just like I didn't get the result that I wanted in that conversation with my mom around this exact time in 2022.

[00:09:49] But ultimately, I got to a much better place with her. And ultimately, I know that I'm going to get to a much better place with the long jump because I've already improved feet from when I started a few years ago. I think the first competition, I jumped something like like 16 feet, four inches. And and now I'm I'm back over 20 feet. So I've improved feet over the course of the years.

[00:10:16] And at this stage and in this season of life, while this isn't what I was jumping when I was 21, 22 years old, I was jumping feet further than this. But for this stage of life, what I've been able to accomplish through the continued work like like it has shown time and time again that I do the work and get the results. But you don't always get the results when you want them.

[00:10:39] And again, as I've said, it is OK when you don't get the results in that moment to feel like that shit sucks. But at some point you have to get back up. You have to keep doing the work anyway, knowing that the next time you go out and do that thing, you may still not get the results that you want. That's the way that it's been throughout this whole track and field journey. I have small wins, small wins, small wins, then have a period where it's frustrating, then have another win. Just had a win with the triple jump.

[00:11:09] But I just have not had that win yet with the long jump. But I have to keep doing the work, keep practicing, keep training, keep doing these drills, knowing that the next time I go out, I still may not get that big PR. The next time I go out, I still may not get that big PR. I might not even have it this season. But when you really want something, you keep going. You keep going until it happens.

[00:11:36] And then when it eventually does happen, it's even more rewarding. Of course, we want it to happen sooner rather than later. But if you think about the things that you've worked really hard on, maybe you didn't get the results you wanted the first time around. But then how it felt when you got that result later, that finally and that level of relief and that level of being proud of yourself or pride for yourself. And then thinking about, you know, I conquered this.

[00:12:05] So now what can I do next? But don't get to that. What can I do next? Too quickly. Just like you sat in the disappointment, you got to sit in the achievement, too. You got to sit in that good. You got to sit in that reflection on what it took to get there and what that experience did for your overall confidence and what it means going forward. But you have to take time to celebrate, too. It's not just jumping to that. What can I do next? I got to call that out for self.

[00:12:33] But I also know if you roll the way I do and you have a big accomplishment and it builds your confidence, you're thinking about how you can now apply that elsewhere or what's the next thing you could go after that you didn't think was possible before. And I totally understand that. But I got to make sure that I encourage you to sit in that good as well.

[00:12:53] And whether that's a day, whether that's a meal, whether that's buying something nice for yourself, whether it's journaling about it, whether it's recording some audio for yourself to talk about that experience so that you always have that and you can refer back to it. You've got to do something with that good. You can't just move to the next thing. So I want to throw that in there as a secondary message as well. And so that's what I have for this episode.

[00:13:19] That is not everything that happened on the trip. There was still the Albany experience, which I'll talk about eventually. I actually had the unfortunate experience of fainting and learning what that feels like. And it does not feel like what I thought it would feel like. It is not. Oh, and then you just fall out. It is something far, far worse, far worse and far more scary is how I'll describe it.

[00:13:48] And I'll definitely talk about that in another episode. And I mentioned, I guess there is one more thing. And I mentioned toward the end of the last episode that as far as the experiment and challenge the self of recording six episodes in Q1 and releasing two a month and trying to do that on the same day did not work. I said that in that episode did not work for me.

[00:14:11] And going forward, as far as the whole schedule, I'm back to the release when I have something to say, when I feel compelled. And so the best way to keep up with the podcast, if you're not doing so already, is to subscribe, follow, whatever the free mechanism is that will alert you that a new episode is available. I encourage you to do that. And I'm looking forward to coming back with the next episode because there are things I didn't talk about on this one.

[00:14:40] Like I mentioned, the whole Albany portion of the trip. I got some blood work done that said some results came back and there's a whole other insight and lesson that's related to this lesson today about when you don't get the results that you want that I want to talk about as well. So there's a lot to still discuss. I'm going to be working on putting these thoughts together so I can come back with another fresh one. But until then, take care of yourself. Be well. I'm out. Peace.