5 Life Experiences that Taught Me How to Build Endurance
Endurance is a virtue we often relate with soldiers of war and extreme conditions. For us desk-jobbers, ‘hard work’ and ‘perseverance’ are good enough qualities to aim for. We’re probably never going to be tested for our ‘will for survival’ or ‘indomitable spirit’, right? So why bother with endurance!
Actually, endurance is something we need in our daily lives too. In fact, we already have this quality in varying degrees and it’s put to test in several ways every day! Think about your fitness efforts, learning those new skills, pulling through those boring days at work, working on your habits, your persistent startup endeavors – they all need you to endure.
Yes, endurance is about survival but survival not just through extreme circumstances but also through pain, discomfort, repetition and routine, sometimes even boredom and seemingly infinite waiting to get to your goals. It is the ultimate patience you need to get through anything that tests your will.
Endurance is patience concentrated.
We live in an age where we want to see quick results. The quicker our efforts rewarded, the more motivating the task. Why do you think cleaning is so satisfying? Think about all those uneventful afternoons when simply cleaning your desktop off the mindlessly accumulated junk gave you a sense of achievement.
We’re seeking instant gratification. Social media has made us addicts for those quick little hits of dopamine. Instant results get us quickly motivated.
Sadly though, with most things in life, efforts reap slow rewards.
It’s like you’re painting a beautiful big picture and you’re standing up close, working on those intricate details, repeating every brush stroke, bearing through the pain of every movement and making it through the boring repetitions. You want to step away and see the progress. You want to feel satisfied by your efforts showing results.
But the work really happens up close and it’s nothing but endurance that can get you through it.
I’ve was extremely curious as a child, always wanting to try new things (as is the case with most children). I loved drawing. But I had a problem – I’d leave most of my work half-done. Each new drawing got me excited at the start. Half way through, my interest would dwindle down, my curiosity wear off and the process get boring. Very unsurprisingly, I’d quit.
Needless to say, my drawing skills lacked depth. I had nothing but half-done work to show for. It was annoying, frustrating and demotivating to say the least.
Do you feel that kind of helplessness sometimes? I know I do.
That’s where I believe we need endurance. Endurance helps us quit the quitting too easily. It helps us stay persistent and keep our efforts consistent, if not growing. Interest, curiosity and passion are quick to wear off. What keeps us going is a strong will that endures through the challenges big and small.
Those who endure, conquer.
But how? How do you endure to conquer? How do you not give up learning that new language half way? How do you make it through each of those 50 squats for days and weeks and months, consistently, to reach your fitness targets? How do you not resign when the first or third or tenth problem threatens your startup goals?
Life lessons that taught me to how to build endurance
1. Stippling
My first conscious understanding of building endurance came during the final, internship year of my architecture undergrad.
My mentor, Ar. Vastarey was an imposing, intimidating person. Don’t get me wrong, he was a gem of a person, but his ability to work through hours with intense focus – detailing every inch of his design meticulously, thinking through every design problem from multiple angles, thorough, undisturbed and relentless – was something completely foreign to me. It showed in his work and I was in complete awe! Actually, no, I was downright intimidated by him.
One day, he pulled out his college portfolio – this fat, big collection of drawings. Each drawing was so intricately hand-detailed, it blew my mind! He’d spent hours on hours for days, months, perhaps even years to hatch and stipple (hand rendering techniques in architecture drawing) every single detail!
My relatively unwise self exclaimed, ‘Wow! But why spend all that time and effort when it adds nothing to your design??’
He humbly replied, ‘Well, for me it was an exercise in building endurance. I then use that endurance in my work. You can try it too.’
Here was this man, successful architect, spilling the beans to his success and luckily for me, I was there to collect them. Did I sow those magic seeds of endurance?
2. Trekking
In one way, trekking is a lot like my abandoned drawing experience – it’s exciting standing at the foot of the mountain, looking up at the peak. A few hundred steps and it really starts to test my will! Every single time, it feels impossible. I just want to surrender.
Thankfully, with trekking I have little choice in comparison with my drawings which I can so willfully and easily abandon at the third, if not first urge to renounce. When 15 others are pushing through the pain, how can I not?
But it’s more than this (positive) peer-pressure! I’ve come to realize that with each trek, my renunciation-urge-bar becomes higher. This is because with each trek, my endurance builds and that in turn helps me build more endurance!
Trekking has taught me to trust in the process – the fact that each step is going to get me closer to that beautiful goal. It has taught me to live in the present – feeling and acknowledging every muscle tense and every joint ache. While trekking, just knowing in my heart-of-hearts that every excruciating step is with a purpose and is getting me closer to my goal – that helped build my endurance.
3. 10-day Vipassana Meditation camp
Of the many, many intense life lessons I learnt from this camp, endurance was clearly and surely one of the best. It was 10-day experience of living in my head without expressing my thoughts, feelings, emotions to the outside world! No phones, no books, no music, no exercise, no conversations, not even eye contact with another human. But that wasn’t the enduring bit.
Meditation was the hardest. Over 10 hours of meditation every single day! If you’ve ever been through such an intense meditation experience, you will agree that it can lead you through intense feelings of boredom, frustration, overthinking, emotions and also, a lot of physical pain!
Vipassana meditation is a lot of things but in one way, it is an exercise in becoming still. Still in every sense – physically and mentally. No movements, no thoughts, no feelings, no judgment, no mind-clouding. Only the clarity of self-awareness.
An oversimplification of the process is to focus your attention first, on your breath and then gradually, moving onto every single part of the body. When your mind wanders, when it is clouded with thoughts which brings in feelings, you simply and gently bring it back. Without judgment. You sit still through thoughts, watching them but not becoming attached to them. You continue this process till you reach a heightened state of awareness and consciousness of the self and surroundings. There isn’t a limit here so you continue this back and forth infinitely till your mind becomes clearer and clearer and freer and freer from feelings.
Here’s my experience sitting through the long meditation sessions:
The back ached, buttocks became numb, legs tingled, itch bothered and the mind wandered – it wandered about ever-so-elusively! Just a second ago, I was focusing on the breath and now my awareness is deep below multiple layers of thought-clouds, so deep that I cannot remember where I got in!
But there were also those moments of crystal clarity. There were moments when I reached a stillness that’s hard to describe.
That was a goal so beautiful, so visceral and so indescribable, that it made all the enduring worth it. The back and forth through all the pain, discomfort and boredom, helped build an immense endurance that I’m sure has made me tough, resilient and tenacious. Practicing Vipassana meditation, still helps me further that endurance.
4. Strength training and endurance running
Building endurance is about strengthening will and toughening the mind. But there’s no better way to do this than through the process of building muscle strength and physical stamina. Rep after rep, step after step, you push your way through the monotony and pain to endure and, therefore, build endurance.
My first trainer was my doctor friend J who, I take the liberty to say, was a complete hard-ass. And that’s an understatement. From day 1 he got me to do 20 squats, 10 pushups, 20 lunges, 10 pull-ups, 10 dips, 3-minute-planks and, to finish off, a 3km run. To many this might be easy-peasy but for a complete noob, I was ready to die after the 7th squat! Any response to my ‘this-is-gonna-kill-me’ cries were met with ‘I’m a doc, Vin. I’ll be here to revive you when that happens.’ Could I argue with that?
It still kills me after a few squats and a couple of kilometers but I have learnt to endure over time. Set a goal and don’t stop till you get there – could there be a more systematic and universal way to build endurance!
Endurance workout is for everyone and you can be sure damn well, it’ll work for you too! Each time you raise the number of reps or the number of kilometers, you build mental toughness. Each time, you learn to endure a little more.
I’ve heard many people say ‘exercise is not for me’ or ‘I don’t need to workout, I’m fit and healthy already.’ Okay, you may not have physical fitness goals, but do it to build your mental toughness and endurance. You can then use this endurance in all aspects of your life!
5. Learning optimism, fighting depression and building a growth mindset
This has been my hardest and harshest lesson in building endurance. Endurance has always been about building mental strength and grit, but building endurance through a mental health exercise? Hmmm… One has got to get something out that!
I had a difficult upbringing and a disturbed adolescence. Unconsciously, I’d built several bad mental habits and thought patterns with the harshest pessimism that made it close to impossible for me to think positively. My fixed mindset stunted my growth. It made me depressed. I lacked self-confidence.
Changing mental habits is the most difficult. Goals aren’t as clear and visible as the peak of that mountain. Emotional pain is harder to heal from than any muscle soreness. Slipping back to old thought patterns is harder to control than the wandering mind. Working through it all is agonizing and frustrating in the least.
But even with the long, slow, arduous journey, I have come around to see some sunshine in my mind. I have learnt optimism (did you know you could?). I think about growth more and ‘ambition’ is now a word in my dictionary. In this entire process, my mind has endured and that has taught it build more endurance!
That’s the awesome thing about building endurance, it simply grows with every enduring experience. It makes you tougher and more ready to fight the next challenge. It helps you not just survive, but also to adapt and thrive!
I will leave you to think about these lessons in building endurance with a mildly disgusting metaphor – building endurance is like building your ‘cockroach skills’ (term coining courtesy: my best friend, Shalini) to survive and thrive through anything at all!