Your Why

You always have a reason.

Sometimes the reason is a terrible reason, like, “I was drunk,” or, “I didn’t feel like paying my bills,” or, “I’ve always done it this way,” or “I don’t like myself,” or, “I was trying to punish everyone in my life by self-destructing.” Sometimes the reason is amazing, like, “It’s the best thing for all of humanity and that’s something I care about.” But no matter what we’re doing, no matter how large or small it is, you have a reason for doing it. You have a “why.”

Most of our “why”s are neither terrible nor amazing, but solidly in the middle. You go to work at a job you don’t especially like because you love your family enough to not want them to be homeless or starve. You bite your nails because it is a habit and you don’t feel like going through the hassle of addressing it. You keep dating that guy even though he is, to be frank, not only not a catch but kind of a natural disaster because you have some good times and you dread the pain and loneliness of a breakup. You buy Chik-Fil-A for dinner for the third time this week because let’s be real, your $17.23 is not really going to empower the organization to destroy the rights of all LGBTQ people (or at least not this month), plus if you have to plan and cook food for your entire family for ONE MORE MEAL after 6-year-old Charlotte broke out in hives AGAIN and your freaking MOTHER-IN-LAW is coming for a visit, you CANNOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE for anything violent and/or illegal you might do.

The truth is, once we hit adulthood, most of us stop thinking about our “why”s almost entirely. We do what we do because it’s basically what seems to be expected of us – get a decent job, get married, have some kids, watch a fair amount of Netflix and Amazon prime, go see the Grand Canyon once or something, and wait for retirement. It’s when we’re younger (mostly when we’re teenagers/young adults and crazy hormonal) that we spend a lot of time thinking about the nature of the universe and our place in it. And then one day we wake up, maybe not on purpose, maybe because we had a life change, or someone we love points this out to us, and it turns out we have lived a shocking number of years by default, never examining why we were doing anything. It’s crazy how inertia works.

I’ve never felt this sensation more powerfully than I felt it in the immediate aftermath of my divorce, living in my new-to-me crack home, the single mom of two daughters. I found myself re-assessing nearly every decision, large or small, that I had made in the last decade and a half, and found myself stuck with the uncomfortable conclusion that I had made most of my life decisions since finishing college for reasons that were inadequate, if not downright appalling. These reasons included:

1. Fear. I was afraid of upsetting someone, or of the implications of disrupting the status quo. I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of not being good enough. I was afraid of not having enough money to provide for my kids, or enough resources to take care of my family. I was afraid of what other people would think of me if I did something differently.
2. Doubt. I wasn’t sure if I was smart enough/strong enough/capable enough to pursue my dreams and ambitions. I wasn’t sure if I would be lovable if I insisted on trying. I wasn’t sure if I could learn the new things that I needed to learn to carve out a new path for myself.
3. Self-loathing. I didn’t like myself much, I certainly didn’t love myself, and I didn’t know how anyone even began to overcome this, and whether I even should because that might require me to overlook my own shortcomings.

When you realize that you are living your life for the wrong reasons, and getting outcomes you don’t like, you have a choice. You can do one of three things:

1. You can give up. People will tell you this isn’t an option; it is. I’ve seen people absolutely fold, withdraw into self-pity and dysfunction, develop a drug or alcohol habit, abandon jobs, and leech off of family and friends as long as they’ll let you. Hey, I didn’t say it was a GOOD choice, just that it was a choice.
2. You can keep going the way you’re already going and hope that someone saves you (or resign yourself to low-level misery for the rest of your life). Here’s a hint as to whether or not someone’s going to save you: they’re not. Even if someone else wanted to save you from you and your life, they can’t. This is just something someone else can’t do for you.
3. You can decide to change, and find a new set of reasons to make a new set of decisions.

The third option is by far the most difficult. It’s insanely easy to be miserable and wretched; misery is basically the human default, it’s what happens if you don’t do anything. It’s a lot harder to change, and work toward fulfillment. Change is so hard that most of us won’t do it unless we’re forced to.

And this is where, for me, running came in. It was the gateway to the third option.

A bunch of years ago, before even I was born (so, dark ages), some Stanford researchers conducted an experiment. They got a bunch of little kids and told them that they could have one marshmallow now, or they could wait a little while and have two marshmallows. Small wait, small reward. Some kids could wait, some couldn’t.

Then the researchers followed these kids for a bunch of years. They found that the children who were able to wait for a larger reward later – those children who could handle the concept of delayed gratification – had better life outcomes: educational attainment, body mass index, SAT scores, other stuff.

It’s hard to have no marshmallow now in the hopes of a second marshmallow later, not just for kids, but for adults. It’s difficult to forgo the $4 coffee right now in favor of putting $4 in your savings account, a savings account that seems to be growing at the pace of a glacier. It’s painful to do sit-ups instead of eating ice cream, when the ice cream tastes good now and the sit-ups won’t yield results for weeks or months. It’s tough to spend your free evenings getting additional education instead of binge-watching Netflix, when the Netflix is enjoyable and the education might not give you career benefits for years.

But small changes have ripple effects. I felt so much satisfaction at completing two 5k races, after those months of painful training, that I felt pretty confident deciding to challenge myself with training for a 10k, for which my 3.1-mile race would become a 6.2-mile race. The training runs were difficult, and it took months to see the payoff: a stronger body, more energy, a completed race.

At the same time, I noticed that this determination to complete longer runs was making me interrogate my capabilities in other areas. If I could push through something painful, at which I had no natural aptitude, with running, could I do the same thing, but with my education? I knew I needed more education to have any shot at the sort of career I hoped for; I have an undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies and the world in shockingly short of people willing to pay you to spin amateur feminist theory.

I started looking at my options. I needed an educational avenue with broad applicability that I could pursue while working full time. After some research, I settled on the idea of getting a Master’s in Business Administration, which was just as stupid as my initial push for a 5k because I was at least as bad at math as I had been at running the first time I tried it and business has all this math in it. I was going to need months of intensive study just to score well enough on the GMAT’s math section to have a chance of getting admitted to graduate school.

I needed a very powerful WHY to spend whatever time I wasn’t at work, running, or with my daughters teaching myself math, a subject I hadn’t been forced to encounter for 18 years, and at which I had always performed abysmally.

Why was I going to simultaneously start training for longer races, and study for entrance graduate school?

I did not want my life to continue the way that it was. I wanted something better, richer, fuller – not just for me, but for my kids.

I wanted to be a person who tackled, and achieved, hard things.

I wanted to set a good example for my daughters.

I wanted to be able to be proud of myself.

Whatever “why” muscles you flex, will grow. If the explanation for “why” that you default to is, “Because life isn’t fair,” or “I’ll never get what I want, so why bother?” or “I’m too old to try anything new,” those muscles of victimhood and self-justification will become powerful beyond belief. Before you know it, they will be the only “why” muscles you use.

If instead, you flex the “why” muscles of, “Because I am in charge of my life,” or “Because I am someone who does hard things,” or “Because I am forging a better life for myself and the people I love,” those muscles will grow. They are more challenging muscles to strengthen. But they’re the ones that make you truly strong.

Running strengthens the second set of mental muscles. Just like strengthening your leg muscles for hiking will also mean you have stronger legs for walking, jumping, home repair, or water aerobics (or for playing the didgeridoo; I’m not judging, you do you), having stronger mental muscles for pushing through a hard run will give you stronger mental muscles for making yourself do math or sticking with a challenging problem at work.

Your “why” beats willpower every single time. If you don’t have a strong overarching reason for doing something new, your strong default reason for staying stuck will wrap greasy fingers around your resolve and yank it under the sludge. This is because NOT DECIDING actually is a decision, and strengthens the “why” of inertia and inadequacy.

I registered for a 10k and for the GMAT the same week. The 10k was in November; the test was the following January. I ran the race slowly, painfully, badly; I struggled, and then I finished, and I felt like I owned the world.

My new whys were getting stronger. Because I am making a new life. Because this life will be better than anything I’ve created in the past. Because I am capable of creating something wonderful.

I applied to the MBA program in February. In March, I found out I had been admitted, with the qualifier that I would need to complete a precalculus requirement the first semester. Precalculus. I looked at the other first semester requirements. They included quantitative analysis, along with the precalculus.

I felt my stomach drop.

Then I thought, I guess I’d better start training for a half marathon.

Why? Because if anything could make me mentally strong enough for a semester of straight math while working full time and single momming, a half marathon could.

You can settle for any set of “why”s you choose. But the why will tell you what you strive for, what you’re willing to suffer for, the sort of person that you’re going to be. Take a good look at your reasons why. Are you happy with them? Are they taking you where you want to go?

Because if not, then change them.

Why? Because you deserve better.