My 1/14/11 post refers to a post -- Why We Quit -- by a Buddhist physician who believes we quit when we can no longer avoid paying attention to the idea of quitting. He recommends building resilience by "trying again, no matter what the reason you failed before."
The post intrigued me because whenever I quit before reaching my target on the treadmill, I worry I don't have what it takes to survive a stem-cell transplant(sct). This thought likely arises because I perceive both as physical challenges, and my failure at the challenge of jogging shakes my confidence in my ability to survive a future sct.
Over the past 20 years I've developed and written about a wide variety of measures that reliably calm my fear of tomorrow (Happiness in a Storm). One measure has been exposing perceived links that are weak. Obviously, elective jogging is a completely different challenge than undergoing a needed sct, a fact that disempowers my fear.
Another measure that calms fear of tomorrow is strengthening my confidence that I can deal with whatever happens. Building mental stamina while jogging would surely strengthen my confidence in handling any physical challenge.
Dr. Lickerman suggests people try and try again. I believe Healthy Survivors can do better by
- exploring why one approach didn't work as desired, and then
- finding new ways of perceiving and/or doing something before trying again.
I've been doing a similar thing while trying to re-start my jogging. "If I quit before two miles or the next tree or whatever goal I've set, then maybe I'm getting sick again or maybe I don't have what it takes to come back again or maybe I'm a wimp...bla bla bla."
I try to remind myself that in reality, it's just a bad jogging day and doesn't mean anything.
I wrote about that a little in my NY posts.
Posted by: Ronni Gordon | January 19, 2011 at 10:46 AM