How a Long-Term Perspective Is Helping Me Stay Grounded

The other day, I was on a morning run trying to run somewhere between nine to ten miles. Early on in the run, I felt pretty bad. I had just run a pretty hard 12-mile race the weekend before, and I felt tired and sluggish physically the couple days before. I looked at my watch each mile and was clicking off some, for me, pretty slow miles. I looked at the pace each mile — my usual easy run pace on a day I don’t feel terrible is anywhere from 7 minutes per mile to 7:45 pace per mile.

This happened until about five and a half miles, where I clicked off 8:30 and 8:15 miles. Again, I didn’t stress too much about it because I felt super sluggish. I looked then changed my view on the watch. Instead of showing how long I had been running every mile, I shifted the screen on my GPS watch to the one that showed the total time I’d been running.

It wasn’t instant, but over the course of that mile, I got a lot more optimistic. I’d been running for almost 40 minutes at that point. I’d put in a lot of work over the course of that run, that week. The momentarily feeling of sluggishness at 6 a.m. on a Wednesday morning was only temporary, and the momentum I gained from seeing the runs in a more long-term manner rather than how fast I was running each mile made a huge difference.

Over the course of last week, I started to focus much more on the long term over the short term. I started to not only focus on how much I’d run over a week, but over a month, over three months. I have averaged over 60 miles a week the last several months, which had not necessarily paid off in fitness over the summer, given the hot and humid conditions. Some weeks, I ran close to 80 miles, and some weeks, I could only muster 40–50. I struggled through numerous summer runs where I felt like I was going to die, and had to wake up at around 5 a.m. to just make running manageable. For about two months, from June to August, it felt like I was just training into the abyss, like I wasn’t getting any better. As such, what was the point of my consistent, hard work for such a long period of time?

The past two weeks, the fruits of my labor finally paid off. I ran a 12 mile race at 5:38 mile pace. It was a net downhill race and the weather was better than most of the summer. This was a good race where I gained a lot of confidence and optimism. However, I ran a 20-mile race last weekend at 5:46 mile pace, which was an even better race. I realized that all the toil of the summer actually did have a purpose and benefit, and if I could only think of how each run would impact me three to four months from

. . .

I started to try to apply a long-term rather than a short-term mindset to the rest of my life, too. I can be too tied to the moment and have a certain tunnel vision of focusing on the next 10 to 20 minutes. I can focus excessively on short-term, incremental goals. This tunnel vision can be helpful to be in “the zone” for super high pressure situations where I need to be on. It can help me just focus on the moment and task at hand, which certainly has its advantages.

I have ADHD, and sometimes, I thrive on urgent, make-or-break situations, but it can feel somewhat unsustainable to feel like the world is ending all the time. My ADHD can sometimes make me too stuck in the moment.

However, starting to become more of a long-term thinker instead of just trying to survive in the moment, I have been able to zoom out and maintain a more healthy perspective, not only in running but in all areas of my life, as a law student at night and special education teacher during the day. This is not to say there is no place for big surges and being thrown into the deep end, but that it’s been so helpful to know how these particular moments fit into some grand big puzzle, and how even the small decisions made now will impact things several years later.

Another personal pursuit on the side is improving my Spanish, as I have taken Spanish courses throughout high school and college. There is no reason why I should not pursue Spanish fluency. It is not perfect, but I have had a 341-day streak of Duolingo lessons. My conversational ability has gotten much better in this period of time as I have conversed with Spanish speakers at work or in my daily life, and although I still lack confidence, it is much better than it was. The progress has been very slow, incremental, and the young impatient part of me just wants to be better right away rather than seeing it as a long, gradual process.

It took me a long time to learn that life does not really work like that. It often takes months, if not years of concentrated, sustained effort to see results. With running as an analogy, there are big workouts once in a while and the big event to perform under pressure, but in the long term, it’s a lot more of about incremental improvement and boring, sustained efforts.

. . .

I have had hard, overwhelming days lately. I am either working or studying from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. with almost no free time at all. I don’t complain because I signed myself up for this, but recently, I have thought to myself: “Can I do this anymore? Have I reached my limit? “

These are very valid questions, and it is a part of myself that is rebelling against all the pressure and ambition I subject myself to. I like to think I will be fine, and one thing that has reassured me among all the periods of being overwhelmed and stressed out is that I have done this before. For the past two years, I have maintained the schedule and lifestyle while also trying to fit in and prioritize my time with my wife and my friends.

It helps to realize that the standards I have for myself are higher than the standards anyone else has for me. I have high standards for my quality of work, and can be uncompromising in that area of my life as well as making sure I do all my readings in law school. I always, always feel like it’s not enough and like I’m falling behind and everything is going to crash down if I do not keep up with these standards. I do occasionally get reminders that these standards are too high.

For example, one of my professors requires that our class do discussion posts every week in response to readings, of anywhere from 200–500 words. I opened up the discussion board on Blackboard the other day, to see that on some weeks, I was the only person in the class who did the discussion posts, which showed that I need to zoom out more and realize that I am working very hard and doing a good job.

This day, this moment, is just one in a big puzzle. This one run, this one moment of studying, of work, does matter. But it is just one of many. The runs I find very mentally challenging are ones I have done before. Not every moment is a crisis, even if it feels like it. Not every moment is going to make or break the whole course of my life, no matter what it feels like, despite the long-term impact that one moment will have months from now.

This might sound really trivial to some people, or just the natural byproduct of getting older. I am 27, so most people still think I’m relatively young. shift and perspective has, for me, made a very, very big difference and is something I wish I internalized sooner. As a teenager, I struggle significantly with social anxiety, particularly in middle and early high school. I used to sit in class and have panic attacks over trivial occurrences that made me feel like an outcast, like my stomach growling or feeling like I was breathing too loudly in the classroom. I wish I could have realized, 12 to 13 years later, that these occurrences didn’t matter in the long term and that the social interaction I obsessed over all day would barely matter where I am now.

I think it can be easy for us to scold early versions of ourselves and have significant regret had the gift of hindsight. Sometimes early in the morning or late at night, I will sit in bed and suddenly remember something I did or said 10 years ago that I wish I didn’t do or say. It could be something as simple as talking poorly about someone behind their back and being wrong for doing so. It’s not rational to regret something that far back, but it’s my mind’s default.

A long-term perspective has helped me realize that all those experiences have led me where I am today. It has helped me delay the instant gratification of the easy way out, of the panic of feeling like the world is going to end if I don’t achieve my goals in the next hour.

It has helped me realize that, in the long run, the relationships with my wife, family, and friends are more important than everything else, and I need to give everything I can to these relationships. It has helped me realize that this is one small moment, and if I can get through this, then maybe, just maybe, everything will be alright.

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This post was previously published on The Partnered Pen.

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