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Full Video Transcript

Introduction: The Voice That Tells You to Quit

Chances are you’ve been in a race and heard that voice that’s telling you to quit, that is commanding you to stop, that is telling you to find a hole to step in, a portaot to go hide in, to end this suffering right now. How do I know you’ve experienced it? Because we all have. from your beginner to the Olympic champion, they all have that voice in our head that is telling us to stop.

Why? Because it’s how our brain works. And today, what we’re going to do is outline why that occurs and more importantly, give you six tools to deal with and navigate that discomfort, that pain, that fatigue, that voice telling you to quit or stop. So, first, why does

Understanding the Protective Brain Mechanism

occur? Our brain is protective. So, whenever we take on a challenge, especially a physical challenge, it’s essentially doing an inner calculation. It’s saying, you know what, this goal is worth it, but at what price?

How much is it worth it? We’re weighing the risk versus the reward. Our brain is asking, is the juice worth the squeeze? Now, if it’s a meaningful goal, which often it is, when it comes to racing, we push a little bit harder.

But at the same point, our brain is more protective. It’s more lenient towards protecting because it doesn’t quite trust us. We know that a motivated person would do something dumb if our brain didn’t interfere. So, what happens is your brain starts to send that alarm to signal the panic button to send those negative voices into your conscious mind to try and first get you to consider slowing down or easing the pain.

And then over time, if that doesn’t work, make the alarm, the voice louder until eventually it might have to voluntarily shut you down. And we know this because if you looked at the end of a elite marathoner running a race or if you looked at the end of a elite performance doing a a time trial to exhaustion, the muscles always have more to give. We still have glycogen in the muscles, so fuel to fuel us more. And in experiments when we go all the way towards voluntary fatigue, meaning when we cry uncle, if you shock that muscle, it will still function.

It will still contract. Meaning there is still juice in there, our brain is essentially shutting us down before we hit actual empty. Because unlike in a car where we can just refuel, get some gas or maybe call AAA to bring some gas, when we go to actual zero, there’s often pain, damage, maybe even death involved. So, it’s right that your brain is protective.

All we’re trying to do is shrink that gap between actual fatigue and when we need to be shut down and when we get to a point. Think of it like this. You’re resetting that fuel gauge or fuel alarm in your car that many of us have that will tell you how many miles do you have to go till empty. And when we hit zero in our car, we’re not actually out of gas because car makers realize that people are stupid, too, and they’ll drive to zero.

So, we often have 10, 15, 20 more miles left in the tank. Our brain is kind of similar. We just want to set that zero closer to when we’re actually in danger with act without actually being in danger so that we can perform at our highest level. So that’s how it works.

What are some things that we can do? So step one, I

Tool 1: Creating Space to Respond Instead of React

call it creating space to respond instead of react. So, under high levels of discomfort and uncertainty where you’re in the middle of the race, it hurts a lot because you’re in the middle, but you’re still far enough away from the finish line where your brain can’t say, “I can make it.” Those are the hardest parts. What happens is we get pulled towards reaction. Reaction is you’re not thinking it through.

You’re not prioritizing the long-term goal. You’re saying, “What relieves me of this in this moment?” It’s essentially if you had a lot of hunger and you went to your cabinet and you said, “Oh gosh, like the candy right here is what fulfills me. I don’t have time to cook this steak or these eggs or these vegetables to give me actual nourishment. Just give me the candy.” When you’re in a hangry mode, you reach for the candy.

Okay? It’s the same with our brain. We react instead of respond. What do we try and do there?

We’ve got to create a little bit of space there. So the moment the alarm gets loud, we don’t just go to solve this as quick as possible, we calm things down and don’t overreact. We don’t jump to the thing. How do we do this?

First, the simplest is you learn to sit with discomfort. Instead of trying to avoid it, instead of trying to fight it, to make it go away, to push it away, what we do is we learn to say, “Okay, this is normal. I’m experiencing some discomfort. It’s okay.” A great demonstration of this is actually when you hold your breath underwater is chances are if you haven’t done this in a while, what happens is you feel that urge to breathe, that CO2 building up and your brain is like danger, danger, go get some breath.

The first time you do it, you only last, I don’t know, 20, 30 seconds or so. Over time, you learn to sit with that alarm and realize, no, no, I’m okay. Staying calm. I still have way more time to go before I’m actually in in danger.

And you stretch that out to a minute or many minutes if you’re a pro at this stuff. Same thing happens with discomfort. How do we do that in workouts? Learning to sit with it to have what I’d call a calm conversation instead of a reaction.

Meaning, hey, this is normal. This is part of it. I’ve been here before. This discomfort is just a signal.

It doesn’t mean that I have to listen to it right now. You’re trying to create a little bit of space. The other things you can do to create space is alter your interpretation. So if we see discomfort, fatigue, or stress as a negative, something to avoid, our brain goes up, turn up the dial, hit the alarm, hit the panic button.

This is the signal of bad stuff. As if we see it and treat it as, hey, this is just telling me I’m working hard. This is just telling me I’m pushing the bounds. I’m right where I need to be.

or the famous Steve Pre Fontaine quote where he says essentially some run the race to see who is fast. I run to see who hurts the most. You get the paraphrase. What he’s doing is he’s reframing that signal of effort and pain and discomfort not as a negative thing to avoid but as a thing to go towards.

The more granularity in terms of the emotions and the feelings we experience, the easier it is to create that space to deal with the thing. Similarly, we can label the experience. We can say, “Ah, that’s just my that’s just my inner alarm, the devil on my shoulder trying to convince me that this is real or that this is I should pay attention to it. This is just my crazy voice.

This is just whatever. This is Steve the Freddy cat.” whatever you want to do it, you label the thing, okay? Or you label it as information. You say, “This is my body telling me that I’m riding the line.

This is my body telling me that I’m accumulating lactate or hydrogen ions or whatever it is. It’s okay. I expect to do this. I’m in a race label the thing.” Okay.

Once we’ve gotten

Tool 2: Actions to Alter Experience

create the space, the second tool is what I’d call actions. So a lot of the tools when we think of dealing with discomfort and pain and fatigue are what I’d call top down. Meaning you are altering how you think about the experience. Okay.

We also have a different approach in our brain in our nervous system which is what we call bottom up. We are altering the experience itself. This might be a little confusing but you’ll get it. Top down is I’m changing my thinking.

Bottom up is I’m changing my actions or my inputs which then will alter my thinking and experience. So think of it like this. If I told you, hey Steve, you look a little nervous. Can you relax?

Guess what? Your brain goes relax. What? I’m freaking out.

That doesn’t help me. Right? We go the opposite direction. In the history of telling people relax, it has helped no one.

I’m sure. Don’t tell your spouse or significant other relax. You know the consequences. Okay.

But if instead of saying relax, I tell someone, “Hey, shake out your shoulders. Loosen them up. Take a deep cal. Take a deep breath.” Right?

Slow breath in and out. Okay? Shake things out. What happens is often we intentionally relax or feel more relaxed because we’ve done the action and our brain goes, “Hey, you know what?

I am a little bit more relaxed. I’m interpreting these signals.” So, it’s not only when you’re looking at relaxation, but it’s also in taking other actions. So, in the middle of the race, when you feel tight, what do you do? You go the opposite.

You shake out your arms. When you feel your arms going across and tightening up, you loosen them up. You drop your shoulders. Whenever you feel like, “Oh man, I’m really letting that fatigue hit, you take an action, which is talking out loud, and your brain goes like, hey, wait a minute.

I’m not out of breath. I can still talk out loud. It’s going to be okay.” When you feel like, “Oh, I’m really tired.” You straighten up your posture. You move forward a little bit.

You get aggressive. Your brain goes, “Oh, I’m not falling apart and going backwards. I’m aggressive. You change the inputs and often the psychology then follows.

Actions often disrupt the mental kind of catastrophizing we have. The third one,

Tool 3: Changing Your Focus

change your focus. So what we pay attention to gets valued. Okay? If I say don’t think of a pink elephant, guess what?

you’re going to think of a pink elephant because you’ve primed your attention to say focus on this thing even though you said don’t. Okay. Stress tends to narrow us. We need to often zoom out from the narrow bad thing.

We’ll say the feeling of pain and fatigue in your legs, how your stomach feels a little upset, how you feel tight. The more we focus on that, the more we amplify that. Okay? But if we can zoom out and say, “Okay, I’m gonna pay attention to the periphery.

I’m gonna look at my competitors. I’m gonna adopt instead of a harsh gaze, a soft gaze and almost a panoramic view.” Guess what? That turns down the stress a little bit and puts us more in I’m going to take in information and explore instead of what we call a narrow exploit zone. So step one with changing your focus under fatigue is often zoom out.

Step two is often to zoom back in, but on something that is actionable and productive. So, it’s saying, “Look at that guy right in front of me. I’m going to lock in. I’m going to imagine there’s a tether between me and him or me and her, and I’m not going to let go.

I’m going to focus on getting to the next 400 mark, the next lap, whatever it is. I’m going to focus on seeing my coach the next goround and lock eyes so that I have that that boost of someone is here supporting me.” you change your focus to something that is benefiting you. Okay, this fourth one, change your

Tool 4: Adjusting Goals and Comparisons

goals or comparison. So, we talked about at the beginning where your brain is often running a calculation. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Guess what?

Our goal or our comparison or how we frame success plays a large part in that calculation. Is it essentially worth it? Right? And when stress hits us, we tend to discount that goal.

We start to say, you know what, it’s not worth it for that little trophy or this race or whatever have you. We discount it. Instead, what we often have to do is amplify that a little bit. Okay?

And we’ll talk about how to do that or we have to make it meaningful. Okay? So, we have to do it for someone. Change your perspective.

We might say, “I’m going to run this mile for my daughter, my mother, my the little kid who thinks I’m the role model.” We might tell a competitor in the middle of the race what we want to hear when you’re running alongside of them. We might say, “Come on, Susie. You got this.” When that’s what we want to hear, right? You’re changing the value of the thing.

Okay? We make it meaningful. This fifth one,

Tool 5: Breaking Down Goals into Manageable Chunks

break that down, that comparison piece to make it manageable. So you’re taking your goal and instead of making it I need to finish the marathon when you’re at mile 161 17 and that feels not accomplishable. What you do is you break it down into something that’s manageable. You say I’m going to make it to mile 20 then I’ll re-evaluate.

Forget about making it to the end goal. Just stay in this pack for the next until the next turn. Okay? You’re chunking it and you’re taking the really big goal that we can’t wrap our mind around because fatigue is hitting us and you’re saying, “I’m just going to bargain with myself.” And each time you bargain with yourself, you make it a little bit closer.

And your goal is essentially to close that gap until you can smell the finish line and instincts take over and your brain goes, “Okay, yeah, I can make it to the overall finish.” So, you bargain with yourself.

Tool 6: Changing Your Self-Talk

And the last one that I’ll include is what I’d call change your self-t talk. Okay, we mentioned a little bit about talking out loud, which has an effect of kind of disrupting because we’re not used to hearing ourselves talk out loud. It makes it seem like, okay, I got this. This isn’t a big deal.

Other ways we can do it is do what I’d call distant selft talk or what research calls distant selft talk. So instead of talking to yourself in first person, you start going second or third person. Instead of come on, I can do this. It’s come on Steve, you’ve got this.

What happens is your brain hears the difference and says, “Oh, this is like a friend giving me advice. I’m actually going to listen to this.” You can also do something that I’d call disrupting the cycle. So throwing in self-t talk that is rare for yourself. If you never cuss yourself out, then every once in a while you might want to cuss yourself out in the middle of a run.

Maybe silently, but also you can do it out loud, whatever floats your boat. But it acts as this like, “Hey, wait a minute. This is a little bit different. This is a new voice.

It gets me out of that cycle of catastrophizing.” And then the last way to change your selft talk is what would a friend say to you in that moment. Okay, there’s six. I’m going to give you a bonus. I lied.

Tool 7: Shifting Perspective and Time Orientation

Seven is changing your perspective or your time orientation. So often when we’re in the thing, it feels overwhelming. It feels like it’s do or die. It feels like we’re not never going to escape this moment.

I want you to zoom way out from your time perspective and think, how would I evaluate this or look back at this when I’m done with this race? Good runner Brian Barza called this the Jedi mind trick where you feel or you picture yourself almost as third person where you’re looking back and saying, “Hey, at this moment, how am I going to see it?” Or, “How will I see this race a year from now?” If you’re nervous going into it or if you’re hurting in the middle of it, will you remember it? Probably not. You’re t you’re altering your time orientation a little bit and your perspective so that you realize, hey, yeah, this feels overwhelming in the moment, but it’s not.

It’s okay. I’m going to get through this. A good friend and former professional runner, Phoebe Wright, put it like me, put it like this to me once, asked how she stood on the line line of the Olympic trials knowing this was like her career and dream on the line. And she said, “I reminded myself that no one gives a about track and field anyways.” And there’s truth to that, but the point was it feels overwhelming in the moment.

And yeah, it’s a big deal, but she doesn’t need to make it any bigger of a deal than it actually is. Because in the grand scheme of things, the world will move on, the world will forget, and all that matters is you show up. So, there’s

Conclusion: Navigating Discomfort and Final Thoughts

seven tools on how to n discomfort. I hope that you find them valuable. If you do, like, comment, subscribe, send me your tools, your tips, comment them all. I appreciate you being a part of this channel.

And just as a heads up, my latest book, Win the Inside Game, is 50% off. So check it out. Exclusive deal. Cheapest it’s ever been.

So get your copy now. All right, everyone. Take care. Until next time.

Keep on running.