“Love and connection outweighs willpower.
It’s not about winning the race. It’s about running together.”
– Steve Napolitan
Today, I’m going to talk about the book Born to Run. And it’s not just about running. It’s about life. And life is what I’m all about. When I read the book, I got so much more out of it than just about running.
At first, it helped me improve my running. I had the longest run in my life; I ran 14 miles and I ran for five days in a row which I never could do before. What I learned was, we are born to run as human beings.
Interesting fact: Every time we’ve been in a recession or even a depression like the Great Depression, ultra-running spiked in popularity. In the ’70s, another spike in runners. Then after the dot-com bust and in 2008 again, the recent recession we had, we also had a bunch of runners come out.
In the book, you find out about the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, who can run for miles and miles. They’ll just get up in the morning, have breakfast, and then they’ll run from what equivalently would be from New York to Chicago just to do it. And there is a story about a female athlete who really wanted to compete with the Tarahumara Indians and beat them. The Indians were invited to their first official race in Colorado, way up in the Rockies.
As the race progressed, this female athlete was winning. She had an almost 20-30-minute lead. The only thing left to do was for her to conquer the final huge hill towards the end of the race. So, she’s running fiercely. Everyone in the booth is watching her and her face looked so fierce and focused!
Everyone is thinking, “Oh, she’s going to beat the Tarahumara Indians.” Well, the Tarahumara Indians started showing up about 30 minutes later, and guess what, everyone in the booth’s faces shifted from seeing what she was going to win, to looking at the Tarahumara Indians. Because they were running, and they were laughing, having a good time, and enjoying the 80-mile race!
You had one woman that had tremendous willpower, driving fiercely up this hill and the Tarahumara Indians coming up behind her just laughing and having a good old time. And guess what? The Indians won the race!
This is the key distinction in their mindset. They didn’t run to win. They ran because they enjoyed it.
But the book goes further than that. The Indians running up the hill were running in packs. They were enjoying each other’s’ company. They had a strong connection with others and that is what would carry them across long distances.
Endurance came from love.
What I want you to understand is this book is about connecting with other humans and having love for each other. It’s not about winning the race. It’s about running together. We as humans, we do better together. I want you to also know that love and connection outweigh willpower. That’s what this story was about.
So, ask yourself this, where can you start connecting with other people? How can you express love? Because it’s not just when you’re out there running or exercising, it’s everything.
In your business: how can you connect more with your staff and with your clients?
Seek that connection. And remember …
Choose Gratitude Create Freedom
Steve Napolitan
