Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 124, November 2019 | Page 22

PJ’S PIECE
By PJ Moses
Be Epic, Not Tired
T
he end of the year should not be looked at with a weary eye or an exhaustive
mind, but with a twinkle in your eye and an excited mind bursting with ideas.
Yes, I know the workload was heavy. Yes, I hear you when you say that
running around after the kids made you mentally and physically tired. Yes, I know
you need a holiday. I hear all these things, and I will still look you straight in your
eyes when I say stop it!
You are not living somebody else’s life. You are not existing by someone else’s
choices. You are what you are because of the decisions you’ve made. Can we all
agree on that? Stop blaming the boss, your kids, your partner, your friends, your
relatives, and stop blaming society. There is nobody to blame for your life except
you, so deal with it. Since the tiredness and fatigue you feel is the result of the life
you have decided to live, then why don’t you choose to end your year on a different
note? Instead of complaining about the year that was, why don’t you rather
plan better for the year ahead? And don’t wait to implement your plans after the
holidays... No, start implementing your plans right now.
One of the best decisions that I ever made came on a Christmas morning. While
everybody else was still nursing their hangovers from the night before, I got up
early, put on my running shoes and went out for a one-hour fartlek. That run not
only helped me physically, but it changed the way I approached the
rest of my life. I chose to lay down a challenge to myself, and by
accepting this shake-up of my normal holiday routine, I found
a new gear that I didn’t know I had.
Forward Thinking
The key is to look forward to what can be, but we
tend to look back at what was, and in so doing we are
actively sabotaging ourselves with the limitations of our
previous successes and the pain of our past failures. A
good example of this would be the way our SA cricket
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team approaches each World Cup. They beat themselves up over what happened
to previous SA teams and thus create a fear of failure in their collective minds,
instead of an anticipation of success and a positive mindset, even when things are
not going their way. As soon as things get tough, they tend to fold because their
fear is greater than their sense of swag!
If I kept looking back at the bad things in my life, then I will never get anywhere. I
will be stuck in the storm and won’t be able to see the sunshine on the other side.
Even though I know the sun is there beyond the clouds, I will only see the rain. As
they say, the man who searches for water has a better chance of finding it than the
man who sits in one place and complains about the well running dry.
If Eliud Kipchoge believed the naysayers and the negative people who kept telling
him that a sub-two-hour marathon could not be run, then we would not have
witnessed his majestic and historic feat on the streets of Vienna in October. He
didn’t look back at his previous attempt and just accept it as a fact, like so many
around the world had. No, Eliud chose to believe, and he backed that belief by
getting up every day and reinforcing it with each action he took.
This is the example we should be following as we end off the year. We should not
be looking at what brought us down this year, but rather at what can lift us up. Not
someday in the distant future, but now, every day and in every moment. Be positive
and be audacious. Put negativity out of your mind and out of your soul. Get up
every morning with a purpose and with a stubborn intent that you will sail your ship
out of the storm and into the sunlight. Your best life is waiting for you, so go get it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: PJ is a former Cape Flats gangster who took up
running, and writing about it, when he turned his back on that dangerous
lifestyle in order to set a better example for his two sons. Today he is an
accomplished runner, from short distances to ultra-marathons, recently began
working in running retail, and his exceptional writing talent has opened still
more doors in his new life.
Most people come to the end of each year and complain
about how tired they are, and how much the past year took
out of them. They use this feeling of battle fatigue as an
excuse to slow down, do less and just switch off. I don’t like
that way of thinking. We have let society condition us this
way, and we have to actively change that, in our lives and
our running.