Mental Toughness 101: Mind states
Practice the art of zoning out and zooming in during your run.
Welcome to Mental Toughness 101, a semi-regular series where we’ll discuss terms and techniques that can help get you over the mental hump. Today’s topic: dissociative and associative mind states.
Have you ever gone into a run thinking it was going to be a good day? You’re brimming with confidence, even a touch of swagger, but within a few minutes realize something isn’t quite right. Your spirit may be willing, but your legs feel sluggish and weak. You have neither rhythm nor flow. You’re just plodding.
The more you try to lean into your body and coax it to go faster, the more it resists. Your emotions rush through the spin cycle as you go from annoyed to frustrated to just plain mad, until all traces of those chill pre-run vibes have disintegrated.
This very thing happened to me recently during a run in which I was A) motivated and B) well rested. On the surface, it didn’t make a lick of sense, but our bodies are not machines. Sometimes they take a little longer to get into gear than we’d like. Rather than fight myself, I tuned my brain to a mental frequency called dissociation.
Dissociation is the process of creating distance between yourself and a difficult situation, in this case, running. By directing attention away from the thing that’s hard and focusing on literally anything else – the trees, a work project, the music in our headphones – we’re able to endure far more than we thought we could.
At times, my focus was on external objects – like noticing a lone wildflower poking up from a dried marsh. At others, I allowed thoughts to float freely through my subconscious. Family, friends, the narrative history of the Grateful Dead during the Keith and Donna years. Whatever. My only goal was to think about anything other than the run.
It sounds strange that daydreaming can be an example of mental toughness, but the ability to dissociate from physical pain and/or mental fatigue is a powerful tool for every runner.