My experience at WTM has caused me to grapple with the question of how to deal with expectations. Specifically, how can I be more effective at setting expectations for myself, and - more importantly - how can I learn to deal with the ramifications of exceeding, meeting or failing to meet those expectations?
The reality of the situation is that I had expectations for how I would perform, and I failed to meet them. Before the event, it seemed perfectly reasonable to think I would finish 50 miles and stay on the course all 24 hours. It would be difficult, but doable. The reality was that I finished 30 miles and spent a substantial amount of time in the Pit Area. I still received the black headband, but I wasn't on the course all 24 hours. So, should I feel bad about setting unrealistic expectations or should I feel bad about failing to meet realistic expectations? Or, should I feel good about surviving 30 rough and rigorous miles on a tough course six months after Achille's tendon reconstruction surgery? Or, should I simply view WTM 2013 as a learning experience that will help me succeed at WTM 2014? How much "slack" should I allow myself based on my Achilles injury (in other words, was I at 60% of what I could have been without the injury)?
I have grappled with each of these questions, and I have to admit that it's tough for me to avoid the negativity. Intellectually, I completely understand that 50 miles is an arbitrary goal that I set for no reason other than it sounded doable. Emotionally, though, I struggle with not having met that completely arbitrary number of miles. This was crystalized most concretely midway through the sixth lap when I came to realize that I wouldn't be able to go for a seventh. This was a difficult thing to admit to my Mudder Brothers, but I came to realize that I was losing whatever strength I had in my upper body and would depend almost completely on them to help me over walls. Additionally, I wouldn't necessarily be able to control my descent on the other side (a real fear crept into my mind because of this and the potential impact of my ankle injury on landing safely). This seemed unfair to Danny and Brian because I would be sapping whatever strength they still had, and thus would make it more difficult for them to keep going. I wouldn't have minded simply skipping the walls and doing the alternate options, but I was really fearing flipping tires as the alternative for Berlin Walls. The last thing I wanted to do was fail the walls, and then be DQ'd because I failed the tires as well.
My achilles injury threw me for a loop in many ways. Aside from the fact that the recovery was difficult and slow, the uncertainty of my status forced me to hold off until VERY late in the game as to whether I would even participate in WTM. Add into the mix the fact that my injury made it difficult for me to effectively train for the rigors of the event, and it's not hard to see these issues as compounding upon each other. The biggest issue, though, is that I personally have a very tough time differentiating between REASONS and EXCUSES. What others may see as perfectly acceptable reasons, I have difficulty differentiating from excuses. But, perhaps this is too much navel-gazing, and there isn't really a difference between these two things and I'm choosing to look at my achievements in the more negative light.
Now, in reading this it is easy to think that my predominant reaction to WTM is negative, but that's not the case at all. I had a fantastic time, met fantastic people, got to spend quality time solving the problems of the world with my Mudder Brothers, and feel better prepared to tackle WTM 2014. The negative aspects of this are all internal doubts about how ready I was for the rigors and how willing I was to push through physical and mental barriers that I could have successfully pushed through with a little more mental freakin' grit. I'll always have my doubts about the answers to those questions, and the only real remedy is to surpass my expectations in 2014 events.
Transitioning to the lessons for educational and leadership settings, I think there are two big take aways from my experience at WTM. First, attempt to be as realistic as possible with setting goals. Don't necessarily choose goals that are easy to achieve, but have a good sense of the reasoning for setting goals. You can set the bar higher than you might normally in order to push yourself, but make sure to have a reason for the height that you set. The second, and perhaps more difficult, lesson is to try to view any failure to meet those expectations as a learning opportunity rather than a negative. It's trite to say that failure only truly counts as failure if you learn no lessons from it, but it's also true. It's not necessarily easy to see the roots of success in failure, but if we can use it as motivation to improve then we're already moving in the right direction. I'm starting to transition to thinking about my failure to meet my WTM expectations as an opportunity to improve for next year, and I'd like to think that this constitutes a different kind of success.
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