The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

by Kelly McGonigal

The athletes learned to focus on the present moment. They didn’t let themselves get overwhelmed by thinking too far ahead. When the totality of what they faced overwhelmed them, they committed to finishing just one more lap, one more mile, or one more step.

Many focused on the impermanence of their present pain. As one athlete told herself, “Sooner or later, the last lap will be done.” This mentality wasn’t simply about imagining a pain-free future. It was also about savoring a present moment that included both pleasure and pain.

One athlete pretended that whatever lap he was swimming or mile he was biking was the last he would ever do in his life. This mindset brought out an anticipatory nostalgia and a fierce desire to enjoy the moment fully, even with the pain it contained.

The physical hardship is the means to cultivating the mental strengths.

Experiencing a state of elevation during a moment of deep exhaustion provides a reminder that flashes of pure happiness can take you by surprise even when things seem the most bleak. Knowing this is possible is how we survive our worst pain. Finding a way for suffering and joy to coexist—that is how humans endure the seemingly unendurable.

As Jethro De Decker said after surviving the catastrophic 2018 Yukon Arctic Ultra, “Can there be a better way to work out who you are?”

It took her four hours to reach the top of the cliff. Standing at the edge, she looked down to savor the magnificent view. “What it taught me wasn’t that you overcome fear or make fear go away,” Schneider told me. “What changed for me is I can have a relationship with fear where I’m holding the cards. I can control how I experience fear. I learned I can analyze my fear, look at it, create a relationship with it, have it be information rather than a showstopper. I can be the decider.”

“When faced with an illness, so much of the bullshit is stripped away,” she said. “When we are vulnerable, our capacity for connection, although perhaps harder to lean into, is deepened.”