Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

by Alexi Pappas

My earliest memory of running was in the first grade when a boy in my class made fun of my best friend, and I not only chased him down but caught him and stabbed him with a pencil to make sure he knew I wasn’t fucking around.

What I now understand is that a successful person can be successful in anything, the good and the bad. This is both empowering and heartbreaking.

One night, before a particularly daunting workout, I typed out this poem: run like a bravey sleep like a baby dream like a crazy replace can’t with maybe It was the first time I used the word bravey, and it stuck. It became the label for a mini-movement, a self-identifier for those who are willing to chase their dreams even though it can be intimidating and scary. It celebrates the choice to pursue a goal and even relishes the pain that comes with effort. There is nobility to it; it’s something to be celebrated.

Imagination, at the very least, brings us joy; at the very most, it empowers us to suspend disbelief and chase the impossible.

do believe there’s a healthy spectrum of parental attention that exists, with my dad closer to one end of the spectrum and a helicopter parent on the opposite end. But here’s the thing: On the helicopter side of the spectrum, at its very worst, a parent’s personal ego can become wrapped up in his or her kid’s life. They see their kid as a reflection of themselves and they can’t bear to let the kid out of their grip.

As an adult, I so often notice parents telling their kids that their hair looks so good this way or that, or how they might try pushing their nail cuticles down just a tad, or a million other small things that seem like no big deal but are actually just one of a million small ways to make a kid feel ever so much more under their parent’s thumb. Parents aren’t meant to protect their kids from failure or heartbreak or being ugly—those things are all a natural part of growing up and figuring things out. I get that it can be hard for parents to let go in this way and watch their kid flounder. It’s not a very pretty sight. Maybe for a parent, the hardest thing to do is to let their kid fail. But I believe that reducing a child’s pain to nothing is far worse.

Since my dad’s ego never stood between me and my failures and successes, my failures and successes were entirely my own. I owned them, all of them.

The focus of high-school sports should be on human development, not high achievement. Competition results are a by-product, not the end goal.

When you’re chasing a big goal, you’re supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time. If the ratio is off and you feel good all the time, then you’re not pushing yourself enough. Likewise, if you feel bad all the time, then you might be fatigued and need to dial things back.

A good coach does not worry about letting you grow up right in front of them. Because a good coach knows you will. That’s what a coach does: They get you ready and then they let you go.

Trail running in the woods is one of my favorite activities. It gives me a different type of joy than road running or racing; it’s a joy that touches every sense individually and makes me feel ebullient, present, and connected to the earth.

Depression is more than just sadness; it’s an entire distortion of perspective.

He gave me one of the most valuable truths anyone has ever taught me: First your actions change, then your thoughts, then finally your feelings, in that specific order.

In college, we were assigned a book to read called Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney. Their thesis states that our ability to make constructive choices and accomplish things is governed by our willpower, and our willpower for a given day is finite. When our willpower is depleted we are less likely to be disciplined about the choices we make and less likely to be effective in whatever we’re trying to do. Willpower is a measurable and depletable resource.

I coined one of my favorite personal mantras, “Tomorrow Starts Tonight,” because before I go to bed I lay out my clothes, pack my day bag, set up my coffee pot, and even write a to-do list and schedule. Every micro-decision that I can make for myself ahead of time leaves me more willpower to dedicate to training the next morning, or to whatever big task is on my plate. If you’re planning your day on the fly, there’s no way it’ll be as efficient.

Through sports, my dad showed me how to approach challenge with grace, grit, and the fundamental understanding that losing is okay. In fact, losing is an ingredient of winning: Along the way to being good enough to win at something, you will inevitably lose.

If you find someone who pulls you out of the real world and makes you feel like the two of you are inside your own little snow globe, hold on to them.

They emanated confidence and helped me understand that a lean, strong body was not repulsive; it was attractive. It doesn’t project unlikability, as I thought before; it projects discipline. Discipline, I learned, just means making choices in favor of your goals. It doesn’t mean you’re un-chill; it means you know what you want.

I know I’m not the only one who feels sad in this way about a parent. Maybe the sadness begins the moment we are born, when we subconsciously become forever grateful to those people who made us possible. And so whenever we behave badly toward those people, even in little ways, like when I cut off a phone call with my dad too quickly, guilt rubs up against gratitude and gives birth to sadness.

I thought for a moment about how running is really a team sport masked as an individual sport. I love being on teams—from playing soccer in my youth to being on film sets today, I feel the greatest sense of purpose and fulfillment in team environments. And I thought about how I love running in the same way that I love acting, because even though your success in both disciplines is measured by your individual performance, you will be better and find more joy when you build others up and support those around you.

A common trait I’ve discovered among competitive athletes is that we never like to make ourselves feel like failures. Even if we did not meet our expectations for how a competition would go, we can see it through a lens of growth rather than failure, and in time come to feel good about ourselves.

Some athletes think they are being authentic or relatable by publicly wallowing in their setbacks. It is comforting, in a way, to watch people fail. But I’m not here to comfort anyone. I always see my failures in terms of how they can make me more successful moving forward.

I think it’s good to acknowledge things we want to improve on in the future, but if we allow our minds to disregard our victories and marinate in our failures, then it’s easy to believe that we are failures. It’s important to actively be mindful of the good things.

Losses and setbacks are instructional, not damaging. Life is not about reducing our pain to nothing, it is about embracing pain and challenge as an invitation to rise and grow.

To be committed is to be dead set on achieving your goal no matter how much tedious work it takes. If you aren’t committed, then you’re only interested. Someone who is interested will dedicate some time and energy to a goal, but not enough to make it happen no matter what.

Sometimes, people will have convinced themselves that they’re committed, but in reality they’re only committed just enough to check the box “tried to pursue dreams” before retreating to the safety of the backup plan.

The first step to committing is to write down your goal so that it is not just a thing floating inside of your head. This way, you’re holding yourself to something tangible, and when you achieve your dream you’ll have the physical proof that you were brave enough to want it in the first place. You talk about it like it’s real, you take it seriously, and this makes it more inevitable. Inevitability is like momentum: It starts slowly and with difficulty, but it builds over time until it’s as clear and powerful as if it always existed. Writing down your goal is the first step.

A great coach once told me that when the pain sets in during a workout, it takes less mental energy to push harder than it does to think about slowing down or stopping.

It can feel safer to think that certain things are impossible than to believe that just about anything is possible if you are scrappy, creative, and bold, and don’t give up—if you see barriers