490 Holly Worton – How Bad Do You Want It? Finding Motivation For Your Adventures

Transcript

Dec 12, 2022 | Outdoor Adventures, Podcast Episode

HOLLY: Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into The Woods podcast episode 490. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about finding the motivation for your adventures and helping you to reflect on the question, how badly do you want it?

This episode is late this week because I have been ill for a couple of weeks which, if you are on my email list you probably already know. I lost my voice, I had to cancel two interviews, I couldn’t do any solo episodes. My voice is still a bit off but at least I no longer sound like I am croaking like a whispering frog.

So in this episode, I reflect on my experience working towards my blackbelt in kickboxing. I know that’s not an outdoor adventure, but this experience has very much informed my adventures for the last few years and vice versa.

So in this episode, I discuss what it took to pass the grading and what I learned from the experience. I also reflect on how it has affected and informed my outdoor adventures and how the activities have been mutually supportive. And this has been an episode that has been on my list for many, many, months, if not over a year. Some time ago a listener wrote in and asked me to talk about my kickboxing and he asked, what have you learned from kickboxing and what this teaches you about learning new things in general. How to handle the physical discomfort of it, but what you learned from it? And maybe what you have learned about how to learn.

I have that on my list of things to talk about and I have been waiting until now to do this episode. I didn’t think it would take this long to do it, because I thought I would be doing my grading a long time ago. So this is very much a long time in the coming.

So how badly do you want it, finding motivation for your adventures.

As a quick introduction, why did I start kickboxing in 2015? I know I always talk about the importance of knowing your why for your outdoor adventures and I have done a whole episode on that which I will link to in the show notes. But I always wanted to do a martial art, ever since I was a really little kid. I remember being in first grade and going to the library and checking books out about martial arts because I just was really interested in them at a very young age. And then never did it, never did it, never did it and then back in 2015 I was having lunch with a friend who was visiting from New Zealand and we were talking about marital arts and how we always wanted to do one and so I decided that 2015 was going to be the year when I tried it.

So that summer was when I walked the South Downs Way for the first time and when I got back I did the research, found a local school and started going to classes. And I have been doing that ever since with the exception of Covid when things were off and on and then last year when I had my shoulder injury and I couldn’t do anything really much with my shoulder.

What have I learned from kickboxing over the years? I have learned a lot of things, in addition to just the techniques and skills of kickboxing. I have learned how to do things even when I think I can’t. I started out obviously as a white belt, moved up on the grades over the years and every time it was something that I really enjoyed but it hasn’t come easy to me. And I think that’s another thing that I have learned, that is very complimentary here, is how to get better at things even when they don’t come easy to me. I kept at it because I enjoyed it and I kept at it because I wanted to improve, but this is not something that came easily to me. And I have got a blog post about martial arts and autism and that’s because I have been reflecting a lot about how my autism has made kickboxing more challenging and also how kickboxing has helped me with some of the ways my autism presents, some of the symptoms.

So for various reasons, it has been hard, it has not been easy. It is not something I started and it has just been smooth going. I think one of the things that I learned was how to get better gradually and what I loved about doing a martial art is that you have very clear milestones. You have gradings every three months, or every six months, you know, you have a syllabus to prepare, you know what you are going to be tested on, you are tested on it, and you get the next belt. I really liked those clear milestones or clear steps and having that kind of structure was really, really, useful to me because I feel like so many things in life there is no structure like that and so I really relished it, it really worked for me.

And another thing it taught me is how to do things even when I am scared of them. So sparring is something that I enjoy but sometimes it is scary and one of the things that I had to do in the latter half of the year was to really step up my sparring and to go to extra fight club classes and to force myself to go to the classes where the more challenging people were going (and a lot of them were going to these fight club classes) where they were a lot better than I was. And I was having to step up and fight with people who just were much better than me. There were some days where I didn’t want to go to class because I was tired and scared and I did it anyway because I knew that it was what I needed to do to get ready for my black belt grading which I knew was going to be a whole new level. So I have learned a lot of things about working towards a big goal.

So another question was what has this taught me about learning new things in general and what have I learned about how to learn.

Again, I really struggled at the beginning because the way this is organised, you just kind of jump in with everyone else. And in the beginning, when I first started there were two instructors and there was kind of a beginner’s group and an advanced group and now it is just all together. But the beginner’s group even though people were white through orange belt, or white through yellow, there were still people who had been there for longer, so you kind of got some instruction and got some explanation on how to do it but I was still outnumbered by people who had been there for longer and knew what they were doing. It felt like a lot to learn, a lot of different kicks, a lot of different punches, blocking those kicks and punches. I don’t know it was a lot for my brain and again I am autistic so I know that my brain is not naturally good at multitasking.

So I bought a book on kickboxing to understand all the different kicks and punches because I learn better by reading, obviously, you can’t learn kickboxing by reading but it really helped to give me a bit of foundation that I could absorb into my brain and then we practised those things in class it was like, oh right, we are doing this thing now. It seems like a weird thing to do but I found it really useful. Actually, I need to look for that book, I would like to go through it now that I know what I am doing and see what that book says. I will link to it in the show notes in case you find it interesting but I am going to check it out again and see what it is like with this new perspective, now that I know all the things at a basic level.

Another thing that I did was I regularly checked in with myself and my teacher on what I needed to improve. And this was a really important part of my learning, especially in the last six months. I did not try to pretend I was doing better than I was. I wanted to hear, I needed to hear, what needed working on so that I could focus on those things. And I really got over my ego on this, I couldn’t pretend that I was better than I was because I needed to improve on my weaknesses. And another thing that I did to improve on my weaknesses, when I was sparring with more challenging people, people who had more experience than I did, I would also ask them how to improve on the things that I was weak on.

So I am not very tall, I am only 5’3″, a lot of people are taller than I am, especially there are several tall women and so I remember one time, in one class, asking one of them, ‘I feel that I am at a huge disadvantage with you, what do I need to do when I am sparring with you to not be at such a disadvantage?’ And she kind of thought about it and we talked about it and that was really helpful. I have another tall friend in kickboxing who has really flexible legs and she is a really good kicker and she has these high kicks that I find really difficult, so I specifically would say to her when we would go to sparring class, ‘please kick me in the head, just kick me in the head because I need to: a) get over my fear of being kicked in the head or the face; and b) learn to block it. I had developed at one point this really bad habit of looking away when I was getting kicked in the head and that was one of the things that my teacher said, you cannot look away when you are being kicked in the head; you can’t get your blackbelt and be looking away. So I realised that I needed to focus on blocking the thing that scared me most which was kicks to the head.

So that was really useful, I think one of the biggest things that I have learned about how to learn from kickboxing is to just really be honest about my weaknesses and really be honest in what I needed to do to improve those and then focus in improving them.

I know the standard advice in life is to not focus on your weaknesses, but to focus on your strengths and improving your strengths, but when you have a very specific goal like passing your blackbelt grading, I found it super-useful to be clear on my weaknesses and improve them. 

As I was going I was also getting clear on what are my strengths. What am I good at? I ended up getting pretty good at blocking and defensive strategies but then not always good at offensive strategies. But it all worked out in the end and really focussing on the blocks and moving and not being afraid of those high kicks to the head, it really helped me to focus on the things that were most challenging.

So what did it take to pass the grading?

I originally thought that I was going to be ready for grading in June of the summer course, but it was really hard for me to get back to class after my, I had been off for almost a year with my shoulder. I really felt like I wasn’t starting off from where I left off, before I injured my shoulder and before Covid, I was starting off at a much more basic level. I really struggled to get back up. I also had multiple family visits, I had a lot of stuff going on in the first half of the year and I wasn’t going to class as much as I needed to prepare. And when it got time for the summer course I knew I wasn’t ready and I still asked my teacher anyway if I could do it and he said, ‘no you are not ready’. I knew he was right but I had to ask, but it was good to have that confirmation that I already knew.

So I also realised I had to step things up in a big way, I didn’t want to get to December and not be ready. So I asked friends who had already done their blackbelt grading what they did to prepare, I made a note in my journal of all the different things that they said, I did those things throughout the next six months and I did all the classes I could handle each week. I did all the sparring classes that I could, which are the fight club classes where you are just sparring. I did a weekly run to keep up with my running, a little bit, but my running fitness definitely declined this year. I practiced my line work a lot and that’s something that again, I know is a weakness for me in gradings: I am not good at understanding verbal instructions, my brain just kind of mixes things up and especially with a lot of the combinations it is really challenging for me to hear these instructions and then perform them. So, I practised that a lot.

I practised straddle stance which is also called horse riding stance, it is a weird thing where you are kind of squatting in the air and it is kind of a quad buster, it really strengthens your quads but it is something that you are tested on for the black belt grading, I think we have to do it for four minutes, so I just kept building up. My intention was to build up to six minutes but I built up to just over five and a half minutes to help with that.

I also did a ton of mindset work, so any time I got back from class, and I either received feedback from my teacher on what I needed to improve or I realised what I needed to improve or realised what I was struggling with, I would do the mindset work and I was seeing really big improvements from the mindset work alone. I don’t know why it was so effective, I have never had mindset work be so effective for me. I think that was in part because, I really wanted this really badly, I was really clear on what I wanted to improve and needed to improve and I was also taking a lot of practical action so, I would do the mindset work and then I would keep showing up for class to work on those things. I found it seriously the most effective mindset work has ever been for me.

And finally what it took was really focussing on improving my weaknesses and just getting brutally honest with myself about where I was and what I needed to improve.

So there was a question about how to handle the physical discomfort.

The grading was very intense, it was five hours on Saturday and eight hours on Sunday but in normal day-to-day, week-to-week classes, there is not a lot of physical discomfort because it is just class and sparring and yes sometimes I get kicked in the face and it hurts or my nose hurts, or I got my ribs bruised one time, but most of the time it is more mental and emotional discomfort than it is physical discomfort. And I was often scared of going to fight club but I just did it because I knew that was what I needed to do to pass my grading and I think what the biggest thing was for me. I just did what I needed to do, I forced myself to go, because I knew that’s what it was going to take.

It is like times in the past when I have not felt like going out for a training run, but I have done it anyway because I knew I had a race coming up. When you have a big goal you know you have got to do what you have got to do to prepare for that goal, especially a physical goal, you have got to get your body in shape to do the goal, to achieve the goal, to work towards the goal. And I think that’s why it is so important to me to have a race in the calendar if I am focussed on running, or have a grading in the calendar if I am focussed on kickboxing, because it is a deadline, it is a very clear deadline on: you’ve got to get into shape by this date, because if you don’t you are not going to achieve the goal, you are not going to finish the thing, or you are going to really suffer… and I don’t like suffering and so that’s why I like to train in advance.

I had a lot of physical discomfort when I got my ribs bruised, I got kicked really, really, hard to the ribs, I don’t know when that was, October? I actually thought they might be fractured and went to the doctor, got an X-ray, it was inconclusive but in the end, I think they were just bruised. But I just did what it took after that to not get injured again, I went back to wearing, I have a couple of different chest protector shields to prevent injuries, some of them just cover the breasts and some of them cover more of the ribs and I went back to wearing the big shield that covers the ribs, because I wanted to prevent further injuries because I couldn’t stay out of practice.

Then on grading day, yes, there was physical discomfort. It was very intense and it was a lot of hours and so I just pushed through and I focused on what I could do which was keep going, keep hydrated, eat snacks when possible. There weren’t a lot of breaks but I brought sports gels with me because I figured that was easy to suck down, so whenever I had a break to have a glass of water sometimes I would grab a sports gel and down that. I probably still didn’t eat enough but I was fine in the end, I got through it. However, there were some last minute problems.

The Monday before grading I got really bad cold or flu, I don’t know what it was. I was online googling, ‘what’s the difference between a cold and a flu?’, I don’t know what I had because I kind of ticked the boxes for both. It wasn’t Covid because I tested and it was negative. I don’t know what it was but it was bad, I felt awful, I have not been that ill in ten years. I had this whole last week planned to step up my practice and step up my straddle stance and step up my line work and step up all the last-minute things that I needed to do to finalise my training and I couldn’t do them because I felt terrible. So I had to completely change my plan to focus 100% on getting better. And that meant sleeping as much as I could, staying in bed all day, doing the minimal amount of work and just focussing on recovering my body. I wasn’t hungry and didn’t feel like eating so my husband was feeding me protein shakes and that was kind of all I was eating for like a week.

Then I got to the Friday the night before grading and I still didn’t know if I could go. I had spent all week…every day I would cry, and I would say, ‘I can’t believe I got this bug thing the week before my grading, I have worked so hard for this and I cant go’. My husband kept saying, ‘it’s not Saturday yet, decide on Saturday’. And then Friday night, I was messaging a friend she sent me a message to say, good luck tomorrow. And I said, ‘you know what, I don’t think I can go, I don’t think I can do it I have been ill all week’. And we were kind of messaging back and forth, back and forth and I just thought, I am gutted, I don’t think I can…it is a challenging thing even when you are physically well, but if you are as ill as I was, I didn’t think there was any way I could do it. So I tried to imagine what it would be like if I didn’t go, that I was going to have to spend another six months really intensively focussing on kickboxing, doing all the stuff that I had spent the last six months doing to try to grade in summer. But that’s not guaranteed either, what if I fell ill in the summer? And I tried to imagine what that would be like. And I thought you know what? I would rather go and try and fail than be left at home in bed wondering what if? So I drugged myself up with a bunch of cold medicine and I went and so many other people were ill, there were so many people coughing and blowing their noses, I think a third of us were ill. And I got through it!

So this truly was, for me, a lesson in how much do you want it.

And I was journaling about this I don’t know whether it was the evening of the grading or the day after. So many people often ask me where I get the motivation to do the things that I do and it is something that I have struggled to answer, because I don’t know I just do them. Now I understand that when I have a goal that’s important to me I just do what it takes to make it happen.

Last year when I ran 100k it was important to me, that was a big goal and so I just did what it took to make it happen, I did what it took to train and then I did what it took on the day to finish. And I think that’s the important thing, is that your goals are important to you, that they are meaningful to you. That you are clear on what your why is, why are you doing this thing, is it just because it sounds good? Is it because you think you should have that goal, is it because someone else wants you to have that goal, or do you really want the thing?

So I really wanted it and so I had a plan, I asked friends what they did to get ready and I did that and I did it and I just did what it took.

I think that sometimes when people struggle with their motivation either they don’t want it badly enough or they don’t know their ‘why’. And this has just been such a massive eye-opener for me because like I said I didn’t think I would be able to go but it was so important to me that I just did it and I made it happen and I got through it and, yes, it was hard, it was challenging, but I passed, I achieved my goal that I had been working towards little-by-little since 2015. And this is a really long-term goal, and I think it has also been really interesting to have such a long-term goal because I think a lot of times our goals are three months from now, or six months from now, or by the end of the year, but this has been such a long term thing that I have little-by-little been working towards and moving up and getting the next belt and finally getting here. It has been such a massive journey and I never could have stuck with it if it hadn’t been important to me. Also, I enjoy it, I am not forcing myself to do something I hate, but like I said it hasn’t been easy but I have kept with it because it was important to me.

And kickboxing has been super helpful to me in terms of improving in my outdoor adventures. It has given me the confidence to be outdoors alone. I generally feel safer in the world. It has helped me to go camping alone, because even in a campground sometimes if it is really quiet if I go camping in winter sometimes I do get uncomfortable but I feel more confident, I feel more comfortable being outdoors alone and just in the world alone because I feel like I am better with self-defence and I hold myself differently than I used to, just more confidence. It has been super, super, useful.

And conversely, my outdoor adventures have helped my kickboxing. All those ultras I ran last year, the little training ones I did on my own and then the two races, those helped me to get through the grading with a completely different attitude. I viewed this grading as an ultra rather than some horrible thing that I had to get through…it was an endurance event. It completely shifted how I approached it. When I think about all the other advanced gradings that I have done that weren’t even as hard as this and there were always moments where I thought, ‘oh how can I go on, I can’t go on, I can barely handle this, I can’t handle it, I don’t know’. And that didn’t happen to me at all, I just did what it took on the weekend. It was like they said, next we are doing this and I just did the next thing; and next we are doing this and I did that thing. And I did all the things and then finished. It was a completely different mindset. And all the mindset work really helped me to pass because throughout all of this as I said earlier I focused on my negative mind chatter, my negative thoughts and my fears and I worked on them every week and I focussed on what I needed to improve and I worked on the mindset stuff on what I needed to improve.

So when you are thinking about your own outdoor adventures or any kind of adventure or life goals or whatever ask yourself, how bad do I want this? Am I willing to do what it takes? And that was one of the mindset statements that I would do, ‘I do what it takes to get my blackbelt’ and that’s what I did, I did what it took.

So whenever you are in life thinking am I motivated enough to do this? I don’t think I am motivated enough to do this. Where can I get motivation from? How can I get motivation. Ask yourself, how badly do I want this? And maybe you don’t want it bad enough and that’s ok, you don’t have to do all the things, I have certainly learned this year that I can’t do all the things. I had to pick one and this one was the most important one and I did it.

So I hope this story was useful to you, because I think a lot of us have these big goals and sometimes we don’t achieve them. And I think back to other goals that I’ve had, maybe not adventure-related goals, but business-related goals or career-related goals and I just think I didn’t achieve them because they weren’t as important to me – and that’s fine.

So I think a lot of times we get down on ourselves for not achieving goals but I think that’s just as I’ve said before on this podcast, there is no failure there is only feedback, you haven’t failed to achieve a goal, you have got feedback. Maybe that goal just wasn’t important enough for you to prioritise it. That’s fine, don’t turn it into a value judgement: I am bad because I didn’t achieve this goal or I am not good enough because I didn’t achieve this goal…it just wasn’t a priority and maybe you have too many goals and you need to pair them down. That was another lesson I learned this year!

So I feel like this episode is the culmination of so many things that I have talked about this year as I have been on this journey to working towards this goal.

So that’s it for now, I hope you found this episode interesting and useful.

If you have any big goals coming up that you are working on, please drop me a line and let me know, I would love to hear about them. You can email me at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.