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The first time my 74-year old mentor advised me to increase my endurance level; it practically made no sense to me. It was after an exhaustive day, at 2 am midnight, and all I wanted was REST. He didn't think so.

As usual, he started lecturing me on endurance and productivity. This time around, I was not in listening mood. He felt I could still work some more, I felt if I tried to work more, I would slump. How I wish he could just understand that I had reached my breaking point. After the night’s conversation, the only thing I could remember was “exercising your body and mind can help you increase your endurance.” 

Although I know he jogs every day, I never attached any special meaning to it until after our discussion on endurance and productivity. I determined to find out how to increase my endurance, and do more. Few days later, I started jogging.

My First Experience…

Some things appear easy until you try to do them. Jogging is one of such things for me. At my first attempt, it felt good. But few minutes after starting, all my bones were aching and my feet itching.

I was also panting heavily and sweating profusely. I had to struggle to carry myself home after the first round, I was sure I would never jog again. But amazingly, I felt good throughout that day, So good that I decided to continue.

Few days after starting, I noticed something funny. The distance that usually gets me exhausted was small chops for me. I completed it easily without panting nor sweating. In fact, I went for another round. Unknowing to me, I had started experiencing a psychological shift that was going to affect my work ethics and my endurance level.

Days later, my approach to work remarkably changed. I could stay longer on work without stress nor fatigue. Sometimes, after working all night, I still have enough energy and motivation to jog for some minutes.

Avoid Shortcuts...
Do you like shortcuts? Beverly Sills said "there is no shortcut to anywhere worth going." If your life has been filled with many short cuts, you will realise that someday, you will pay dearly for them. Please understand my context. By saying avoid short cut, I am not discouraging smart work. But there is a difference between work, hard work, smart work and hard smart work. Even if you don't need to understand all of them, I am sure you must have found yours.

Usually while jogging, you will see routes that can lead you to your destination faster, but following them means defying the objectives of the exercise, weakening your endurance.   My mentor never minds starting his work from scratch, if he notices errors that he could easily cover up, not minding the huge investment of time, resources and energy. He understands the word of J.R.R Tolkien: "shortcuts make long delays."

Lennox Lewis says "I have found that taking shortcuts will get you to the place you don't want to be much quicker than they get you to the place you want to be. Jogging trains your mind to embrace delayed gratification and avoid unnecessary short cuts."

Beat your Records...

When last did you say I have tried my best? The best of people is a function of their mind; their level of endurance. Never settle down with past records. The excellence of yesterday is mediocrity today. Beating past records means getting comfortable at being uncomfortable, according to the Navy Seals.

Jogging taught me that tiredness and fatigue are all functions of the mind. The same distance that got me very tired and weak on my first day of jogging, had no effect the following week. I thought I tried my best.

Someone said: your body believes every word that you say to it. The mind is like an elastic, and it is difficult to know it's breaking point. Chukwu Tochukwu wrote about his jogging experience: "I jog every Saturday for a month now and my thoughts and reasons for jogging have always been to increase my endurance level."

I find this inspiring because increased endurance influences other areas of life, and produces amazing results. I agree with the person that said excellence means doing your work a little better than what is expected. Cultivating a lifestyle of excellence means pushing yourself further, harder and going an extra mile to beat existing records.

Overcome Discouragements...

Someone said: "Tough times never last, tough people do.”. Jogging can help you stay motivated in the middle of discouragements. Impossibility is a word my mentor hates hearing. In fact, he has an avoidance theorem for people with the impossibility syndrome. 

One of the numerous things I learnt from him is "don't let anything distract you from your chosen course."

Routines and Consistency...

Building your will power to do what you want at the time you want is quite a difficult task, but it becomes possible through routines and habits. It also requires consistency. Dr Mike Murdock observed that "successful people do consistently what unsuccessful people do occasionally."

You might be motivated to start jogging after reading this article, that is good. But don't let the transformation that should take place elude you by indiscipline and inconsistency. The emphasis of this article is to point out how jogging helps in developing mental strength by increasing endurance. This however would require discipline and determination to be produce the desired results.

Benefits of Jogging...

The benefits of physical exercises, most especially jogging, are much. Some of these are

1.        Increased Resilience: People have different ways of responding to stress. Some give up while some break down. Jogging in itself is a practice on how to cope and tolerate discomfort.

2.        It facilitates delayed gratification: Sometimes, it takes mental toughness to say no to sleep or comfort for the sake of future reward.

3.       Increased Muscles: Jogging reduces your fat level, burns off calories more, and increases your muscle mass

4.       Aging: Jogging also acts as antiaging, and improves the abilities of the heart and the lungs.

5.      Stress Reliever: When you sweat during jogging, it releases endorphin are released off, which have analgesic effects.

Last but not the least, personally, jogging helps me to clear my mind and opens me up to creative ideas. Sometimes during jogging, I feel so much creativity that I have to stop on the road to write out some ideas on my e-notepad. I I also found out that jogging helps me overcome laziness and procrastination, to work for as long as I want.