WREN Stories: Building resilience through physical activity

This month's WREN (Workforce Race Equality Network) Stories blog comes from Vishal Sharma from our Clinical Effectiveness Team.

“Your reasons to continue must be bigger than your reasons to quit.” – Ross Edgley, The Art of Resilience

My name is Vishal Sharma and I’m the Knowledge and Evaluation Lead within the Trust’s Clinical Effectiveness Team. Knowing what to write for my blog post was tricky. So I decided to break down my learnings into three key areas, in the hope that it might encourage others to try something new.

  1. Channelling your motivation

At the start of lockdown finding motivation was difficult; everything was different and uncertain, and engaging in the norm felt odd. So I initially turned to reading, and two books in particular – Ross Edgley’s The Art of Resilience and David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me – provided an impetus for change. The idea of pushing your body past the limits imposed by yourself or others was intriguing, and gave me the motivation to see what I could achieve.  The books emphasised the physical and psychological (managing stress) benefits that come from exercise and that motivation needs to come from within – you exercise for the sake of exercise, not for some external reward. I felt this would be a useful skill to develop for the future.

  1. Finding an activity

I have, what might be considered, some unusual hobbies – archery and knife/axe throwing, as well as the more common running and going to the gym. Over the years I have learnt that the key is to find activities you enjoy and that encourage you to keep active.  So I set myself challenges, small ones at first to build momentum, such as shooting 30 arrows per day, or running 5k three times a week. I tracked my progress and over the months the challenges increased in difficulty, to the point where in November I ran 5k every day and in December I set myself the challenge of running 300km over the month. In fact in December I ended up running 300km and walking a further 200km. Each challenge built on the learnings from the books and from my experience, and each encouraged me to push myself a little more – building that mental and physical strength.

  1. Getting support

Even though internal motivation is key, having support from colleagues and friends can prove just as important. In November, the Trust had its activity challenge, which I entered with Alice Stoba, and we provided support to each other to keep us on track to win the team challenge. In December, I entered the stepping challenge, organised by Emma Brookshaw, and the support and friendly competition within the Whatsapp group encouraged me to keep going. In fact it was a conversation with Emma that motivated me to reach the 200km walking target on the last day. Sharing my goals and progress on Twitter with the @LypftRunners community kept me accountable and it seems it also encouraged others to start doing more physical activity.

We are fortunate to work in a Trust where everyone supports one another, and I’ve been lucky to make new friends across the Trust; something I never thought would happen when I started my first challenge all those months ago.