Just last month, my former podcast guest Jack Hsueh was back at the starting line of the Tor des Géants, a 330 km (about 205-mile) race through the Italian Alps. This time, he pushed his way to the finish line. It’s a story about effort, and about knowing when it’s worth it.
Jack loves an endurance challenge. He’s run races like the Tahoe Rim Trail 100 and Western States 100, but the ultimate is Tor.
He’d finished it once before. When we talked in 2022, he had just attempted it again and didn’t finish (DNF). He was conflicted in the middle of the run: “Do I keep going? Is it worth possibly injuring myself? Am I okay with not holding to my commitment?” Weighing it all, he chose to drop out. The cost wasn’t worth the personal reward.
We also talked about effort, and how hard work is both what prepares him and what makes it worthwhile. “Putting in the work,” as he described it, didn’t guarantee a successful outcome, but it gave him confidence going out on the course and let him trust that his preparation would carry him through. Hard work builds self-efficacy, which in turn fuels our motivation.
Soon after, Jack took a new professional role and didn’t have time to train, so he put the Tor ambition on the backburner for a few years. Until this year.
Here’s how Jack reflected on finishing, using The Lord of the Rings as an analogy (his Instagram post is worth checking out for the photos alone):
“There’s no question that finishing Tor was always the goal. But if it had been any easier to cross beneath that finishing arch, I would have felt robbed of the full experience. Thus, there was this evolution from trying to wrap my head around the difficulty of the course, to becoming wont to whatever crazy steep ascent or exposed descent would come up next, to being glad at the end that it was not one step easier.
Maybe that’s the thing about the ring. The burden never really changes. What changes is your relationship with it.”
Same event. Same terrain. Same challenge. Last time, the effort risked injury. This time, the struggle was the reward. What changed? Jack’s relationship with the effort.
I love this because it shows both sides of Right Effort, the third pillar of the Sustainable Ambition Method. Sometimes the sustainable choice is to stop, to recover, to care for ourselves. Other times, it’s to lean into the challenge and let it be part of the fulfillment.
As ambitious people who want to pursue our goals sustainably, we may think putting in a lot of effort means we’re doing it wrong, that things should come easier or that we’re overextending ourselves. Perhaps sometimes. But hard work isn’t bad. There can be joy and satisfaction in putting in the effort, as Jack found.
Where might you want to dial in your effort as you move through this last quarter of the year? Below are a few Conscious Ambition Tips to explore this for yourself.
Here’s to choosing our challenges wisely.
Want to get insights, tips, and tools on how to live with Sustainable Ambition? Join in here. Welcome!
Sustainable Ambition offers a strategic approach for pursuing our professional and personal goals in a way that is motivating, meaningful, and manageable from stage to stage, rather than be all consuming in a way that compromises other important aspects of our lives or sacrifices our well-being.