Five half-marathons in five days wasn’t about mileage—it was about mindset. In this episode Jonathan breaks down why humans need structured challenge, how action rewires identity (virtue in practice), and why you should pick your hard: the hardship of disciplined growth over the hardship of regret. You’ll learn a simple framework to create momentum when life is busy and the weather’s freezing, plus how to turn pain points (injury, fatigue, self-doubt) into progress.

You’ll learn

• Why we need goals that stretch (not crush) us
• The Action → Identity flywheel: behavior shapes character
• “Pick Your Hard” in business, fitness, and family life
• Micro-challenges you can start today

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Well, hey there, my friend Jonathan Doyle with you.

Welcome aboard to the Daily Podcast.

So pleased you're here.

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J Doyle speaks one word.

J doyle speaks.

You will have followed last week's adventure where I decided.

To run five half marathons in five days.

So I got up on Monday morning about three 30 in the morning

and ran the first half marathon.

And then I ran one every morning, uh, until yesterday.

So finished the last one at about 7:00 AM yesterday, and

uh, look, I got a crazy life.

It's busy.

I got kids and I gotta get it done before, sort of seven 30 in the morning.

Uh, a couple of days.

It was like minus four.

And one of the questions that sort of has come up constantly

were, well, well, two things.

I guess.

The feedback from people are one.

Is a lot of people asking, are you crazy?

Like, are you literally not normal?

Not well?

Like is there a mental issue here?

And the second one is the more obvious question, which is why?

So I've actually spent a fair bit of time thinking about this, and I guess the first

point is not everybody needs to do this.

I'm not saying that people should go out and do this kind of thing.

I've always taught that it's relative, like the challenges that we have.

That we set for ourselves a relative, like, you know, if you are, uh, in really

poor health and you're just trying to turn things around, I always say that walk

into the letterbox one day and then walk into the letterbox twice the second day

and maybe three times on the third day.

You get the point.

Like it's, it's relative.

If you are a Olympic level athlete, then you're challenges are gonna be different.

I think what is important is that we look for significant challenges.

So I'm gonna try and tie a few ideas here together that I've been thinking

about to try and like, I guess help us understand why I did this and

what it's pointing towards and how it might be useful to all of us.

I guess what I noticed was I need things to do.

If, uh, normally I'm traveling and speaking a great deal.

I've had a few weeks, uh, where I'm not speaking, I'm heading to the US on a,

speaking through in a couple of weeks.

But, you know, it's been a bit of downtime and I just find that if I don't have

structure, if I don't have a purpose, if I don't have something in front of me

that has to be done, I get a bit restless.

I don't know if you have that experience, but I think we need things in front of us.

I think there's something central to the human experience that we need.

Challenges in front of us, and if they're not there, if they're not

structured by the life that we're living, we have to sort of choose them.

I think, I think we actually have to kind of create things

that are there for us to do.

You know, there's a, there's a balance that we need to strike between just the

mundane, predictable routine of life.

Then alongside that is moments of, you know, difficult things and adventure.

And I was thinking about if you, if you've ever read the books or

seen, uh, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the key characters there,

the hobbits, they kind of love their predictable, comfortable, routine life.

Like they absolutely love it.

It's kind of a theme in the book, how much they like the simple things of life

things to be the same with no change.

But then there's this tension because they sort of can get stuck there too long.

And then eventually some of the key characters get swept

up into this epic adventure.

So there's this sense of routine and normality is good for us, and it's

something that gives us stability and gives us community and relationships.

But then we also need something outside of that to keep us growing, to help us

become more fully who we can become.

And I think that's kinda the point that as we do difficult things, you do kind of.

Learn more about yourself, and I was sort of filtering that this

week because I love solitude.

I love silence, and I love being out there on my own.

You know, at 4:00 AM.

You, you'll notice that there's not a lot of people around and there's

parts of where I was running that quite isolated and the stars are still out.

And you do get sort of confronted with just yourself and your thoughts and

who you are and what's important in life, and that in itself is useful.

But the bigger thing is you learn to push through difficulty and pain and

you learn a kind of mental toughness that, you know, a lot of athletes have

always known that that's what this thing does, is it, it forces you to mentally.

Uh, discipline your body and take control of it and sort of drive

yourself through off the mental frame.

I think that we are capable of so much more.

I think doing five half marathons in five days.

And keep in mind there's people out there that have done 50

full marathons in 50 days.

I, you know, could I do that?

Maybe at some point?

Do I want to, I dunno.

Ask, ask my wife.

Does she want me to, at the moment I'm sort of hobbling around the house with

a, with a inflamed Achilles, which will settle down, which is fine, but, uh, you

know, people do harder things than this.

But the point is that we all should be doing something.

Something that's a test for us, pushing ourselves into someplace.

So for me, it was doing this, but for you, it could be something different.

Like, I'm about to do this speaking tour and I've got these big audiences.

They're high stakes events, but I've been doing this for almost 30 years,

so I don't get anxious about it.

And other people would find that really hard, but I don't because

I've been doing it for so long.

Whereas, you know, running 150 K race is hard for me.

'cause yes, I've been a runner, but that's an extreme distance.

So pick your hard, right.

I think it was Les Brown that used to say, you know, you can

have the difficulty in hardship.

Of pursuing success, or you can have the difficulty and hardship of failure

and getting towards the end of your life realizing there's all this stuff that

you could have done that you didn't.

So it's hard to fail and it's hard to succeed.

So they're both hard.

Why don't you just pick the one that's, uh, probably gonna have more

upside, which is the hardship that comes from doing difficult things.

I guess one of the other lessons I learned was actually yesterday's final

run, so I was maybe five or six K in.

And my right Achilles tendons in a pretty bad way.

So it was really painful and I know that a lot of people would say,

well, why don't you just stop man?

Like seriously, what is the point of hurting yourself?

And I did get to this 0.5 K where I was sort of hobbling and walking for a,

for a couple of minutes and I genuinely thought, well, maybe I'll just walk it in.

And I just like, I don't know what happened, but I just kind of somehow

just kept shuffling and kept moving and then, and then got it done.

And this Achilles will gimme trouble for three or four days, but it'll

settle down and, and I'm done.

But I really wanna stress the point that there was this moment that

was really quite difficult and there was a real testing moment.

I'm like, well, I don't just walk it in.

Why don't just.

You've done enough, you've done four.

I see.

You're always gonna hear this voice at some point that's gonna

tell you, Hey, you've done really well, you've tried really hard.

Uh, just, why don't you just take a break?

Let it go.

And that's the moment that we have to push through.

So the why?

I don't know.

I just, I, I think I've often said to people, you know,

my father, God bless him.

Was was somebody who was never particularly healthy.

And I grew up seeing somebody who I, you know, I think my, my father's

mental health struggled a lot because of his physical health and

there was this relationship there.

So I think I have been quite driven over the years to, to really try and

not be there, to really push myself to, you know, to get away from that.

And I'm honest about it, right?

Like I'm not, it's like people listening, going, man, like there's what?

What drives you?

Well, some that's part of it is that I want my kids to have a good witness.

I wanna encourage people, and that's another part of this, like

this week, sharing it on Instagram and just talking to people.

There, it actually encourages people.

And it's fascinating.

I was at the golf course, I'm talking to the guys there and

they're like, oh, I couldn't do that.

I can't do more than this.

And people have these stories about themselves, and when they

see you doing something like this, they're like, oh, that's amazing.

That's crazy.

But I keep thinking, look, I'm, I'm an average guy.

I'm, I'm 52 years old almost, and I just got up on Monday and

banged out five half marathons.

Like, you can do this.

Yeah, I've got a background in fitness, but.

You can get it done, whatever that challenge is for you,

it's really worth doing.

So, you know, I don't know who's attributed to this actual saying, but

usually people attribute it to Mother Theresa and I'm, it's one of those

urban myths that's a saying that's now attributed to tons of people.

But the idea that, you know, your life itself is God's gift to you.

What you do with it is your gift to God.

So you, you know, God gives you the raw material of your life,

the raw capacities that you have.

And then it's up to you what you wanna do with that.

And I really think that the culture we live in is such a,

is such a consumerist culture.

And it's easy to say that.

What does that mean?

It just means that the way that this culture has emerged in terms

of, I guess, the overarching economic system, the technological

systems, it requires consumption.

Like our, our global economic system is sort of a debt-based consumption model.

And, and you have to keep consuming.

So I think we're all swimming in this sea where we've been socialized

into, you know, consume, consume, consume, sit on the couch, consume and.

I think getting ourselves out that, pushing ourselves out of

that sedentary mode, that mode of just sitting around, you know,

experiencing life but not actually getting out there and really living.

I, I think I remember years ago looking at data on, you know, the,

the death rates for men who retire.

I. You know, the mortality rates for men who retire early kind of are really high

within the first two to three years.

It's almost like we're not meant to stop.

And I get it.

Like I get that as you get older you may wanna transition to do some

different things, but I just don't think we're really designed to stop.

I think if you stop, you know, it's, uh, it can be challenging and problematic.

So we are meant to move.

We're meant to grow, we're meant to contribute.

So for me, it was a pretty cool week and I need a few days just to rest up and then.

I'm just like, what's the next thing you know?

And I guess the last point I want to give you on this is that as

you do difficult things, your sense of yourself will change.

As you do difficult things, your sense of yourself will change.

You know, sometimes people will go and, you know, they do a 10 K

fun run and they're like, well, I couldn't believe I did it.

And then they go back to normal.

I think we have to keep doing and keep stretching because as we do

it, we become the kind of person, you know, I used to teach a lot on

virtue ethics and, you know, virtues based leadership models and the basic

classical idea and classical philosophy.

There's this incredibly strong link between what we do and

what we become or what we are.

So our, our essence, our character is shaped not so much by what we think about.

But what we actually do, the words that we use, the actions we do with our

physical body, the actual things we do in the world are shaping who we become.

So if you sit around and do nothing, then you become not a nothing, but

you become sort of, I think you kind of risk letting all of that

potential within you just settle.

So I do still wanna encourage you, I just wanna say, look, you don't

have to run five marathons or five half marathons in five days.

But is there something that you could do that would test you a little bit?

Is there, is there, is there something?

Some study, a book, a program, a, a skill that you've put

down, or maybe it is fitness.

Maybe you, you, you do need to start getting in shape and doing some

stuff, but whatever it is, please, my friend, do not waste any more time.

Because I'm 52, but I got a lot of plans.

God spares me.

I'm just like, I'm just like, what's next?

What's next?

Looking forward to it.

I set another goal this year that I was gonna be on, you know,

at a single figures handicap.

By the end of the year.

I'm pretty much there, you know, and, uh, playing a lot of golf, playing well.

I'm working hard at it, you know, and I know you're listening.

And how do you fit this all in?

Well, I get up early and I'm pretty disciplined, so God bless you.

That's all I want to share.

Get out there.

Do hard things.

Set some goals for yourself.

You are gonna encourage other people.

Don't leave all that potential you've got on the.

On the metaphorical couch of life.

Okay?

Get out there, get amongst it and do stuff.

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God bless you, my friends.

This has been the Daily podcast.

You and I are gonna talk again tomorrow.