Book Excerpt: The Real Reason Why Milind Soman Runs

Excerpted from ‘Made In India- A Memoir- Milind Soman With Roopa Pai’, with permission from Penguin Random House.

Why do you take on these extreme challenges? I’m often asked. Why do you always choose the most difficult way to do things? Why can you not stop wanting to do something more challenging than what you have already done?

Now those are questions that I can answer. And the simplest, most succinct answer is this—because it’s such a massive, glorious head-rush.

You see, there are many routes to wisdom. You will get there whether you take the well-marked, well-ordered, safe and steady route, or the overgrown one that you have to hack through with a machete, while bracing yourself to deal with whatever leaps out at you from the underbrush. My personal head-rush comes from not knowing how much further the path runs or what might be around the next corner, and from knowing for certain that whether you survive it or not, just walking the second route will give you the most dazzling insights and perspectives in the shortest amount of time. You learn the most, you see the most, when you push yourself to the limit.

The ultimate conquest in the world, as our own ancient scriptures agree, is the conquest of the mind. But the mind is a fickle, obstinate, cunning, deluded thing—it is inordinately difficult to conquer the mind via the mind. Thousands of years ago, deep inside our forests and in the high, snowy reaches of our mountains, our ancient sages discovered the explosive truth that the mind was best conquered via the body—they sat or stood, unmoving, for weeks, months, years—systematically defeating hunger, thirst, heat, cold, sleep, proving that the body’s ‘needs’ were nothing more than artificial barriers, constructed entirely by the mind, to fulfilling one’s true potential. As those imagined fetters fell away, the lines between mind and body blurred, and the two began to work in perfect synchronicity, each learning from the other instead of holding it back, each complementing the other instead of standing in its way.

When I run, when I undertake extreme physical challenges, I seek that same glorious coming together of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual faculties, that same ecstatic sense of liberation that results when your mind and body work in unison, that the ancient sages experienced. I am nowhere near achieving it, but when I run, I get almost instantly into that meditative headspace, which is the starting point of that great quest, a space where my many minds converge and become focused and still. I use running as a tool to yoke mind and body together—it is a high, and a very addictive one at that.

There’s nothing self-indulgent or escapist about this kind of addiction, but could there perhaps be something detrimental about it? What is the point of being amazingly fit, if you end up destroying your body on the way there? What level of fitness is healthy for you? Those are good questions, and valid ones. The debate around them rages, but the jury is still out. Whatever the answer may be, one thing is clear to me: The more you challenge yourself physically, the more you grow strong mentally. Abrade your body by degrees, and by degrees, your mind becomes invincible.

Here’s something else I have discovered: When you create efficiency in one area of your life—say physical fitness—using a combination of discipline, doggedness and self-belief, you create efficiency in every other area of your life as well. Keep your body in top condition as a matter of course, and you free your mind up to go after what it really wants. Push your body a little further each day, and watch your self-belief grow stronger and stronger, until it becomes unshakeable. Those are the real reasons I run.

The thing is, you do not need to be especially gifted or talented to achieve this—you just need to be pig-headed, and that is something we are all capable of, especially when it is to do with the things we really care about. And what can be more important than good health, both physical and mental? What is happiness but the knowledge that your body is strong enough and your mind calm enough to take on any challenge that life may throw at you? What is wisdom but the realization that while it is futile to work towards controlling the world, it makes a whole lot of sense to work towards controlling your mind, which is what really constructs your world?

When I was dreaming up Pinkathon, I came up with a tagline that I thought would be perfect for it. We don’t use it any more, but to me, it still epitomizes a philosophy that I have lived by my entire life, and one I believe is the cornerstone of a happy life. And this seems as good a time and place as any to share it. It is just four words long—The Cause, it states simply, Is You.

Who knows what the future holds? All we have is the present, and all we can do is make it as pleasant for ourselves and everyone around us as possible. All we can do is love ourselves so much that we leave the past behind, however terrible or wonderful it may have been. All we can do is stay curious and treat each new day as a great new adventure, packed with the promise of new experiences that may not always be pleasant but are certainly not to be feared.

All we can do is keep moving.

Milind Soman is an actor, runner and entrepreneur.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.