Embrace challenge, work hard and discover your why: How to find success in running - and life
In his new book, The Success Complex, performance coach Adrian Kelly examines what powers the most successful people
What is the invisible force that stops you achieving whatever you define as success?
That’s the over-arching question at the centre of a new book by performance coach, Adrian Kelly.
The Success Complex features a host of real life examples of those who have found various forms of fulfilment, including sportspeople such as tennis star Mardy Fish, basketball legend Michael Jordan and even Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards.
Although the vast majority of the examples included don’t directly relate to running, the lessons learnt are relevant to the sport and can be applied to finding improvement - and joy - within it.
Adrian was motivated to write the book by a desire to make sense of the jungle of information that people can discover when trying to plot a road towards success.
An avid reader of self-help books, he wanted to create a framework that people could attach information on to as they moved forward in life.
The idea for The Success Complex was born after Adrian took a non-fiction writing course during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Initially looking for something to do during lockdown, he later wrote a proposal for the book.
He said: “When we settled on the subject matter, the publisher said, ‘you're biting off a big subject here’.
“Interrogating the subject of success and what's meaningful and what will resonate with people and what direction they can go with success - these are massive questions.
“But in a way, I needed those big questions to really motivate me to put the legwork in and find something worthwhile.”
Finding transcendence through challenge:
Much of The Success Complex centres on mental resilience and transcendence in sports - a state where athletes go beyond individual wins to find deeper fulfilment and purpose.
Adrian said: “Transcendence is about a shift in focus from self-centered concerns to a broader, more altruistic perspective.”
He added that finding this state can empower athletes to redefine success and overcome mental limits.
The book consists of three parts; the first addressing the skills someone might need to overcome a challenge, the second looks at the application of those skills, and the final part examines what people really want in life and what’s worth aiming for.
Adrian said challenges come to everyone, whether they seek them out or not.
“Maybe I just want to sit at home and be left alone,” he said. “Well, unfortunately challenge is there for everybody.
“The question is can we tackle them in a sustainable way, that avoids burnout and bad decisions.
“The third part is the most challenging bit. When I started writing the book I didn't have those answers and that was exciting in one way and terrifying in another, because you have a publication date or certainly some deadlines with a publisher.
“But I wanted to stay with that unknown, that uncomfortableness to try and not deflect to easy answers, but ask hard questions, interview as many people as possible from different arenas, and try and come up with real answers that hopefully can make a difference people's lives.”
‘Running clears my head - I come up with great ideas’:
Adrian’s exploration of what success means, and how people can find it, is a million miles away from his own life as a struggling student three decades ago.
Languishing at the bottom of his class and lacking purpose, he experienced the sting of failure first-hand.
Since then, he has become an award-winning lawyer and forged a new life as a coach whose work centres on mental resilience.
His entrepreneurial journey includes working with high net-worth individuals and co-founding a rapidly growing renewable energy company. Since 2018, he has worked as a business advisor and coach, assisting over 100 companies across both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The Success Complex is a record of the knowledge he has gained during that journey, and an attempt to help those who may be at their own life crossroads.
Adrian told the Running Tales Podcast that one factor he sought to highlight in the book was the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
These two very different types of motivation represent, on one hand, money, rewards, trophies and a tangible outcome (extrinsic) versus a much more long lasting and deep rooted outcome which centres around the inherent enjoyment we can find in any activity (intrinsic).
“Take running as an example (of intrinsic motivation),” Adrian said. “I love to run. It clears my head and you often you come up with some great ideas when you're running.
“You're in that zone.”
The Success Complex explores which of these motivations has the most influence on people - and brings the most joy.
Adrian sites a study conducted by Harry F. Harlow in the 1940s: “It was with a group of monkeys and they had one set of monkeys who had these rewards, these peanuts.
“Then they had a control group with no rewards whatsoever and the monkeys all had a set of tasks do, such as pull the pin out of the box and try and open it up.
“The scientists assumed - wrongly as it turned out - that the monkeys that had the rewards would do the best job.
“But it turned out that actually the monkeys that had no rewards did it quicker. And many years later there were more studies to try and dig into that and find out why that was - and the answer was because they enjoyed doing it for the sake of it.”
Finding ‘happierness’ - we only have a short time on this planet:
The Harry F. Harlow experiment is just one example The Success Complex uses to show how finding success is a subjective experience.
“It really comes down to defining what success means to us,” he said.
“Your success is not the same as mine and it's important to spend time and think about what it is you want to get out of life in the first place.
“We only have a short number of years on this planet.”
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He added that the second factor people need to remember is that success tends not be a permanent.
Adrian told Running Tales that the fleeting nature of success meaning finding ‘happierness’ is a more realistic goal than aiming to always be happy.
The theory is that underlying wellbeing and continuous growth will bring physical, psychological and emotional benefits.
“You can have a bad day, you can suffer,” Adrian said, “and you don't necessarily have to be happy in the moment, but you'll know that you have a plan.
“It involves, unfortunately, a little bit of legwork on our own part to find out what we find inherent value in, in the first place, and it's not a panacea, but we can certainly get on a road of happierness, which is worth aiming for.”
Buy The Success Complex:
You can buy ‘The Success Complex - Ancient wisdom, the building blocks of life and your path to sustained success’ at Amazon or all the usual book stores. Running Tales doesn’t get commission from promoting the book - we just think it’s really good!
Adrian, who runs recreational five and 10km events and completed his first half-marathon last year, said finding joy in the sport is important.
He said: “If you're having those horrible days, it's probably horrible because you're not meeting some time that you've set for yourself or something.
“Maybe it's more about, on those days, getting back to slowing down a little bit and thinking how wonderful it is to be out there running in the first place.
“Running just heightens the senses. It brings us into the moment. It's a natural mindfulness exercise in many ways.
“And typically it's the feeling you get afterwards. Some people feel exhausted, but if you're a regular runner, you get that endorphin hit. You feel rejuvenated.”
He added: “So, we need to get away from, ‘I can't believe it. I'm doing a 26 minute 5k when I should be running 24,’ and find that perspective and focus more on the joy of running.”
From ‘journeyman’ to top 10 and anxiety attacks - what the story of Mardy Fish tells us:
Sport has always been a central part of finding transcendence for Adrian.
He has worked as a sports coach in Senior Intercounty Ladies Gaelic Football and amateur baseball, both domestically and internationally with the U18 Irish International Team at two European Championships.
Adrian said one way to find improvements in whatever you do, including running is through purposeful practice.
Although comparison can often be the enemy of personal development, with social media posts showing off how good people are at whatever they excel in without chronicling the work it took them to get there, it has been proven that 20 hours of purposeful practice can make very real differences.
“That immediate comparison can be very demotivating,” Adrian said.
“But in terms of building your unique skill set for whatever reason - it can be for health, for enjoyment, to pursue some goal, or for social reasons - with quite a small degree of effort, in many cases, you can achieve a very passable, very acceptable, level of proficiency.
He added that being proficient in a broad range of topics and activities is something which can bring people both success and satisfaction: “It leads to a much richer existence and experience to try and upscale yourself and find a range of activities that you might enjoy.”
Although Adrian is a proponent of learning lots of skills and using purposeful practice to make relatively quick gains, he is quick to highlight that success does not come without hard work.
In The Success Complex, he uses the example of American tennis star Mardy Fish, who went from something of a journeyman player - ranked 123 in the world - to the top 10.
What was really unusual was that Fish’s rise up the rankings came late in his career, at a time when most players form and fitness are declining.
His remarkable achievement came because Fish dedicated himself fully to tennis, sleeping in an oxygen chamber, changing his diet and training intensely.
There can be a ying and yang to such commitment though, as Fish found to his cost.
In 2012, he was forced to withdraw from the Miami Open after suffering what later was revealed to be severe cardiac arrhythmia, and then dropped out of his fourth round match against Roger Federer at the US Open because of issues with anxiety.
Adrian said: “His dedication led to remarkable results, but it also had remarkable costs because he wasn't in a position to sustain that for a variety of reasons.
“This was only 2012 but things have moved on a lot and the science of recovery is developing all the time.
“I’m a big believer in allowing space to recover and develop, and that's where the true benefit of all that hard work kicks in.”
‘We need to learn how to win together’ - finding success is not a zero-sum game:
Although rest, recuperation and a variety of habits and pursuits can help people achieve their goals, The Success Complex is clear that there is no substitute for hard work.
“There aren't too many shortcuts in life,” Adrian said.
“You can certainly differentiate yourself by doing things that people aren't willing to do. Putting in that extra hard work, those hard miles. Getting up earlier.
“Mike Tyson, for example, used to say, ‘the reason I get up and run at 5am is I know that my opponent isn't doing this’.
“It’s about how do we differentiate ourselves in our effort.
“We tend to celebrate the outcome. But what we don't see and we don't want to hear about is the hard work that went into things.”
That hard work, however, should not come at the cost of enjoyment or to the detriment of others.
“If it's a zero-sum game. I don't think that's true success,” Adrian said.
“If I win and you lose, that's not success. We need to start learning to win together on this small planet.
“And we only have to look at the news cycle and Gaza and the rhetoric that's coming out of there, the hostility in politics, both here and in America and other places, and it's more and more hostile, more and more zero-sum.
“I think ultimately, as the human race, as we evolve, we need to learn more and more to win together and define our personal success in terms of how we can help others win and include others in our goal to really arrive at a truly fulfilling outcome.”
Listen to Adrian on the Running Tales Podcast:
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