Eric Deeter is an entrepreneur, published author, certified life coach, podcaster, and barefoot/minimalist ultramarathon runner. He and his wife created one of the top faux finishing companies in the greater Kansas City area.
His success in business led him to look for his next challenge, breaking through his own limiting beliefs so that he could, in turn, help others do the same. In 2017 he met that challenge and went on to become a certified life coach. He also set and achieved a personal goal to become an ultramarathon runner.
He discovered that the mindset for life transformation and the mindset for ultramarathon running is the same. A goal that seems impossible at first becomes a reasonable challenge when you have an ultramarathon mindset. He helps his clients discover and go after their EPIC THING: that big dream or goal they’ve put away in the back corner of their minds.
Eric Deeter, Ultramarathon Mindset Coach
Why did you run a 100-mile trail race?
The night before my first 100-miler, my wife asked me the same question. “Why are you doing this?” I think she was afraid I might die on the trail. I didn’t have an answer for her. All I knew was I had something burning inside me to do this race. But I’d never stopped to ask myself “Why?”.
After a few minutes I finally answered, “I need to know if I have what it takes to go that distance.”
For most of my life I only took on “easy” challenges. I think the need to overcome challenges is part of our human nature. It’s what drives some people to seek adventure, exploration, and competition. Books and movies tap into this need. They make us identify with, and cheer for, the hero of the story. I felt this same need, but I was fearful and went after low-risk challenges. The result was that every success I had felt hollow. I knew in my heart that all these were fake victories.
When you set out to run 100 miles, you know it’s going to make you dig deep, both physically and mentally. And even then, there’s a good chance you could fail. For me, I failed on my first attempt. I was on pace to finish. That was before heavy rain in the night turned the trails to grease. I slipped and slid and lost enough speed to miss the cutoff time at 84 miles.
My running friends encouraged me to enter a different 100-mile race taking place several weeks later. I had different challenges there, but I overcame them and finished that race.
What do you mean when you talk about an ultramarathon mindset?
Ultramarathon runners have a saying: Keep moving forward! Sometimes it’s said as: Relentless forward progress. Running an ultramarathon is all about managing your self-talk as you try to balance your energy, your nutrition, and your hydration.
You get to a point where your body and mind will try to tell you that you can’t go any farther. In that moment, your mindset is the story you tell yourself about what you will do. Sometimes the best you can do is stumble forward. The ultramarathon mindset is that drive to be relentless in your forward progress until you either get to the finish line or you run out of time.
Usually, when you make that decision to keep going, you’ll find a new burst of energy a few miles down the trail. In longer ultramarathons you may go through these lows and highs several times. And it’s often a mindset breakdown more than any physical challenge that causes runners to drop from the race.
This ultramarathon mindset is about more than just running. Any significant goal you have in life takes the same mindset of relentless forward progress to achieve. History is full of stories about those who pushed on in spite of overwhelming odds until they had success. Likewise, there are countless stories of those who gave up and never knew they were on the verge of breakthrough.
As a coach, I help my clients manage their thoughts and emotions to develop this ultramarathon mindset to go after goals that matter to them. I call this finding your EPIC THING.
You say you help people find their EPIC THING. What is that about?
As humans, we have a built-in need to strive and overcome challenges. For much of history and for many people today, the challenge to merely survive is all-consuming. Most of us, however, have the luxury of needing to seek out ways to feel like we’re overcoming some sort of meaningful challenge.
Take sports fans, for example. A true fan will ride the highs and lows of emotions during the game because they identify with the team. They can feel the thrill of victory or agony of defeat because it’s “their team” out there on the field.
We get the same feeling through characters in TV, books, and movies. The drama draws us in and we identify with the characters so much that we feel all the emotions they feel, especially the reward of victory at the end. And if there’s not a happy ending, we usually feel cheated.
Some people are satisfied with these emotions they get from watching sports, or from books and movies. But these things are like trying to live on a diet of sugar and chocolate. They don’t give you any real substance.
Finding your EPIC THING is about feeding your human nature on a challenge that means something to you. Most of us grew up feeling that we wanted to do something significant, to make an impact on the world. What happens is that we choose “safety and stability” and bury all those idealistic ambitions somewhere in the back of our minds.
My clients may not be able to follow that original ambition from their past. But most of them still have something still smoldering deep inside their soul. I help them develop this dream and develop a mindset to rise to the challenge and start moving forward.
Do you only work with runners?
I work with anyone who wants to develop their mental game. Endurance sports like ultramarathons and triathlons require a strong mindset for success. And it’s surprising how few competitors besides the elites take time to train themselves mentally. And most of the “free advice” about mental training is worthless.
Some of my work is with endurance athletes. And I prefer to work with clients who have fitness as a focus: either as an ongoing lifestyle or as a goal to become fit. But an ultramarathon mindset is about relentless progress toward a goal. This mindset has value for more than just runners and endurance athletes.
What sets you apart from other coaches?
Mindset and life coaches all have similar tools that we use. We are about helping our clients change and direct their lives to become the best version of themselves. And every effective coach will focus on finding the right combination of tools to connect with their client and help him or her get the quickest and best results.
I do the same for my clients. My role as a coach is to help my clients manage their thoughts and emotions in order to focus on and reach their goals. What sets me apart from other coaches is that I help my clients make a connection between their mind and body. This connection is powerful for taking their life off of autopilot so they can reach their epic goals.
You talk about a mind/body connection. Why is this important?
We tend to treat the mind and body as separate entities. Our education system trains us to think of academics as the real value and physical education as something less. The stereotype of the weak brainy kid VS. the strong, but intellectually challenged, athlete is an example of this kind of gap.
The result of this perception is that we think our identity is in what we are thinking. Our emotions are fickle and not to be trusted. And our drive (or our will) is completely ignored. The truth is that every thought produces a corresponding emotion that triggers in our body as a neurochemical response. This neurochemical in turn reinforces the original thought in our brain. There is a constant flood of neurochemicals flowing between our brain and body that impacts our mind.
Any behavior we want to change will disrupt this neurochemical balance and trigger a resistance from the body which has adapted to what it feels is “normal.” This resistance will come even if the “normal” is an unhealthy cocktail of chemicals that result from negative self-talk and stress response.
I help my clients manage their thoughts and emotions by understanding the connection between mind and body so that both are working together toward their epic goal.
What issues do you help your clients deal with?
Your mindset is made up of the stories you tell yourself about yourself and what you believe about the way the world works. None of us experience reality as it is. We experience reality through the stories we tell ourselves. And most of us tell stories that have the same effect as children’s fairy tales.
The theme of most fairy tales is that there are all kinds of things in the world that will hurt you or eat you. I’m talking about the original stories, not the modern sanitized versions. I think they were intended to scare children into staying safe and not wandering off.
In the same way, we learn stories as children and young adults that turn into limiting beliefs. These are mental boundaries we’re afraid to cross. For most of my clients, these beliefs center around confidence and success.
People often say, “I can’t even imagine doing that,” when they hear I ran 100 miles all in one go. I couldn’t have imagined it myself, 5 years ago. But the change of my limiting beliefs let me both imagine it and do it. In the same way, I help my clients see where their limiting beliefs are blocking their imagination, and help them see that what they believe to be impossible is not only a goal they can reach, but an epic challenge that will bring life to their soul.
[Free: 20-Minute Reset Call] Schedule a call with me about your biggest roadblock and I’ll help you get clarity on how to start moving forward toward your goal. https://calendly.com/ericdeeter/free
