What are you grateful for?
Mark White is campaigning for the Grateful Mile. I spoke to him about how your mental health might thank *you* for joining it, especially if you're a man...
Do you ever think about what you’re grateful for? I mean truly grateful for.
Did your parents ever demand you think about the starving children in famine-ridden countries when you didn’t finish your plate of food? Have you considered that you’re reading this right now on a machine that cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars? Did you return from your last injury a little bit more appreciative of the luxury of a healthy body?
This is about gratitude. This is about how we think about what we have in our lives. I spoke to Mark White of Run Grateful about why a Grateful Mile can be such an important tool for a runner to be equipped with.
What is a Grateful Mile?
Quite simply: it’s being purposeful about spending a mile of movement every day, whether that’s running or walking, and introducing a gratitude practice within that.
“The goal is to build a positive habit around a mile a day. I think it's transformative. It can help change your perspective on anything.”
“From the outside looking in, 5km can look like the entry point into running. For some, a mile is still a long way, but it's more inviting and more achievable than a 5k.”
“The invitation is to focus on something or someone that you're grateful for, that you appreciate, and just let that be your guide. When you start thinking about your day or going a bit faster, it’s a meditative reset as you bring yourself back to the focus of that gratitude.”
Sure, it seems like Mark is aiming this at a beginner runner, but please don’t dismiss the idea if you’ve got 30km planned for this weekend. Just choose one mile of it to practice your gratitude.
So is this a run club…?
It’s not a run club! While these kinds of movements are often centered around a physical community, Mark was mindful that “the world didn't need [him] creating another run club.”
“I thought, ‘How can we create an energy around this? How can we have the biggest impact? How can we get as many people as humanly possible to experience what a Grateful Mile can bring to our lives?’”
“I've got my own evidence of how it's absolutely changed my life, and I'm not unique. It's just putting one foot in front of the other, and being open. The rest will follow.”
Mark’s goal spoke to me deeply because I like to meditate. There are so many ways to meditate, but my favored way of meditation is running, of course. It’s how I achieve that stillness of mind.
Some use music to get into that meditative flow state while running, but I like to hear my surroundings. I practice a series of minute-long micro-meditations while on my runs. I’ll take a minute to focus on how my body feels, from head to toes, trying to identify any unfamiliar sensations. The next 60 seconds I’ll focus on what I can hear – the birds, the cars, one loud side of a telephone conversation. Another minute will be spent looking at my surroundings. I’ll focus on the advancing horizon, or I’ll scan the gutter for trash.
These extended moments of mindfulness allow me to give my body a diagnostics check, or to connect to my immediate vicinity a little more deeply. As runners, we often say that we are out in the world a little more than most people, and that’s true, but what do you notice when you’re out for a run? And how does that make you feel?
What led Mark to this state of gratitude?
Mark found himself in rehab on his 19th birthday where he was introduced to gratitude work. That mindset shift worked for him to the point that Mark celebrated 22 years sober in June of this year. But the beginning of the second big, big chapter in his sober life was in 2011. His first run.
He’d been generally taking care of himself. Meditation, silent retreats, positive habits, a deeper understanding of himself, and self awareness were all practices in his wheelhouse, but now Mark had tasked himself with giving up Marlboro Lights – the last of his vices. To do this, he took up running with a friend who was also stopping smoking. His friend, however, was a former professional boxer. His friend had firm evidence of what fitness could provide a person.
“I remember not liking it at all. I was mature enough to know it wouldn’t happen overnight, but after two months I told my mate I just wasn’t a fan. He said to keep going and one day it’ll feel like walking. My life changed forever.”
To help formulate his perfect running practice, he has taken cues from his existing mindfulness practices, and the mantras (have an open mind, try new things, build new habits, speak to new people, give more than you take) that he still carries with him.
“Gratitude entered my life and was the first thing that was an anchor for me. I started to look at the good rather than the bad, and focus on what can be done rather than can't be done.”
“When running entered my life, it was very much that kind of relationship. I don't want personal bests, I don't want distances. I don't want to put any more pressure on my life.”
Mark went on to form community running groups in his hometown and beyond, as well as wellness programs in local primary schools. The Grateful Mile is his next project in giving back to the community.
During the pandemic, Mark was inspired by Australian YouTuber Beau Miles to take on the challenge of running one mile on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours. While the Aussie did odd jobs around the house between runs, Mark went online to share a gratitude for every mile.
“I immersed myself in gratitude, and absolutely loved it. At the end of that day I wanted to introduce it to others. I knew the 24-hour thing wasn't for everybody, so I thought, ‘Let's start with a single mile.’”
Can a Grateful Mile solve male loneliness?
All are encouraged to run a Grateful Mile, whatever your gender, race or religion, but in a conversation between two meditating males, both dedicated to thinking a little more deeply about their practices than most, male loneliness was a topic that came up repeatedly.
There have been a couple of deep studies — and many more articles — written over the past couple of years about the (American) male loneliness epidemic. For quick context, here are some basic findings:
15% of men today do not have a single close friend - up 500% from 1990
Men are 400% more likely to commit suicide than women
6 in 10 men under 30 are single - twice as many as women the same age
Men are less likely to seek mental health services and have more negative attitudes towards seeking help
Men have less robust social support networks than women (family, colleagues, childhood friends)
Loneliness is associated with higher rates of cardiovascular illness
A lot of these numbers are focused on what is missing. Can moving for a mile while considering what one does have in their life be a solution? If so, how do we convince someone who might shun the idea of therapy-adjacent activity that a mindful moment could be of benefit to them?
The language is important here. Mark very specifically uses the word ‘gratitude,’ but the Grateful Mile is firmly an exercise in mindfulness. The negative perceived connotations of mindfulness (and meditation) is something that Mark is hopeful to overcome.
“If you have got a more mindful approach, or mindfulness isn't so alien to you, then you might be a bit more open to it, and it might sound like a natural thing to do. Then you've got the other lot: the disengaged. The people that are really dismissive and are really judgmental around that kind of conversation.”
Mark’s approach is to be gentle and consistent. It is to remain welcoming and non-judgmental, and wait for them to come and ask a question.
“When are we more open to this? Where are we in our life-cycle, and is it a rock bottom thing? Is it when we become fathers, if we're lucky enough to do so? Is it when we have our first breakup? Is it when we get divorced? Is it when we lose our mums or dads?”
“Hopefully you can find your tribe, whether it be running or meditation. We all deserve to be part of something where we feel supported and heard. I found a lot of mine through running, but also as part of other communities, AA and Cocaine Anonymous, which was the start for me.”
The plan is to have Grateful Miles run all over the world. There’s already been a major collaboration in Sydney with The 440 Run Club in 2023.
“I want to build this movement and have this experience with as many amazing people as possible. I want to get millions of grateful miles shared around the world in my lifetime.
“We don’t need to sell tickets. We don’t need to close roads. We don’t need hundreds of people to turn up. It’s very achievable.”
We cannot meditate our way out of a news cycle so determined to make us constantly feel ill at ease, but running, meditation, and gratitude are all important things to have in one’s toolkit. Using those skills regularly might just help you feel better about the things in your life that you can control. It certainly won’t do any harm. As Mark says: it’s time well spent. It might even transform your outlook on life.
What are you grateful for?
Follow Mark White and Run Grateful on IG.
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Thanks for reading
- Raz x
Thanks for this thoughtful post. I had a serious health scare that turned out to be a mistake and false alarm, but for the days when I thought it was legit, I saw and felt everything differently, with more awareness and gratitude, especially as I ran. I'm trying to hold onto that perspective. Your story also reminded me of an old Jon Kabat-Zinn staying from his classic book "Full Catastrophe Living," about mindfulness-based stress reduction; he said: "You have only moments to live." I always think about the double entendre of that saying. What if we only had moments to live; i.e. something catastrophic was coming—wouldn't we want to make the most of the time left? And, in fact, we do only have moments to live—every minute is a moment to be more fully present. Anyway, thanks for sparking all those thoughts with your newsletter today.
" ... running, meditation, and gratitude are all important things to have in one’s toolkit." YES! And, combined, build a strong foundation of resilience. When you're self-aware, comfortable with transience, and grateful for whatever the moment might be teaching you, there's little that can take you down. And for the literal bad guys that might try, well, that's where the running comes in.