Dont hate Your Self Doubt : Advice for Aspiring Runners (or people that really hate running!)

Awareness

It would benefit you to bring your attention to your thought patterns while you are running. Bring awareness to where you focus your energy. Where do your thoughts land? Are you focused on your breath, the heaviness in your legs, the slow ticking of distance on the treadmill display in front of you?

Its perfectly ok if you realise that you are pretty pessimistic as you run. Bringing awareness to this will improve your staying power in any program that you follow.

Too often people give in and give up because their self talk gets the best of them.

We have been conditioned to focus on what we cant do – as humans we are designed to keep ourselves safe. Fear is the nemesis of progress. Fear is loud and disguises itself as doubt and excuses.

Bring awareness to the moments when negative self talk kicks in. Welcome that moment. Give thanks for the awareness you have brought to it – because this is where the magic starts to happen. This is the moment you are given the opportunity to grow.

Awareness paves the way for choice.

Once you are aware of how you are feeling, what you are saying to yourself, where you are focusing your energy – you can CHOOSE how to deal with that.

Each of you will have to come up with your own plan of attack for how to deal with these moments. Thats the beauty of training. It will give you many opportunities for this.

This week – bring awareness to those moments. Catch them. Identify them. Consider what you could CHOOSE to do from that moment on.

I personally change my physiology. I lift my head, puff out my chest and take a deep breath. I then tell myself ‘I want to do this’.

Im not asking you to fine tune your plan of attack in a moment– simply bring awareness to your experience each time you run. With that awareness -choose what to do the next time you run.