Encouragement goes a long way

Feeling good about running again

© Teresa Azevedo | Dreamstime

Something I notice about myself is that sometimes (often?), it’s hard to keep a healthy habit going for a long time. Whether it’s eating the way I know I should, or keeping up with an exercise habit when I’m not training towards a goal, I find it exceedingly easy to fall off the path I’ve been on and give in to my lazier self.

And when I do, my mind follows. It forgets everything I’ve done in the past, no matter what successes I might have had, and settles in to the warm, soft hammock of indolence it loves so much.

Gone are the memories of feeling strong around the tenth mile of a run, or climbing a hill and getting a burst of energy; no, it would much rather just enjoy the view from where it is, thank you very much. Why bother doing something that will pay off later, when laziness pays off right now?

But, when I have enough clear runway ahead in my life — when there aren’t too many competing responsibilities — I find I actually can re-establish my running habit, and find the mojo I’d been missing once again.

The past few weeks have been like that for me, after a winter of discontent with my running. I’ve been able to run every other day fairly consistently now for a few weeks; on some days, I’ve been able to string together back-to-back runs, which has felt great.

When I do this, I find that the mental chatter in the back of my mind changes. What had felt gray, cloudy and negative turns a little sunnier. I start to feel like more things are possible, that I can add another mile to my workout, that I can push a little harder and go a little farther. (Not too far, just yet — my ankles talk back more to me today, at age 52, than they used to.)

I like this feeling, the feeling of more being possible. I want to keep experiencing it, which means I have to keep thinking of it as a runway, I think. My body isn’t like a helicopter, it can’t take off straight upwards from a standing position. No, it needs a long runway, time to get ready, time to get stronger, so that when takeoff actually occurs, I can stay in the air and keep rising — and not come crashing down back to earth.

These thoughts all came to mind today as I was reading one of my favorite newsletters, one about fatherhood by Ryan Holiday:

We all know that confidence is important. Most of us wish we had more of it. We spend a lot of time trying to build it up in our kids. By encouraging them. By reassuring them. By seeking out activities that will develop it in them.

So why aren’t our kids more confident? Well, often it’s because despite that work, we also undermine their confidence too. The great football coach Pete Carroll would question coaches who yell at their athletes for this very reason, particularly after big mistakes. If confidence is so important, he asked in his book Win Forever, why would a coach ever do anything to undermine it?

Yet this is what we so often do, without even thinking about it. Not just in how we behave on the sideline of their soccer games or backstage at their school plays, but also how we react to their report cards. The tone we use when we’re frustrated with them, when we’re tired, when they’ve done something they’re not supposed to do. We chip away at the very foundation we’ve been trying to build.

Each of us can remember from our own childhood the effect of one unkind word, one thing our parents did. We forget all the ways they built us up, all the encouraging words. This is said not to terrify you but to remind you of the stakes. Confidence is difficult to build…yet so easy to destroy.

So be careful. Make sure you’re not undermining yourself or them. Don’t be a minimizer, as we’ve said, always be a builder.

I love the thought Holiday concludes with: always be a builder. It’s so easy not to be, even we’re not aware that’s what we’re doing. (Maybe especially when we’re not aware that’s what we’re doing.)

In the back of my mind, there’s a constant debate going between the little voice that tells me it’s silly to build myself up, that it’s ridiculous to believe I might be able to achieve things I haven’t yet, and on the other hand the voice that says, “yes, we can do this.”

What I’m going to try to do, now that I have a few weeks of momentum built up, is to listen to the second voice, and follow what Holiday recommends: always be a builder. Of myself, and others.

I’m sure it won’t be easy; if it was, I’d be running 32 miles a day like this runner, or 200 marathons like Mina Guli. (Maybe those are still too tall an order just yet!)

But maybe we can get a little beyond where we are right now, and reach a little farther. That’s worth staying on the runway for.

I hope your week is going well and, as always, let me know how your running/life is going. Keep in touch!

Your friend,

— Terrell