Recently I began running again. I grew up in a small town in rural Montana and didn’t really fit into traditional sports. Not that we even had a soccer team, but soccer wouldn’t have been my sport-too much sprinting involved, not enough lung capacity. At five foot nothin’, vertically challenged and not a lot of speed, basketball wasn’t my sport either. I absolutely lived gymnastics until 9th grade, when the body began betraying me, no longer conducive to gymnastics. It was about 10th grade I began running. It was a test of my grit and well, made me kinda gritty which has, as it turns out, served me well in life. I had to work hard, possibly harder than the average runner to become a runner. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, a blue haze in the living room or car, both parents smoking. It couldn’t have been good for my lungs, and I am guessing, likely put me at quite a disadvantage in terms of becoming good at a sport that required significant cardiopulmonary fitness-I was probably more suited for bocci ball, shuffle board or knitting instead of running. I remember getting the running bug, hitting the pavement and about a quarter of a mile in, absolutely feeling like my lungs were on fire. I thought I might just lie down in the ditch and die. Somehow, that experience didn’t deter me like it would have any rational person. What should have stopped me dead in my tracks, didn’t. Marathons were becoming the craze. I was ‘gonna do this!’ And so, I became the female version of Forest Gump, running every day all over my home town and nearby town. I didn’t compete against anyone except my own mind which on almost a daily occasion shouted, ‘WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?!! GIVE UP ALREADY! THIS IS TOO HARD!’ Somehow, I didn’t. I just kept Gumping. I learned how to breathe, how to pace. Never experiencing elusive the ‘runner’s high’ for the first three years of running, I kept going; it was mentally brutal, physically painful. People in town making comments-once I heard someone standing outside the Longbranch Saloon, jeer about how slow I was running and it stung. I felt like a loser, embarrassed and tempted to quit, but I didn’t. I out-stubborned myself and perhaps all the doubters. Only once was I talked into competing in a track meet for our Air Force squadron in England, they needed bodies. I was lapped in the 1 mile. LAPPED! Three years into my running career, I finally got the runner’s high and it didn’t matter how far I ran, at 30 minutes in I knew I could count on it and it felt so good it made me want to go back for more the next day. Kind of like that one golf shot you make that keeps you going back for more punishment, right after you decided you are selling your clubs (or throwing them into a lake) immediately upon finishing your round.
So where am I going with this? And what does my running saga from 38 years ago have anything to do with right now? I am glad you asked. It has to do with endurance. It has to do with your ‘why’. It has to do with, life is hard, but we get to pick our hard. Endurance is the grit that keeps you going when the going gets tough. You want to be a person of endurance….it will take you places you didn’t know you could go. It has to do with focus.
Building an ethical coaching business that doesn’t take insurance compensation but delivers an exceptional, life transforming product for my clients is hard when clients may be mentally hardwired for a twenty dollar copay. Marriage is hard, and easier than ever (at least on the surface) to get out of. Whether I choose to overlook an offense and forgive my spouse or divorce, life will be hard. I am not saying ‘never’ to divorce for couples, but it’s too easy to want it my way and quit 5 years in. Staying fit is hard, it’s easier to sit on the comfortable couch and talk about how hard it is to work out, how I don’t feel like it, and how hard I’ve already worked. It’s easier to ignore the fact that we are getting older and deconditioning every day that we don’t work at staying strong. I am back at working out because life is going to be hard either way, whether I work out or not. I am either going to spend time and money at the doctor’s office with failing health, feeling weak, tired, unmotivated, and depressed, or I am going to spend a little time everyday pushing myself beyond my present limits so that I can remain at peak health and ability with loads of energy (yes!!! that happens when we start working out again and on the surface it makes no sense!) Will some people jeer at me as I lay down tracks on the roadside, things jiggling that didn’t jiggle as much 40 years ago? Even slower than I was 40 years ago? Perhaps. Let ‘em chuckle. I am willing to be laughed at. I am willing to be slow and out of shape to begin with. I am willing to do the very hard things, to build strength and endurance both in my 55 year old body and in my marriage and pay a price for an enduring love that comes with voting for my marriage everyday, putting in the hard work, even when people said, ‘quit’ many years ago. I am willing to keep my cleaning business as long as I have to while building my coaching business because I am unwilling to give up because I have built mental endurance and grit and perhaps, because I have a little stubborn streak. I can say, ‘yes’ to junk food and feel like garbage, or I can say, ‘yes’ to fueling my body with healthy proteins and fats and complex carbs and feel amazing. It’s hard in the moment to say no to the tempting junk but it’s worth it.
In coaching school their motto was, ‘be willing to suck.’ I say, ‘be willing to suck and endure you will get there!’ We have to have the long-view.
How about you? Who’s with me? What are you willing to ‘stink’ at? What’s your why? What’s your dream?