Tags

,

Whenever I set out to do something that’s really hard for me, one of two things happens. Either I convince myself to give up because it’s hard or I push past that mental block and succeed. Today I was finally able to get past a huge mental block that I had put up and I learned a lot about myself in the process.

Those of you who know me well know that I am not a runner. I have always hated running. Even when I’m living a more active lifestyle, running is not part of it. There are always many other forms of physical activity that are way more enjoyable that I choose to do instead. But, I have always kind of wanted to run an entire 5K (runners –please don’t laugh –a 5K is super long for a running-hater!) just to prove to myself that I can. My in-laws are awesome and many of us in the family are on a journey to living a more healthy lifestyle so some of us decided it would be fun (or just a good experience for those of us who think running can never be fun :)) to do a 5K together.

It’s important to know that prior to my training for this 5K we’re planning I had never run more than a mile outside with no walking. And I’ve only done that once. In school whenever I had to run the mile I would only run portions of it. I have run up to 2 miles on a treadmill but that doesn’t really count in my mind. So I decided I needed to slowly work up to running a 5K. My sister-in-law told me about an app C25K (Couch to 5K) and it sounded like just what I needed so I downloaded it.

The app consists of eight weeks of training and you train three days a week. It starts out really simple with a 5 minute warm-up walk and then alternating 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes and then a 5 minute cool-down walk. Each week gets progressively harder with more jogging and less walking until you finally run a 5K at the end of week eight.

I started using the app on May 8th and trained pretty consistently for the first four weeks. Then week five hit and on day three of week five you’re supposed to jog for 20 minutes with no walking. I finished day one and two of week five with no problem but for some reason I was scared to attempt the full 20 minutes. I didn’t think I could do it so I just didn’t try for a while. A few days later I convinced myself that I was acting crazy –I could definitely do it –so I went running with my wonderful husband to finally do the 20 minutes and I failed miserably. I ran for 11 minutes and my legs were killing me and breathing was difficult so I just stopped. I didn’t even finish out the 20 minutes with walking. I just stopped and headed back to the car and went home.

I felt terrible for quitting! I planned to go running with Devan again soon and I made him promise to really push me so I could get it done. But more important things kept popping up that conveniently took up all of our running time so we didn’t end up going. And because I was scared of failing again, not only did I not run the 20 minutes, but I didn’t go running at all. And I know it’s not really a physical thing –my body is perfectly capable of running for 20 minutes straight, my mind is where the real problem is.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the reason I failed that one time I tried and the reason I put it off for so long and I think I have it figured out. When I’m scared of doing something difficult because I’ve never done it before and because I know it’s going to be hard, I tend to put off doing it at all because I’m afraid if I try then I’ll fail, and I hate failing! I convince myself that if I don’t try then I don’t have to fail and I try not to think about the fact that giving up on my goal is just another way of failing. Finally that gets to me and I convince myself that I’m being ridiculous. I’m strong enough, I’m good enough, I can do this, etc . . . I convince myself that it won’t be near as hard as I imagined and I’m sure that I can do it with no problem. So then I finally try and it ends up being super hard and I’m not mentally ready for it since I just spent a week convincing myself that it will be easy. I was wrong –it’s not easy –so I give up.

Today I finally decided to change my way of thinking about failure. I decided to go running knowing that I might not make it for the full 20 minutes. I decided that was ok because even if I didn’t make it for the full time, at least I did something. I told myself that I just needed to do my best –whatever I was able to do would just make it a little bit easier to do more the next time. I told myself that it was going to be hard but that I was capable of doing hard things and even if I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted to, I knew that I was at least capable of doing more than I did last time.

Guess what? I jogged the entire 20 minutes. I was no longer afraid of failure and I acknowledged to myself that it was going to be super hard so I was prepared when I wanted to give up and I was able to talk myself into continuing through the pain.

I hope I’m able to remember this lesson I learned about myself and I hope I’m able to apply it in other areas of my life as well. I can see the same procrastination/failure/quitting pattern in so many aspects of my life. It’s important for me to know that it’s ok to mess up. It’s not ideal, but it happens to everyone sometimes and there are ways of fixing mistakes or getting past them so I can move on. I don’t have to do the same things I’ve always done because “that’s just who I am”. My actions don’t define who I am –I am a daughter of God and I have infinite worth just like everyone else does. I am capable of so much and as long as I keep on trying, I can do better today than I did yesterday. With God’s help I really can do anything but I have to stop demanding perfection and beating myself up when I fall short.

Making an effort and falling short of perfection isn’t failure –it is progress.