Once I stopped telling myself I wasn’t a runner and started telling myself I was, I was right.

When I was eight-years-old I ran a mile race. Well actually, to be more accurate, I started a mile race.

There I was at the starting line in my green track suit, my hair up in pigtails that my mom had braided with matching green bows. “I am going to win this,” I thought to myself.

When the starting gun was fired, I took off so fast that I completely lost my breath. I started panicking and had to get picked up by the police officer that was driving behind the entire race. I was brought to the finish line in the back of a police car. I think I threw up somewhere in the middle of all of that too.

My eight-year-old ego was not happy.

I remember my parents waiting at the finish line, very worried. I got out of the police car, crying from embarrassment, and decided at that moment I was not a runner. And guess what? I was right.

In college, I repeatedly told myself and other people, “Oh, I can’t run/I’m not a runner.” After the 1000th time I thought to myself, “Why do I keep saying this? What a bunch of bullsh*t.” There was no evidence to support this claim, other than the time I was a competitive little kid who ran too fast, freaked myself out and then gave up on running. Maybe I was just lazy. Hmmm. Let’s find out.

In my quest to see how right or wrong I had been for all of those years, I signed up for a half marathon when I was 24. A funny thing happens when you sign up for something; miraculously, everything changes. I became a runner, ummmm, because I started running. Funny how that works.

After the 10 half-marathons I have run over the years since then, I realized that once I stopped telling myself I wasn’t a runner and started telling myself I was, I was right.

Fast forward to last week. It had been about four years since my last half marathon. On Thursday, I decided I was going to run another one the upcoming Sunday, just to test myself (and my body).

Most days I wake up and say, “Okay body, we are going to run four miles today.” And it listens.

Sunday morning I woke up and said, “Okay body, we are going to run 13.1 miles today.” And it said, “WTF?! Well, alright.” And thankfully, it still listened.

A challenge for you:

Think about the things you say you can’t do and ask yourself why you say that. For fun, start saying the opposite and see what happens.

And remember, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” ~ Henry Ford

~

Editor: Jennifer Townsend

Like elephant health & wellness on Facebook