One of Life’s Most Important Lessons Running can Teach You (or anything else unpleasant)

Let me ask you something…

Do you think every runner started out as a “runner”?

Do you hate running and figure every runner jumps out of bed and can’t wait to hit the trails… that it’s just… natural?

I’ll let you in on a little known secret... NO runner, body builder, cyclist, or even sales person started out as those things. They started out where you and I do: awkward, unskilled, weak and slow. But what separates them is they put in the dedication necessary to get over that inevitable uncomfortable phase.

I might consider myself a runner now, but flashback to 7th grade… I was the slowest kid on the track team, let’s put it this way, I was the one everyone clapped for at meets because I was the last one on the track. I literally CRIED & BEGGED my mom every day after she’d pick me up to let me QUIT. Unfortunately we don’t always have that tyrant mom figure to push us past our humps so we give up

Flash forward 5 cross country & track seasons, varsity front runner all 4 years, 1000s of miles & 10+ mile days, gallons of sweat... and I’m a running addict. I don’t do it for medals or varsity letters anymore but runners high and the pure rush of actually putting your all out 110% into something (and I still try talking myself out of runs by the way! YOU’RE HUMAN!!)

But you know what I realized in 8th grade that took me from 42nd to 2nd place??

You suck it up the days you “don’t feel like it” and you swing for the freaking fence. You give it all you’ve got and the days you want to give up you dig deep inside of yourself and you find strength to keep moving forward. Because that’s when you really find out about yourself, you’re only as capable as you believe you are. You don’t hate something because you’re not good at it, because the more effort you put into it, the more success you have and the easier it gets, so you set new goals for yourself. Instead of your goal to be running 1 mile without stopping, or close 1 deal, it eventually will be run a 26.2 mile marathon or close 100 deals.

Let me broaden this for you all to understand:

NO ONE STARTS OUT AS A PRO, and beginning is never going to be comfortable or easy. Hating that activity and giving up is easy to do during this time, but change your mindset & push past it, and you CAN conquer it! Just because you hate running doesn’t mean you don’t have the potential to love it, it just means you haven’t put forth a “winner’s effort”.