Runner Insight

So the night before my full marathon I tried on my race day outfit: I was trying to decide which hat to wear. Should I wear the red “Runner’s Edge” one, or the gray Missoula Marathon running hat I just bought that day? When in doubt, I ask T. She is always a good sport, and I trust her fashion sense…and besides that, she has her eyesight. I live my life with the philosophy that it’s always good to have at least one person around who can actually see.

With a 6:30 a.m. start I wanted to be up by 4:30 as we had to drive about 20 miles to the start of the race, and after six or seven months of training for this thing, I wanted to be sure I was fully prepared and didn’t forget anything. I did manage to go to bed early, but with the heat, sleep was hard to come by. I did manage to get some sleep, but it was a fitful night.

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Permission Slips

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Do you remember when you were in school and you had to get a hall pass?  Or when you had to have a permission slip to attend the class field trip? Or you had a “Get Out of Jail Free” card?  How did that make you feel?  I know when I had a permission slip I felt in control, empowered.  That tiny scrap of paper carried a lot of weight.

Now we’ve pretty much grown up past the point of permission slips, but imagine writing out your own permission slip, and it reads something like this:

I give myself permission to start “You fill in the blank” today. 

Don’t start with the excuses already. I can’t hear you. (This is a blog…remember? It only seems like a conversation ) 

Now where were we…oh, yeah.

I give myself permission to start “You fill in the blank” today.

It doesn’t matter if it’s something fun like your favorite activity that you haven’t been able to find time for, or an arduous task like cleaning out the garage or clearing ground to start a garden, or a life-altering personal growth experience like getting fit or learning to play the harmonica or reading that inspirational book that your friend recommended. And it really doesn’t matter the reason that you’ve been putting it off.

By giving yourself permission, it allows you to start.  You are able to face down all the excuses you have created in the past, like “I’m never going to be able to do that” or “I don’t have time” or “I might as well not even try because I know I will fail” or “It’s too hard” or “Insert your favorite excuse here.”

The question is not whether you can or can not do whatever; the bottom line is whether you start or don’t. If you continue to choose “don’t”, then the spot you’re in now will be the same exact spot you’ll be in next week and next year and the years after. You still can’t find anything in the garage; you still haven’t leapt into your healthier life; you still don’t know how to play the harmonica; and you’re still eating produce that’s been shipped in from several states away.

The thing is, once you start, all it takes is baby steps. Baby steps make it easy to get some momentum so that you can keep going.  It’s not like you are required to overcome this huge barrier all at once; it’s all about baby steps.  And this baby step builds on that one and continues on, so that they are no longer really baby steps because they’ve all built up on the one that came before it. So you end up having made actual steps towards forward momentum and progress. What if you only went and spent an hour in the garage? Is it going to make a dent in the chaos? Perhaps not, but even if you only end up throwing out one box and two bags of broken junk and filling one box of stuff you don’t use anymore to donate to the local battered women’s shelter or to give away on Freecycle, giving yourself permission to start the task is like lifting your foot off the floor to take that first tiny step. And until you start, you never really know how far you’ll get.

Giving yourself permission is not only about starting. You can also give yourself permission to stop. This summer as it got hotter and I had all these miles to run for my fundraising Run Over To Ellen’s project (if you haven’t donated your dollar yet, what are you doing reading this? Perhaps you’re not sure how to do it. Let me help. Take your mouse hand, slide the mouse until the cursor is over in the sidebar where that green FirstGiving widget is, and then click on the orange Donate button in the bottom corner. Go ahead. I’ll wait for you to come back. Go on, now. I promise we’ll pick up right where we left off. We won’t go on without you. It’ll be okay…;) )

La, la, la

La, la, la

Okay, now . . . Thanks for coming back. As I was saying, this summer the temperatures were getting hotter, and in the past I’ve chosen not to run in the heat. But since I have all these miles to run (1,222 miles for my fundraising run), I figured I should try to run when it’s a little hotter out. Now at first this was kind of a big deal in my mind…’What if it’s too hot?” “What if I hate it?” Well, it occurred to me that I could stop and go home if it was too hot.  I could start out, give it a try, and if it was unbearable I could at any point in time turn around or call T to come get me; that thought made it possible for me to start.  Once I got out there running, I was running. I had my water, and yes it was hot, but it was fine that I was running when it was hot. I had always presumed that it would be dreadful to run in the heat, and I would hate it, so I hadn’t really done it. But since I had my water and the confidence that I could stop if it wasn’t fun, I could start.

Giving yourself permission to stop can eliminate the fear of failure that can hold you back and keep you from starting in the first place. Knowing that you have permission to stop can actually be a precursor to giving yourself permission to start.  If you start out with the knowledge that you can stop at any time, you have taken back the power and control in your life. And most likely, once you’ve started, you’ll end up going all the way and finishing the task because it becomes not as daunting as you first imagined.

Permission slips and baby steps…they go hand in hand. After all it’s all about moving forward and growing one step at a time. 

How ‘bout it? 

-Vision Runner   

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Beyond Cloud Nine

The other day we went to our favorite lake about 60 miles from home. We returned from a great day in the sun and water in the early evening. Just as we were coming through the Hellgate Canyon into the Missoula valley, I flashed back to other times when I had come back home from long trips away. Granted this was just a day trip, but as we came into the valley I remembered the feelings I had each time I would come back home, after being gone for weeks, or even months sometimes.

-Vision Runner

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