I recently got an email from somebody who told me they were offended by the language I use in my posts and on the podcast and were therefore unsubscribing. This isn’t the first one I’ve gotten, and guess what? I totally get it.
What I’m diving into this week is all about why being your authentic self is the best way to be! I’m exploring why creating palatable versions of yourself to please other people does not work and will only cost you your energy and wellbeing. I might surprise you here, but the tools I’m sharing explain why being offended or not liking what someone else does is not their problem or responsibility.
Join me for a short and sweet rant about why authenticity matters! It’s not always easy to truly be yourself because we all want to be liked, but hopefully, this episode will show you why honing in on it is so empowering!
If people actually do like you, whatever version of you that you're pretending to be, what they really like is the person you've created. They don't actually like you. They don't even know you. Share on XI’m taking a crew of women to New Orleans in February to run the Rock n Roll half there for a once in a lifetime race-cation! If you have a half marathon on your bucket list or if you’ve done a five-mile run within the past month, I want you to sign up for a quick call with my team! This trip is going to be epic and you do not want to miss it!
What You’ll Learn From this Episode:
- My favorite time to train for a half marathon.
- Why being your authentic self can be difficult.
- The best thing about showing up as yourself.
- Why running is a great way to apply the tools I teach.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
If you have any questions you’d like answered on the show, email me at podcast@notyouraveragerunner.com
- Join the Not Your Average Runner Private Facebook Community
- Join Run Your Best Life to get exclusive content from a podcast accessible just for members!
- Not Your Average Runner Instagram
- New Orleans Rock n Roll half marathon
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
- Doc Parsley’s Sleep Remedy
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who is midlife and plus sized and you want to start running but don’t know how, or if it’s even possible, you’re in the right place. Using proven strategies and real-life experience, certified running and life coach Jill Angie shares how you can learn to run in the body you have right now.
Hey rebels, you are listening to episode number 58 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today’s episode is going to be short and sweet and all about how to become a person who changes the world for the better.
But before we get into that, I want to talk about half marathon training. So the very best time to train for a half marathon is really fall and winter. And the reason I say that is because it’s not a million degrees outside. So that’s my favorite time to train. But for real, it’s actually because the temperatures are calming down, it’s a perfect time to train for a half.
And oh my god, I am taking a crew of women to New Orleans in February to run the Rock n Roll half there on race-cation. And it’s going to be off the hook, amazing, and of course, I’ll be training them between now and then to have an amazing race as well. So we are staying in this ridiculously gorgeous, huge house, right near the French Quarter. I’m planning all kinds of fun shenanigans so that it becomes the trip of a lifetime.
So basically, if you have a half marathon on your bucket list for next year or maybe even the year after, but you’ve already done a five-mile run within the past month, and I’m including run-walk in that, there is a few months left before the race. If you’ve gotten yourself to the five-mile point and you’re like, I don’t know if I’m ready, you’re ready, and we need to talk. So I want you to sign up for a quick 10-minute call with my team to learn more. Just go to talktojill.com. Just do it.
Seriously, this trip is going to be epic and you do not want to be watching all of the photographs coming up on Facebook thinking, “Oh, I could have been there but I was too afraid to sign up for a 10-minute call and find out more.” So just do it. Talktojill.com. You’ll talk to a member of my team and we will get you figured out.
Alright, my rebels, we’re kicking this episode off with one of my favorite quotes of all time, and here it is. “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” And of course, I have a really good story about why I chose it, as I always do.
So last week, I had somebody write to me and tell me that they were going to be unsubscribing from the podcast and my email list because my language was unacceptable, and I’m quoting. She said, “I’m not perfect by far, but I do not need that kind of inspiration.”
And actually, I totally get that. Not everybody wants to hear a bunch of F-bombs in a podcast or get them in their email. Fortunately, the unsubscribe button is always just a click away and if you don’t like it, you don’t like what you’re hearing, you don’t like what you’re reading, you just unsubscribe and say no thank you. Just opt out. Totally fine. That’s why it’s there.
Oh, and just as a side, we just finished interviewing for the newest Not Your Average Runner team member and the fourth question on my list that I asked every single candidate was, “Are you bothered by large amounts of profanity?” Now, I don’t require someone to swear a lot to work for me but for sure, if they’re uncomfortable hearing it a lot, this probably isn’t the right job for them.
Anyway, so I’ve actually gotten quite a few emails from listeners and readers who really don’t love how I express myself. They’ve said, “I love your message but your swearing offends me and I really think you should stop doing it so that you can reach more people. And they want to let me know. They have opinions. They say I could reach a lot more people if I toned it down or stopped altogether. But basically, what it comes down to is they want me to change so that they can feel more comfortable, right?
So just really hear that. This person, whoever it is, wants me to change so that they can feel more comfortable. Now, I know that how I teach is not everyone’s cup of tea. I am bold. I am loud, and I’m kind of unapologetic about it. Like, I really don’t give a fuck if somebody doesn’t like what I teach, how I say it, or any of that stuff.
And sometimes I say things that people feel offended by. Now, could I change how I speak and write so that I’m not offending these people? I absolutely could do that. I might retain a few extra listeners, who knows? I might get thousands of extra listeners. I might help thousands of extra people, and that’s great, right?
But here is the thing; changing your behavior to suit somebody else’s preferences, to try and manage their opinion of you by how you act is straight up lying. We cannot manage other people’s thoughts and feelings. That is their responsibility. I am not the one offending somebody else by my swearing.
They feel offended because they have a thought, “She shouldn’t be doing that,” and when they think that thought, they feel offended. And when they feel offended, they either unsubscribe or they send me an email telling me how I should stop swearing.
And this is the beautiful thing about the world and about our brains. We all get to have opinions. Their opinion is that I shouldn’t be doing that. But let’s be clear. I am not offending them. They are offending themselves. I actually have nothing to do with it. I’m just doing my thing. They have a thought and a feeling about it.
Because if swearing were truly offensive, everyone would feel offended. Everyone on the planet. But that is not how it is. Some people like it. Some people don’t. Some people have no opinion. I have no control over that. So if I have no control over that, why would I even bother to change?
Because here’s what would happen: I would stop swearing and the offended people would like me better, they would tell all their friends, they would subscribe or re-subscribe or whatever, but then you would think, “Aw, I liked her better when she swore all the time,” and then you’d write me a letter saying, “You know what, Jill, you’ve kind of lost your edge. I’m not inspired by you anymore because you’ve changed.”
So then I’d have the letters from you saying, “I wish you would be different so that I could like you better.” There’s no winning. So showing up as anything other than your authentic self at all times means you are pretending to be a different person so that other people will like you. It’s lying, my friends, which here’s the deal: it means if they actually do like you, whatever version of you that you’re pretending to be, if people like that version of you, what they really like is the person you’ve created. They don’t actually like you. They don’t even know you.
They know some watered-down curated version of you that you’ve presented to them in order to manage their opinion. And then you have to keep playing that part forever or you risk that person not liking you anymore, and this – holy shit. This sounds exhausting to me. Constantly trying to edit your behavior so that you are palatable to somebody else is a waste of energy. Fuck that shit.
Put your energy into something else because putting your energy into lying about who you are is a waste. It doesn’t really get you anything. I want you to use it for something more productive. And I want to tell you a little story about this show on Amazon Prime – first of all, I’m obsessed with Amazon Prime and Netflix and all those shows are so good.
But there’s one that I was watching recently and I’m going to mess up the title but I think it’s called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and in the beginning, the first episode of that show, this woman, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, she has this version of herself that she presents to her husband so that he will like her.
And this involves, I shit you not, so they go to bed at night and she’s got all of her makeup on and she goes to bed looking perfect. And then she sleeps and then she wakes up like, an hour before him every morning and gets up and showers and does her hair and does her makeup, then gets back into bed and pretends to be asleep so that when the alarm goes off, he looks over and he thinks, “Oh my gosh, look at my amazingly beautiful wife,” right?
And so she’s constantly presenting this version of herself to him so that – and it’s exhausting, right? It’s taking so much of her time because she’s got this image that she presented to him when they got – dated and got married and she’s got to keep it up so that he doesn’t find out. Well, spoiler alert, he leaves her. He asks for a divorce and here she is like, she’s done all this work to try and manage his feelings and emotions and it got her nowhere.
And all of that happens in the first episode, maybe the second episode. I may have just spoiled part of it, but I promise, it’s an amazing series and I swear to god, I want to meet this woman. I don’t know, I don’t think it’s based on a true story but she is my kind of people because she goes through this amazing journey, becomes this awesome woman afterwards.
But anyway, that’s what I think of when I think of like, having to – you create this version of yourself to manage other people’s opinions and beliefs about you and then you have to keep playing that part. So I think of Mrs. Maisel and how hard it was for her to get up every morning an hour before her husband got up and put on all her makeup and…
So just don’t do that. It just seems like a waste of energy, right? It’s so much easier in the long run for you to just be yourself in all your fucked up unique, weird, bizarre glory. Now, here’s the catch of course. It might not feel great at first to be yourself, to be your authentic self, especially if you’ve been hiding behind veils of who you think you should be, if you’ve been doing that for a while.
Because what’s going to happen is you think – or you’ll be worried about what people will think when you stop pretending, when you stop – when you drop all the masks and you just go out there and you just own your crazy ass self, you might lose friends. People might not be happy with you, they might have opinions about you. They might not like the opinions you have that you’re expressing. They might think you’re too loud, you’re too bold, they might think you’re not fun anymore. They might feel threatened by your brilliance. And all of that is okay because you can’t control their opinions.
You really can’t. All you can just control is yourself and then you get to let people have the opinions you want and then you decide if you want to continue to have a relationship with them. And then on the other side of that is getting to express yourself and really be who you want to be and show up as the person you were meant to be on this planet.
And that might be telling everyone that you’re a runner and not apologizing for doing it your own way. Or going on a first date, even a blind date, and admitting you’re secretly a math nerd. And I’m raising my hand here because true story. Leaving the house without makeup because you fucking hate spending 20 minutes putting on your face every day just so that other people will look at you and think, “Oh, she looks nice,” right? Or saying no to parties you don’t want to go to because you’re kind of an introvert and you really don’t want to go out.
So it basically means living your life the way you want to do it instead of the way everyone else thinks you should. Whatever that is. Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.
Now, the best part is when you show up as your own beautiful, amazing self, you start to develop new relationships, try new things, stop wasting energy being somebody you’re not. And what are you going to do with all of that extra time and energy? Well, this is where it gets really fun.
Now, I mentioned last week that one of the goals of Not Your Average Runner is to get a million more women up and running. A million more women feeling confident, loving themselves, living a kickass life. And running is a great way to apply all of the tools that I teach, to practice them and to hone them so that you can then apply them to your entire life.
That’s why I use a combination of life coaching and run coaching to help my clients. Because I want them to have the tools to manage their minds so that they can achieve whatever they want in their lives. Because a runner with a well-managed mind is a really powerful woman. Hell, a woman with a half-managed mind is a powerful woman. It’s when we don’t manage our minds that things get kind of icky, right?
So powerful women make powerful, positive changes in the world. They do not sit around complaining about it on Facebook. They actually get out in the world and make shit happen. Now, that might look like starting a local running group for back of the packers, so they have a group of similarly paced people to run with. Or it might mean going door to door to support a political candidate that promotes women’s reproductive rights.
Or it might be intervening when you see somebody being bullied or mistreated. Now, whatever your contribution is, you can’t make that contribution if you are hiding, if you are putting all your energy into presenting a version of you that you think will be likable. Fuck likable. Likable doesn’t get shit done.
I want you to chew on that for a bit, and then I would love for you to drop a line, come over to notyouraveragerunner.com and like, tell us what you think. There’s a contact page on that website. I want to know what you think of this. Likable doesn’t get shit done. Authenticity gets shit done. Confidence, well-managed minds get shit done.
Okay rebels, that’s my rant for the week. And I do want to talk a little bit about my latest obsession, which is unrelated to everything I just ranted about. But here’s the deal: ever since I hit perimenopause, I’ve really had trouble sleeping. Like, actually I shouldn’t say I’ve had a lot of trouble sleeping. I fall asleep with no problem but then two hours later I’m like, wide awake and I toss and turn all night long.
I’m not refreshed when I wake up. It just doesn’t feel good. And then in the middle of the night I’m like, up and like, worrying and obsessing about not sleeping, which makes it harder to sleep, right? And I have tried everything. I’ve tried blackout shades, not having screen time before bed, not eating for at least three hours before bed, taking a hot bath right before bed, using earplugs to block out any extra noise or sleeping in a really cold room.
And you know, doing all of those things, it does help a little bit, especially the cold room and not having the screen time. But I was still having problems like constantly waking up all night and not feeling refreshed in the morning. And then I heard about this thing called Doc Parsley’s Sleep Remedy and a few people were just like, “No, seriously, this is the shit. This is good stuff,” and I was very skeptical.
It was not cheap. It was like, probably $50 for a bottle and I was like, I don’t really want to spend $50 to find out that this is yet another thing that doesn’t work for me. But you could get a sample for like $3 that would – it was three nights worth or something. And so I bought the sample and I tried it and the first night like, I still woke up a few times but not nearly as much and when I woke up in the morning, I felt refreshed. Like, my sleep was so much deeper and restful and I woke up not feeling like exhausted.
I mean, it wasn’t magic but it felt pretty close to it. So it’s basically a blend of vitamin D and magnesium and tryptophan and melatonin. And I don’t know why it works but it really, really worked for me. And so I just wanted to tell you guys about it in case this is something that you’re struggling with. If you’re perimenopausal or you’re post-menopausal like I am and this is something you’ve been having a hard time with, I encourage you to give this a try.
And you can go to the website. And I’m not getting any kickbacks or anything for this. Like, I just wanted to share my experience. If you go to the website, you can pay like, $3 and get a sample and try it and then decide for yourself before you want to make the investment. So that’s just my little obsession. It’s making a difference for me and I think if you’re in the same situation, it might make a difference for you.
Alright rebels, that is it for this week. And everything that I mentioned in this episode, which is basically Doc Parsley’s Sleep Remedy and the chance to talk to my team about whether or not you should be at the New Orleans race-cation next February, everything can be found in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/58, and I’ll be back in a couple days to talk to you soon. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you liked what you heard and want more, head over to www.notyouraveragerunner.com to download your free one-week jumpstart plan and get started running today.
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