Ep #56: How Running Can Change the World

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 56 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today we are talking about why it’s so important for you to be a runner, and it is not what you think.

So today’s warm up quote is from Gandhi and it is something that I actually try to live my life by. It’s, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” And it’s pretty simple really. The only thing we truly have control over are our own thoughts and behavior, and that means we can spend all of our energy wishing that other people were different and stomping our feet and demanding that they change, from our own immediate family right on to our government officials, but we really can’t force anyone else to change. It’s just not possible.

The only change we can have complete control over is ourselves. So if you want something to be different, you need to start with yourself. And then what happens is people will notice and follow. And that is my segue into the meat of our workout today.

Now, you have heard my say before that the mission of Not Your Average Runner is to get a million more women up and running in 2019. And I am really, really passionate about this and I’m going to be uber focused on it all year. Now, there is a lot of reasons that I set this as a goal for Not Your Average Runner.

When I started this business, I really just wanted to help people feel better, and I still feel that way. Becoming a life and a running coach has been one of the greatest joys of my life and I just want everyone else to feel as good in their life as I do in mine. That doesn’t mean that everything for me is always rainbows and daisies. It’s far from it. Life is life. But as a result of doing all this coaching work on myself for the past six years, I truly just have this general sense of wellbeing on a daily basis, and that is just so fucking awesome. Can I tell you? And I just want everyone else to be able to feel that way.

So that’s why I started this company and it is one of the driving reasons that I make this podcast, that I send out the Friday love notes over email, it’s the reason I have a Facebook group with over 7000 members in it. And it’s also why I work with clients in the Run Your Best Life group and in the Rebel Runner Unleashed program.

It’s my life’s calling. It’s my life’s calling to teach women what I know, whether it is through the free content that I share or in a more direct way, working one-on-one with my clients. I want to make a difference in the world. I want to be part of the solution. And ultimately, I just want to leave this planet a little bit better than I found it.

So over the past year, this business, the Not Your Average Runner business, the company has grown a lot. And in fact, we just hired another team member, she’s completely amazing. I can’t wait to introduce her to you. And I am starting to realize that our little company could have an even bigger impact.

Now, I’m a data driven person. I like numbers. They make perfect sense to me. You can just always count on them to be orderly and reliable and not fuck you over. I’m pretty sure actually in another life I was an accountant. So when I think about setting goals and when I think about making a bigger impact in the world, I always decide first, how am I going to measure my success?

Now, in the past, when the business was brand new and my primary goal was to pay my living expenses because I quit my corporate job, all of my goals were very revenue oriented. And as the business grew, that expanded to paying my team members, keeping the podcast running, and of course, always providing the very best experiences for my clients.

Now, real quick, I do have to give you a little side. Being a woman who runs her own company is pretty fucking amazing. And first and foremost, because it means I get to call all the shots and make this business exactly what I want. Now, I have a team and we talk about things and we make decisions as a group like, what’s best for the company, but it’s kind of like, awesome to be the CEO, right?

When I was living the corporate life, I used to say all the time, “When I’m in charge of everything, when I’m queen of the world, this is what I’m going to do.” And now of course I am in charge and I get to run this amazing business and make decisions and create the direction for this company that I want to see. It’s a way for me to make my vision for the change that I want to see in the world come to life.

So I got to say, it’s thrilling and terrifying all at the same time. It’s kind of like when you sign up for your first marathon, you are like, pretty much wanting to barf even as you’re hitting the register button. And just as a side note, I have a small group of coach friends who also run their own businesses and we meet monthly. We actually keep in touch on a daily basis but we meet once a month to really talk about our business issues, share our wisdom, share our successes, and we have this little thing that we call barf goals, which are basically goals that you want to achieve but they scare the shit out of you.

And I know you can relate to this. We all have barf goals. I think it’s really important to set goals that scare you because if they don’t scare you, they don’t challenge you and they don’t change you.

Anyway, I keep getting off track here. Let’s come back to The Not Your Average Runner goals. So our revenue goals are super important because they keep the lights on. The income means I can continue to put out all of the free and almost free content like the podcast, managing the Facebook group, all of the e-books on Amazon, which are just a few dollars to download. And income is something that’s really easily measured.

My accountant, she provides me with a report every month. I always know exactly where I stand with respect to the goals I’ve set, with respect to the minimum I need to bring in so that everybody can get paid, and so the lights stay on and so forth. And it’s kind of like getting those weekly summaries that you get from Garmin or Runkeeper or Strava or whatever your tracker of choice is. Like, how many miles you run this week, what your pace is like compared to last week and so forth.

You can measure your progress against your training plan. It’s very, very satisfying. Numbers are satisfying. So like I said, I got into this business to make a difference in the world and the revenue is one way that I measure the difference, but that’s really more are we healthy as a business, that kind of measurement.

I didn’t really have any numbers to measure the broader difference that I wanted to make in the world. So we set the one million new women, one million more women up and running goal to really put some sort of measurement to this impact that we want to make in the world. And we’re still figuring out how to measure it. How do you figure out – unless I can get a million women to write in and say yes, I started running because I listened to your podcast, which I think is going to be tough.

So we’re going to figure out some creative ways to measure it. But the target itself is there and it is just so exciting. So why is it so exciting for me to have this goal or for the business to have this goal? Well, I get a lot of letters from my listeners and my followers and my clients and they tell me or they tell my team how their lives have been changed for the better as a result of running and as a result of doing the self-coaching work that I teach. And they also tell me how the people around them notice the change.

And remember the quote that we talked about at the top of the podcast. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” When you start becoming the changed person that you want to see in the world, other people start to notice. And in the Rebel Runner Formula, one of the key areas that I focus on is community. And part of community is realizing that somebody is always watching you.

And I don’t mean like they’re watching you and judging your outfit and thinking you look fat in those tights. No, they’re watching your behavior. They’re noticing the changes that you’re making. Your kids, your coworkers, your family and your friends. When you are being the best version of yourself that you can be, you’re actually helping others to do that too.

Somebody else might see you start running and think, “Hey, maybe that’s something I can do too? I didn’t realize fat chicks were allowed to run. I’m going to get a pair of tights and I’m going to give this a try myself.” And then they start running, and then somebody sees them do it, and then the cycle starts again.

Here is the thing: I talk about running all the time, but this isn’t just about running. It’s not just about improving your health and fitness. I mean, all of those are amazing goals. They’re fine goals. I love them. All in. But for me, getting a million more women up and running is about the impact that it will have on the world.

Especially women over 40, women that are coming up to that age 50 or maybe just past it, women who identify as plus size because oh my gosh, plus size women, there is no way to describe the sting of judgment that you feel from the rest of the world for not fitting into that stereotypical perfect woman’s body. And women who are in their 40s and their 50s and are plus size, they’ve felt it for a while.

And they know that right now in our world, running in that size, running in that body is an act of rebellion. And if you’re willing to start running and create that act of rebellion, when you start to rebel against those misguided beliefs that women’s bodies should look a certain way, you start to feel pretty powerful and courageous, and that my friends, is exactly where the magic lies.

That is where true change happens in the world. Running is just a path to access that superpower where you start to speak up for yourself, speak up for others, tell your story, stand up for what you know is right. That power and courage that you feel when you become a runner in a plus size body, when you become a runner at age 50, when everybody’s like, “You’re too old, you’re going to ruin your knees,” when you hear all that crap that other people are saying, you decide to do it anyway, that rebellious spirit that breeds that power and that courage, and that is the superpower.

And when you are that one person that speaks up, a few people are going to hear you. And then they might be like, “Hey, you know what, she’s got a point.” And then they start to speak up, and then the message gets louder. And then with a million women, a million more women who have been like, developed this power and this courage and this rebelliousness through running, when they start fighting for equality everywhere, well, that’s a movement.

That is where change starts to happen. And you’re seeing this, you’re seeing the tides turn in social media and just out there, more and more women are starting to speak their mind but I think it needs to happen faster. So getting a million more women up and running is about more than just health and fitness. It’s about more than women just feeling good about themselves. Yes, that is all part of the mission, it’s awesome. I want everybody to feel good about themselves. It’s a necessary step along the way.

But when those million women get to that point and they feel so fucking good about themselves that they are ready to step up and start being the change that they want to see in the world, they’re going to inspire a million more. And then the numbers just propagate from there, right?

The exponential effect of that kind of impact is staggering. There is nothing that we can’t do with that kind of power, with those kinds of numbers. Like, putting an end to the societal norms that keep women from speaking up about abuse and rape, creating a world where women are paid the same as men for doing the same fucking job. Or where it is no longer socially acceptable to treat women as objects instead of as humans. Or where it’s no longer acceptable to mock women who refuse to play along with the societal norms and mock them for being bitchy or ugly, right?

Imagine a society where women no longer have to apologize for being fucking women. I would really like to live in that world. And I’m getting a little emotional talking about this right now. I’m not going to apologize for that because it’s so important. You’ve been listening to this podcast, you know that you’ve been impacted by how the world views women and the expectations of everybody in our society on how women should behave, and it’s bullshit.

So for me, getting a million more women up and running and helping them develop the courage and the power and the confidence and the rebelliousness to speak out and change our society, that is the change, that is the impact, the legacy that I want to leave on this planet, and I hope you feel the same way too.

So changing the world starts with changing yourself. I would really like to help you with that. If you want to join the rebellion, sign up for a free 10-minute call with my team to find out how you can become a rebel runner, how you can start making a difference and really affecting this kind of change, this kind of title shift that needs to happen in this world.

Okay rebels, we are heading into the cool down. I know I’m heated up. It’s been quite a workout today. So I’m going to lighten it up a little bit with my latest obsession, and this week I am completely obsessed with bullet journals. So Kristie Bittleston, who you might remember from episode 43 recently taught a class in the Run Your Best Life coaching community on how to make your own running journal using an inexpensive bullet journal, some washi tape, and some gel pens.

And she had lots of like, tips and tricks and hacks to make it amazing and fun and oh my god, first of all, she even has Wonder Woman washi tape, which – first of all, if you don’t know what washi tape is, go look it up. It’s like, the silliest thing but the most amazing thing ever. It’s washi, no E on the end. And it comes in all kinds of different designs and colors and you basically use it to create some interest in your journal.

And so Kristie has this Wonder Woman washi tape, which I immediately went and ordered on Amazon. And she also gave us a ton of ideas for how to create a running journal that reflects your needs, your goals, like, specifically what you want to journal about. Because not everybody wants to have the same thing.

So Kristie’s has – she takes a whole page every day to do her thought download and then on the other page, she has some high-level to-dos and she journals about her workout. And she uses it both to plan forward and to record what happened. Her journals are beautiful but just go check out – there’s tutorials on YouTube or Pinterest.

You could also join Run Your Best Life to get access to Kristie’s webinar directly and see what she taught us. But I highly recommend giving it a try because if you’re analytical, if you’re creative, you can make a system for yourself that incorporates all of the uniqueness that is you.

And we’ll have links to all of the stuff to make your own in the show notes, which are going to be at notyouraveragerunner.com/56. In fact, everything I mentioned in this episode can be found there, and thank you so much for sticking with me this week, for sticking with me for 56 episodes. It has been my pleasure to be in your ear every single week. It means so much to me and I hope that you’re getting as much out of this podcast as I am.

That’s about it for this week. I will 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.