Ep #159: Showing Up Even When You Don’t Want To

So, after having that pep-talk with myself, I realized it’s quite literally what I needed to share with you today. First because I want to be honest with all of y’all. So, you know it’s not always rainbows and unicorns here at Not Your Average Runner, at Casa De Angie…

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.

Hey, rebels. So, real quick before we dive into this week’s topic, the seven-day Start Running Challenge is back. This is a free challenge that will get you up and running in just one week. It runs from August 31^st to September 6^th. And all you have to do to join is just click over to the show notes for this episode, episode 159. And the link to join will be right in the show notes. That is it.

So, thousands of women have started running, or restarted running using what I teach in this challenge. And you could be one of them. So, visit the show notes. I’ll wait. Go sign up and then come right back to me and we can get on with this episode.

So, truth-telling time. It’s almost three years into this podcast. And first of all, I can’t believe it’s been three years. What is happening? But three years in, just about, and this week, I’ve legit just ran out of things to say. I sat down this morning to record and I was like, I’ve got nothing.

And you know what? I had a moment, a long moment, maybe more like 30 minutes or more, where I told myself, “You know what, it’s okay to miss a week. You’ve been doing this for 159 episodes, Jill, you’ve got this.” And I thought you as the listener, you’d probably forgive me if I didn’t show up this week. You’d understand. 159 episodes, it’s been a while. It’s been a minute.

So, the excuses were very strong with me this morning, which is actually super funny because I’ve been talking so much lately about excuses and consistency and how to stick with your exercise program, did a whole three-hour Zoom class on it. And I guess, what is the old saying? Physician heal thyself, right? It was like, all the stuff that I’ve been doing about excuses and sticking with something, and then I just had such a moment this morning. And I know you can relate.

Do you ever have those times where you feel like, “It’s been fun, but I’m done now?” That was me today. I was like, “Well, we had a good ride. But running a business is kind of hard. Showing up each week for this podcast is hard sometimes.” And hell, sometimes, just keeping myself motivated to do my minimum baseline is fucking hard and I just want to give up.

I just want to quit, get a job at Barnes and Noble shelving books. And sort of a side note here, did you know that I used to work at a Borders bookstore way back in the day? Does anybody even remember them? Like, when I first started working after college, it was years before I made enough money in my job, despite having an undergraduate and a graduate degree in chemistry.

I graduated and the fancy high-paying jobs were nowhere to be found. So, I always had a part-time job for between 10 and 20 hours a week to make ends meet. I did this for a really long time. And even when I went back to school and got a second Master’s degree, and that school was a 90-minute drive from where I lived, I still worked two jobs. Somehow, I managed to have a fulltime job, a part-time job, go to graduate school, got a second Master’s degree.

This is before online learning was a thing, before smartphones were a thing. This is all back in the 90s. Honestly, I look back and I kind of have no idea how I did it. But for several years, I did. And I survived. And I’m pretty sure that doing that made me the person I am today.

And I had some really fun jobs. I worked at an animal shelter, which was amazing. I worked at an underwear store. And you have not lived until a random woman comes up to you in said store, lifts up her shirt and says, “Hey, do you still sell this bra?” Like, what? And that happened more than once. And I also worked at a Borders. And that was such an amazing job, it paid minimum wage, but I got to spend hours and hours just shelving and organizing books. It was so freaking relaxing.

Anyway, I’m getting way off track. So, today I had a really strong moment where I was like, “I’m going to shut down Not Your Average Runner. I’m going to go work at a Barnes and Noble where I just show up, they tell me what to do, I do it, and I go home. That sounds fucking amazing.”

And here is the thing. I know the reason I am who I am today is because other people in my life, whether people I knew in person or people I knew online or people I never met, because they showed up even when they didn’t want to.

Here’s a great example. Brooke Castillo, who created The Life Coach School, which is where I learned a lot of the awesome thought tools that I teach here, what if she had decided to give up when it got hard? What if she had said, “I don’t know, it seems like a lot of work. I’d rather just get a job with somebody and have them tell me what to do and not have to run this business?”

Right, if she had decided to do that, I would not have learned all I know about mindset. I wouldn’t be helping you get over your inner mean girl bullshit. None of this would be happening.

I think about Andy. Every day, he gets up and he heads to the hospital. And right now, all of his patients have COVID. That is his job, to serve patients who have COVID. What if he decided, you know, like he just got to work one day and was like, “I don’t know, nursing these people is really hard. I’m going to go home.” Or, “I’m just going to do the bare minimum today. I’m going to make sure they have water and that they are cleaned up and then that’s it. I’m not going to do anything else for them.”

These people would not have a very good experience. They’re already sick. They need someone to show up fully as their best self. If he doesn’t show up 100% for his job, people legit suffer. So, he does it even though it’s hard, even though it breaks his heart some days, he’s seen some crazy shit during this pandemic, he does it because he knows it’s going to make a difference in someone’s life every damn day. Because he shows up even when he’s tired or it’s hard, there are people whose lives are changed because of him.

So, I realized, if I quit just because running a business is hard or because I’m tired of recording a podcast every week, that’s a really shitty thing to do to you. Like, it’s shitty for me for not showing up for myself. But it’s even shittier to do it to you.

It’s like saying, “Well I know this podcast is really important to you. I know you look forward to it every week and that it helps you stay focused on your training so that you can show up for other people in your life. But you know what? I’m just not feeling it today. This is kind of a pain in the ass to do all this stuff. So, you know what? You’re on your own. And screw everybody else who depends on you too.”

Running a business is hard. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s hard. It’s difficult. It’s a challenge every damn day. But it also brings me such joy and satisfaction and pride. And like most challenging things, it’s worth it because it helps me grow as a person. And not only that. This podcast and the Not Your Average Runner business are my legacy. They are my contribution to the world. They are my way of leaving this world a little bit better than I found it.

So, to give up on that just because it’s difficult or I’m just not that into it today is just – it’s selfish is what it is. So, after having that pep-talk with myself, I realized that’s quite literally what I needed to share with you today. First because I want to be honest with all of y’all.

So, you know it’s not always rainbows and unicorns here at Not Your Average Runner, at Casa De Angie. And I’m not sharing it because I want you to feel bad for me. Because despite all my whining, I do have a really amazing life. I mean, I own my own company for fuck’s sake, that I started myself. I have the most amazing husband ever. And life is just really great.

And just a side note, is anyone else kind of digging this whole quarantine life thing? Like, you’ve been training for this for the past 30 years and now your introvert skills are finally useful? No, just me?

Anyway, the reason I’m sharing my whole thought process this morning is because you might be thinking about quitting something right now. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s running. Maybe you’re starting a podcast yourself and it seems like more trouble than it’s worth. And it’s really not. It’s a wild ride, but totally worth every minute.

But maybe you’re just feeling insecure and unworthy and you want to hide from the world right now because you don’t think you have a contribution to make. Here is what I want you to know. You matter. Showing up as your authentic imperfect glorious fucked up self is important. You never know who is watching. You never know who needs to see you today.

There might be a woman in your neighborhood who is going on her very first run today and she’s lacing up her shoes. She’s unsure. She’s nervous. She’s worried about what people will think. And she needs to see you doing it.

She needs to see your fat ass in spandex, maybe running in just a sports bra too, to normalize plus-size bodies exercising in public. She needs to see you red-faced huffing and puffing and doing it anyway. And if you don’t show up for yourself today, you’re letting her down too. And instead of going for a run, she might just give up and never even try.

And then her kids won’t see mom being brave. They won’t have that example set for them. And then they might grow up feeling insecure about their bodies too. Do you want that on your conscience?

I’m being a little overdramatic here, but not really. You never know who’s watching you. You never know who needs to see you. It might be your own kids, your best friend, a coworker, a random follower on Instagram that you’ll never meet.

I get direct messages all the time on Instagram from people who say, “I started running because your podcast told me it was okay.” Like, legit, they listened to the podcast and they’re like, “Oh, it’s alright for me to start exactly where I am. I don’t have to be fast. I don’t have to be skinny.” And all of that, all of those people are running now because I decided to show up each week, work through my own bullshit, and talk about it.

Lives literally changed because I bought a microphone and started saying things and was willing to be imperfect and maybe piss some people off, which has totally happened, because it was more important for me to spread the message than it was to play small.

So, you might not think that you have that impact in the world, but you do. I remember, again, going back to the 90s, I first started running, I was super-secretive about it. I ran in the dark so nobody would see me. And, of course, one of my damn neighbors did she me and she happened to work at the same place as me. And she told other people and, oh my god, I was mortified.

Until one day, a woman came up to me at work and she told me that I was her hero. She legit used that word, hero. She was interested in running but thought it wasn’t something she could do, but then knowing that I was doing it changed her opinion.

She hadn’t seen me running. She just heard through the grapevine that I was starting to run. And she’s like, “Oh, wait, if she can do it, maybe that’s something I could do.” And so, I realized, what if instead of hiding what I’m doing, I actually started talking about it? What if instead of being all up in my feelings of shame, because that’s really what holds us back, we’re embarrassed, we’re ashamed or we’re tired, we’re just done. And we hide and we don’t show up. And then we don’t get the result.

But we think it just impacts us. We think like, if I’m embarrassed and I don’t show up for myself, I’m the one who suffers. That’s for sure true. But I want you to think about all the other people that need to see what you’re doing so that it feels okay for them.

What if, instead of being all up in my feelings because I was fat, I started being proud of doing something that most people thought was a terrible idea because they’ve been brainwashed by the fitness industry to think only thin people can run?

And so, that started changing my brain a little bit to think, like, maybe it’s really important for me to just be myself and show other people that it’s okay.

So, here’s the thing. I want you to think about what you’re not doing. Really think about it because you’re not doing it maybe because you’re scared or you’re bored or you’re embarrassed or you’re just not feeling it. You’re like, “It’s too much trouble,” because you think it’s not important, because you think it’s just too hard or it’s not worth trying.

I want you to inventory the things in your life that you’re not doing for those reasons and recognize that there’s probably somebody that needs you to show up and do it. And it might be somebody you will never meet. But they need you just the same.

So, think about it. Think about it and think about the people in your life that if they hadn’t shown up and done something awkward or hard or uncomfortable, how would your life be different if that person had not done their thing? And then think about what is it that you can do to help somebody else.

Okay? Okay. My friends, I love you. Don’t forget to sign up for the seven-day challenge. The link is right there in the show notes for episode 159. Stay safe. Get your ass out there and run and I will see you next week.

Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.