We’ve been discussing the importance of consistency on the podcast over the last few weeks, and today, I’m diving into one thing that makes consistency pretty much impossible. I’ve made a lot of excuses throughout my life when it comes to exercise, and if you’re not getting the results you want from your running, I’ll bet you’re doing the same.
Making excuses can feel legit at times, and you might believe that your circumstances are getting in the way of your running. There will inevitably be things that are out of your control, but this week, I’m inviting you to question whether you’re really cool with sacrificing your wellbeing and health for a couple of bullshit stories about why you can’t run.
Listen in this week as I show you what it means to truly own your results and how you can start doing this. You always lose out when you believe your excuses, and I’m sharing the work required to take responsibility for yourself and how doing this will turn you into an unstoppable badass.
I’m doing a one-off virtual online class on becoming someone who exercises consistently called Not Your Average Workout: How to Start Today and Stick with It for Life! My goal for you in this class is to help you create a realistic workout routine for yourself that you can actually stick to, along with learning all the tools I share! If you want to create an identity for yourself as an exerciser and deal with the tantrums in your brain, you need to come check it out.
The class is on August 23rd from noon to 3pm Eastern time. It’s only $39, so click here to join and I can’t wait to see you there!
The Rebel Runner Roadmap is a 30-day online class where I teach you the fundamentals of running. This is a class where you’ll learn how to start running the right way, or how to up-level your running. From running form, strength training, stretching, to all the brain work, it’s all in there. Check it out here and get on the waiting list for the next round of enrollment …I can’t wait to see you there!
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
- Why making excuses is often a lose-lose situation.
- The difference between someone who exercises consistently and someone who skips their workouts.
- How to start owning your results.
- Why you need to be on the lookout for your toddler brain acting up.
- The good news about taking responsibility for yourself.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
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- Ep #157: How to Disaster-Proof Your Running
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Full Episode Transcript:
I just don’t want to. I’d rather stay in bed. Running is boring. It might rain and I don’t like running in the rain. I don’t have anyone to go with. Other people might make fun of me. I can do it later. Running is too hard. I don’t like running in my neighborhood, I’m so bored with it. The first mile is really hard.
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. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but Andy and I got a kitten a couple weeks ago and she’s so freaking cute. She’s literally sleeping on my desk right now, so if you hear any weird noises, that is probably her waking up and trying to play with anything that is not nailed down. She is very rowdy and I am here for it. It’s super cute.
I actually started an Instagram for my cats because apparently that’s who I am now. You can find it @maddy_and_eunice. That is her name. It is Eunice. It’s so cute. I’ll also have it linked in the show notes. And so far, Maddy has been very tolerant of her new little sister.
So Eunice is only like, eight, nine weeks old. She just wants to wrestle, play, eat, and sleep, pretty much in that order. And Maddy is not super excited about the wrestling. There have been a couple of spats, but this morning I caught them sleeping together on the same bench about six inches apart and then later on, I actually saw Maddy grooming Eunice, so I think they’re okay.
So anyway, that’s probably enough about my cats, but I’m just obsessed right now. Anyway, before we dive in to the excuse-busting topic this week, I want to quickly remind you that Saturday is the last day, Saturday the 22nd is the last day to sign up for the virtual workshop. It’s happening on Sunday, August 23rd from noon to 3pm Eastern.
And basically, we’re going to bust through all of your excuses so you can get your ass out there and run, or get your ass in the gym and strength train. So you’re just going to go to notyouraveragerunner.com, click on consistency workshop to sign up. And also, for those of you who have asked me will there be a recording, yes, there will be a recording.
But it is only for those who are signed up in advance. So if you want to come to the workshop, you can’t make it live, you can get everything delivered right to your inbox and watch at your convenience if you sign up by Saturday the 22nd at midnight.
Okay, so today we’re going to talk about how to stop making excuses. Do you ever make excuses? I’ve made a lot of excuses in my life. If you’re not getting the results that you want from your running, I would put money on it being a lack of consistency causing that problem. And the reason we aren’t consistent with running is always 99.9% of the time, it is our excuses.
So what exactly are excuses? I mean, they’re thoughts that we have in our brain, but I looked up the dictionary definition and it kind of made me laugh. Dictionary definition is a reason or explanation put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense.
Now, I don’t think skipping your training run is necessarily an offense, but it is something that we kind of feel guilty about, right? We think it’s a character flaw that we can’t stick to our plan. So I think it’s kind of interesting that excuses are how we defend ourselves when we haven’t done what we thought we should do. That’s basically what it is.
And we don’t offer excuses when we’ve done something the way we want to. We don’t say, oh, I got on all my training runs, here’s my excuse. No. An excuse is something we use to justify why we didn’t comply. And usually, it involves taking the blame off of ourselves and putting it outside of our control.
It’s raining, I can’t run. My boss made me stay late, I can’t run. The neighbor’s dog was barking all night long so I woke up really tired and I can’t run. Because when we can put the blame elsewhere, we don’t have to take responsibility. Because when we take responsibility for something we didn’t do right, we get to this place of like, now I have to beat myself up, now I have to admit that I’m lazy and undisciplined.
And that is kind of the other side of the coin with excuses. It’s either someone or something else’s fault and therefore we failed through no fault of our own and we get to have a pity party about it, or we have to admit we’re just a couch potato with no control or self-discipline. And we kind of don’t have a middle ground there. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Either you’re powerless or you’re lazy, and neither one of those sounds good to me. So I mean, okay, sometimes there are legit reasons that are out of your control, but most of the time, we can find some ownership in there.
So let’s say it starts hailing. Nobody wants to run in the hail. I get it. Starts hailing right before your planned running time and you’re like, see, there’s nothing I can do, I have to skip my run. But really, if you were taking responsibility and owning your results, you would have checked the weather the night before, maybe even a couple days before.
You’d have figured out a backup plan ahead of time so that in the event that it’s raining cats and dogs outside, or in the event there’s hail, you know exactly how you’re going to handle it. So shit is going to happen, but the difference between somebody who exercises consistently and somebody who skips a lot of workouts is how they talk to themselves and the amount of ownership that they take for their results.
Owning your results means you accept responsibility for all of it. You cannot control the weather. You can’t control the traffic. You can’t control whether your boss asks you to work late, whether your child gets sick, if your babysitter cancels. Those are not things you have control over. Those are circumstances.
But my friend, we just talked about disaster recovery plans last week. We did a whole podcast on it. You cannot control circumstances, but you can create backup plans. You can say, oh shit, it’s hailing outside, well I knew the weather was going to be crappy so it’s time to activate plan B and maybe plan B is I already know what I’m going to move around so I can make my run up later today or tomorrow.
Or maybe plan B is holy shit, it’s going to be thundering on Sunday when I have my long run planned, I guess I better figure out how to make it happen on Saturday so I’m not behind.
Because it’s not a matter of if circumstances are going to happen that you didn’t plan for or that you can’t control. It’s not a matter of if circumstances that you can’t control are going to happen. It is a matter of when. It’s a big difference between that.
We can just say, oh, I hope it doesn’t rain, but you can also say, at some point it is going to rain and I have to figure out what I’m going to do about it. So the first part of owning your results is owning that circumstances will happen. You don’t have to let them shut you down. Take charge of the solution. Don’t just hope that you figure it out, I’m sure it’ll come to me.
No, fuck that. Take control, figure it out ahead of time, decide what you’re going to do. That’s powerful. That is badass. Decide right now nothing is going to get in your way ever. I love this story. One of our Run Your Best Life members posted the other day that her husband was diagnosed with COVID. One of her sons is now showing symptoms.
There’s all kinds of quarantining and disinfecting going on in their house. She and her daughter are like, sequestered in a different part of the house so that there’s no contact, and I mean, seriously, there’s a lot going on. And guess what she did? She fucking ran anyway. I mean, come on. If anybody has a good “excuse” not to run, it’s her.
But she’s also somebody who owns her results, so she figured it out, she took care of herself, she got her run done, and a strength training workout too. That is what owning your results looks like.
And now, here’s the bad news. Owning your results when there are circumstances that happen, that is actually the easy half of excuse-busting. I’m so sorry to break the news to you because you know what’s even worse for your running routine than letting circumstances derail you? It is not having a circumstance and quitting anyway.
I’m just going to leave that for you to think about for a moment because when you quit on yourself and you actually don’t have a circumstance, you just have some bullshit thought, that’s the worst. Then our brains get all busy.
So here’s what that looks like. I just don’t want to. I’d rather stay in bed. Running is boring. It might rain and I don’t like running in the rain. I don’t have anyone to go with. Other people might make fun of me. I can do it later. Running is too hard. I don’t like running in my neighborhood, I’m so bored with it. The first mile is really hard, how am I going to get through it?
Those are not circumstances, my friend. All of those statements, which I guarantee you’ve said at least a couple of them to yourself. Do not lie to me. I know you’re out there. I’ve told them to myself as well. All of them are just bullshit stories you tell yourself and then you believe them.
You think, yup, that’s a legit reason not to do this really important thing that will make me feel better, I’m cool with sacrificing my wellbeing and health because a few strangers might have opinions about me. Yeah that’s right, I’m not willing to be uncomfortable for 15 minutes so I can get to the part of my run that feels really good.
Are you cool with that? Because that’s what excuses are. They’re just lies that you’re like, okay yeah, let’s go with that. So the difference, again, the difference between somebody who exercises consistently and someone who doesn’t is the consistent person doesn’t believe her own bullshit.
The consisted person does not have a better brain. She does not have a brain that never complains about being tired. She does not have a brain that never says let’s watch Netflix instead of running in the rain. The consistent person hears the excuses and says yeah, I hear you, let’s go.
Think of a toddler. I do not have children, mainly because I’m pretty sure the toddler phase would send me over the edge. My brain is enough of a toddler. But seriously, your toddler is always going to have reasons you should do things that are not in his best interest, like going to bed on time. No, we want to stay up as late as possible.
Brushing teeth, potty training. Seriously, how people convince little kids that all of the effort of going to the bathroom, the getting undressed, getting on the toilet, cleaning up afterwards, that all of that is worth it when they can just conveniently go in their diaper and have somebody else do all of the work, that is a pretty good marketing effort.
Parents, way to go. Because potty training seems like a hard sell. But anyway, your toddler has all of these reasons not to do the things that you want them to do to keep them healthy and turn them into a functioning adult. And the toddler is going to have reasons, and you, the adult, are like, I hear you, but seriously, let’s brush your teeth.
You don’t believe her reasons because they’re bullshit. No toddler has ever made a solid case for skipping the tooth brushing, right? You’re like, you can tell me all the excuses you want in the world, we’re still going to do it because it’s important.
So the excuses in your brain for why you shouldn’t go for a run are just your inner toddler. You’re never going to stop them from coming. And the sooner you can recognize like, oh, I don’t have to shut down the excuses, I just have to know what to do with them because it is what you do with them that matters.
So my ex-husband is a very regular exerciser and he’s in his 50s. Ever since he was probably 21 or 22, he has worked out pretty much every single day. And when I first started getting into exercise and when we were first married, I had a lot of drama in my head and I said, “It’s just so easy for you.”
I would get so mad at him because I would want to say, hey, let’s just go out to dinner tonight. He’s like, I can’t, I’m going to the gym. And I’d be like, it’s just so easy for you, you always want to exercise. And he stopped in his tracks and he looked at me. He’s like, “No. Definitely not.” He’s like, “Every single day, I think to myself, maybe I just won’t go today, I really don’t feel like it, I’m not in the mood.”
Literally every day he would have that thought. And then what he would do is he’d be like, but that’s right, I’m going to feel worse if I don’t work out. I’m going to feel better if I do. It’ll make my brain feel better, it’ll make my body feel better, I’ll sleep better. He would review all the benefits and he just was like, I just don’t believe it when my brain says let’s not do it. Like I get it, but we’re going to go.
And so to this day, I remember that conversation so well because it blew my mind. I just thought that there were lucky people out there who always felt in the mood to work out, and it was easy for them and the rest of us had to suffer. And to be honest, I was a little pissed to find out that my dream of these people who were just always in the mood to workout didn’t exist because I was always searching for the holy grail of how I’d always be in the mood.
And it was kind of a bummer to find out that like, oh yeah, at least half the time I’m not going to be in the mood and now I have to do the work to get past my excuses. The good news is though, the more you do the work, the easier it is.
So we had this conversation when he’d been working out probably for 20 years regularly. And so it looked to me like it was easy and it was easy from the perspective of he had had that conversation with himself so many times that he could run through it super fast and get to the conclusion of, oh yeah, we’re just going to go for a run or a ride or whatever.
But I mean really, I just remember being so fucking mad thinking it was like, my brain broke a little because I realized, oh, I have to take responsibility for myself. And nobody likes to hear that. We want to blame other people or other circumstances when we don’t success because it’s just so much easier than admitting I didn’t do what I wanted to do.
Here’s another funny story about my ex. One year, we had this huge snowstorm. All the gyms are closed. The power was out. There were no sidewalks to run or bike on because we had several feet of snow and it was just a no. Our basement had a couple inches of water in it, we didn’t have a treadmill at the time, and the power was out.
Anyway, so it didn’t matter. And you know what he did? He set up his bike on one of those low-tech trainers where you just balance the bike on these little wheels and you just ride to nowhere. It’s kind of like a Peloton, only really low key with no metrics. Just a bike and some little rollers.
So he set up his bike on his trainer in the only dry corner of the basement and he rode by flashlight. And I was like, damn, that’s some commitment. That’s what it means to own your results. Because for sure he could have said I’m taking a day off, I shoveled snow for two hours in the driveway, that’s good enough, but he was training for an Ironman and he didn’t want to miss anything on his training plan. That’s badass.
He actually said, “Oh, I just named it Lake Basement,” like it was an adventure. He’s like, I’m riding lakeside today. I was just kind of like, alright, that’s how you achieve big ass goals. That’s what it means to own your results because everybody in the world would have agreed, totally legit to take off the day.
And he’s just like, well yeah, but then I’m not going to get closer to my goal of finishing an Ironman. Now, I am not saying you need to go to that extreme. That’s a personal choice. But seriously, think about the excuses that you come up with for not working out and recognize that they’re pretty flimsy.
Most of the time, they’re sort of see-through. And so often, myself included by the way, this is not me telling you how terrible you are. This is me saying hey, I have the same issue, this is just how brains work. We are our own worst enemies.
It’s not the rest of the world. It’s not the weather, it’s not the traffic, it’s not your shitty boss that’s really getting in your way. It’s not being willing to call yourself on your bullshit. It’s not willing to get uncomfortable in the pursuit of what you want.
So this week, I want you to take an inventory of all the reasons you have for not running or not strength training or whatever it is you’re working on, all the reasons that you’ve used in the past, and be super honest with yourself. Are they legit? Broken leg, yes. Spent the night in the emergency room, okay. Six feet of snow and no power, maybe. I still think you can make that one work.
But seriously, you can have your excuses or you can have your results. You cannot have both of them, so which one do you want? Now if you are ready to take your results, to seize the results and create them and not have the excuses anymore, I have a step-by-step process to do exactly that, and I am teaching it in the virtual workshop this weekend.
You in? Because seriously, if you’re like, I got a lot of excuses and I don’t have a lot of results and I would like it to be the other way around, the process I’m teaching in the virtual workshop this weekend is what you need. So go to notyouraveragerunner.com, click on consistency workshop to sign up.
The class is from noon to 3pm Eastern, August 23rd. If you can’t make it live, that is okay. I will be sending out the recording within 24 hours to anybody that signed up by midnight on Saturday. So really think about this because I’m pretty sure you need this process and I’m going to teach it to you.
You’re going to be able to practice it during the workshop, you’re going to start putting the principles into place immediately so that you can basically start today and stick with it for life. Alright my friends, I love you. Stay safe, get your ass out there and run and I will see you in the next episode.
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.
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