Ep #116: Three Phrases that Destroy Your Motivation

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 116 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host Jill Angie, and today I am laying down the tough love. Buckle up.

Now, if you are somebody who has never ever said, “I fell off the wagon again,” or, “I just can’t seem to find my mojo,” or if you’ve even never said, “I just don’t feel like it right now,” this probably is not the episode for you. But if you have said any of those things, especially in like, the past month or so, listen up.

Now, “I fell off the wagon,” “I lost my mojo,” “I just don’t feel like it” are three of the most powerless statements I have ever heard because when you believe there is a wagon to fall off, you will fall off of it. When you believe mojo is something you can lose, you will lose it. If you wait until you feel like it, you will be waiting a long time.

Your thinking is what creates your motivation. Believing that these things just happen to you, it makes you feel powerless, right? Your thinking is what keeps you on the wagon. Your thinking is what keeps you motivated. And by the way, I fucking hate that term, “on the wagon,” and I’m doing air quotes right now because it implies there is a right way and a wrong way.

It’s very black and white. If you’re off the wagon, you’re in total fuck-it mode and you’re a loser, and if you’re on the wagon, you’re perfect and you’re an angel, right? On and off the wagon is the epitome of perfectionist thinking. We just spent a whole month looking at perfectionist thinking in Run Your Best Life.

It was definitely an eye-opener for some of our members because we kind of are taught that we should always be striving for perfection. And I think when we strive for perfection, we screw ourselves over because then we’re disappointed when we don’t achieve it and it keeps us stuck. It keeps us from even trying because we feel like if it can’t be perfect, it’s failure and we can’t take failure.

So perfectionist thinking is kind of bullshit thinking. I’ll probably have to do a whole podcast on that. Or you could just join Run Your Best Life and go through all of the course materials that we created around it a few months ago. But anyway, let’s get back to those three phrases and why they make you feel powerless.

Now, when you think to yourself, I lost my mojo, you are not taking responsibility for creating your own motivation. Mojo is not something that just sort of comes and goes at whim. It’s not like the weather. Mojo comes from your thinking.

When you think the thought, I lost my mojo, how do you feel? You feel very unmotivated and probably a little helpless or powerless. You’re thinking, when is it going to come back? I don’t know what to do, right? So how the fuck do you expect to get out there and run if that’s how you feel? You don’t. You’re not going to run. You’re going to wallow and complain and wish your mojo would come back.

Like there’s some kind of mojo fairy who flies into your room at night and sprinkles happy mojo dust all over you and then the next morning you wake up and voila, you’re motivated and everything is awesome again. Rebels, you know that’s now how it works. And no matter how many times you try, just to see if it’ll come back on its own magically without you having to do any sort of mental work, you’ll be disappointed because you are in charge of your own motivation, my friends.

Stop expecting it to rain from the skies. And please, please, stop saying I just don’t feel like it because you’re not ever going to feel like it. I mean yes, maybe if you had a really shitty day at work and you need to just run it off, I get it. But most of the time, you’re going to have a conversation in your mind about it. You’re going to have to.

Nobody ever feels like running. Nobody wakes up and goes, oh my god, I can’t wait. Those people who don’t seem to have a big mental struggle about it, it’s not like they’re all the time oh my god, I can’t wait to run. No. They have just gotten really good at having the conversation in their brain about going for a run.

And I say conversation. They don’t allow any drama. They’re just like, I don’t feel like it, that’s okay, you got to go anyway. Boom. Done. No drama. So if you keep thinking to yourself, I just don’t feel like it, well guess what? You’re not going to feel like it.

Again, if you want to feel like motivated, if you want to feel like it, you have to work on your thinking. So what happens is you say to yourself I don’t feel like it, and working on your thinking means you push back and you say, oh really? Because I think you do want to run right now. It might not sound like fun, but you definitely want to have that amazing feeling when you finish and be proud of yourself and know that you took care of yourself today.

We always want those things, but you can’t feel proud until you’ve done the thing so you can say fuck yeah, I did that. So when you say to yourself, I don’t feel like it and you think, that’s it, my mojo’s gone, I don’t feel like it, I can’t run, it’s bullshit. You got to push back. You’ve got to have a conversation with yourself and say really? Is that really what you want? I don’t think so.

Now, all of the successful runners that I know have one very important thing in common. They are really good at managing their minds. They stay focused on their training instead of their excuses. It is always easy to find excuses and reasons and justifications and it’s very easy to find people that would say, oh yeah, you’re right, you probably should take a day off.

They’re a dime a dozen. But an unmanaged mind is going to grab onto those excuses and convince you that it is way more important for you to feel comfortable right now instead of taking care of your future self and doing the hard work of running.

A managed mind will see right through the bullshit. An unmanaged mind is like, oh yes, excuses, I’m all in. Give me all the excuses. A managed mind will see right through the bullshit and say yeah, it is easier to stay in bed. You’re right. But that does not get us closer to our goal so let’s just get up and go. This race is not going to run itself.

So this week, I want you to take some time every single day and ask yourself, what am I focusing on? Am I seeing all the reasons I can’t? Am I seeing all the things I don’t feel like doing? Or am I seeing all the reasons I actually do want to do the hard shit? Am I seeing the reasons that yeah, maybe I don’t feel like it but here’s why I want to do it anyway?

Whichever it is, you can tell exactly what kind of results you’re going to get from the quality of your thinking. And I just had this conversation with somebody in Run Your Best Life. I said the quality of your run is directly linked; it is a direct result of the quality of your thinking. So if your run sucks, look at your mind. If your run is awesome, look at your mind.

What were you thinking that made that run so awesome? Can you think it again? And if your run sucks, what were you thinking that made your run really shitty? And how can you reframe that so that you don’t end up making those thoughts a habit?

And here’s the deal; you know that guy that just ran the one hour and 59 minute and 40 second marathon? He literally ran 26.2 miles in under two hours. I guarantee he does not focus on all the reasons he wants to skip his workout and all the reasons he wants to stay in bed. That is not how you run a sub-two-hour marathon.

And by the way, that was not his first attempt. He’s tried several times. It took him a while to get there. He could have let his mind go to some terrible places after the first time he failed and the second time he failed and so forth, but he didn’t. He’s like no, I want this goal. I’m going to keep doing whatever it takes until I get there. Fuck being comfortable and sleeping in. I got to run.

So managing your mind is the key to becoming a successful runner. If you don’t, you’re going to have all this drama in your brain and it’s going to be hard and it’s going to suck. And I don’t want that for you.

Now, one other thing that I want to cover today – and this is something that we’ve been talking about a lot recently in Run Your Best Life because we’re heading into winter and a lot of people are saying I’m going to sign up for a bunch of races in the spring so I can stay motivated.

Now, I get it. Races are fun. Races are awesome goals. And we think if I sign up for a race six months from now or three months from now on the other side of winter, I’m going to be motivated to train all winter long. And if I don’t have a race then I won’t feel motivated to train all winter long.

I think that is kind of a mistake. When you are relying on the race itself to keep you motivated, you are screwed. A race is a race. It’s just a race. It’s just a circumstance. It cannot force you to train. And if your only reason for signing up is so that you will be forced to run so you don’t embarrass yourself on race day, I’ve got some bad news for you.

Using negative motivation like that doesn’t really work. Now, think back to the last time you tried to lose weight for an event. If you’ve ever tried to do this, you’re thinking oh my god, I’m going to lose 50 pounds before my 25-year high school reunion because I don’t want everybody to see how fat I got.

How did that work out for you? My guess is you didn’t lose a pounds. Or maybe you lost five pounds right away and then gained it all back. Or maybe you just gained weight overall. Who knows? Whatever it is, I doubt that you lost that 50 pounds and then you felt like shit about it when you went to the event.

You’re just like, oh my god, I wanted to do all these things and I didn’t do it and I’m just – we have all the thoughts about it. Now, the reason you didn’t hit your goal is because your thought was I don’t want to be embarrassed at my reunion, or I want to show all those motherfuckers how awesome I am.

When you think like that, you don’t actually feel motivated. You feel kind of embarrassed in advance or anxious or nervous. You don’t feel excited to do whatever it is you need to do because those things that you need to do are hard and uncomfortable. And if it were easy, you would have already done it.

So your brain thinks like, just because I want something, I should be motivated, and it doesn’t always work that way. You have to work on the thinking around it. And the same goes for a race. If you expect a half marathon to motivate you because you don’t want to show up on race day and come in last, you’re going to be all focused on I don’t want to show up on race day and come in last.

And when you think that thought, you feel anxious and nervous, and when you feel that way, you don’t train well. And then you get exactly what you focused on. You show up undertrained and you don’t perform well or you just don’t show up at all.

So a race doesn’t motivate you. You motivate you. You. Not the race. Choose thought – do your thought work and choose thoughts that make you feel determined and confident and excited, powerful. Don’t choose thoughts that make you worry about what’s going to happen. And I promise you, it is a world of difference when you make that shift.

When you start looking at what is the thinking that is going to give me the emotion I need to drive the action of training, it’s just a game-changer. Okay my friends, I know that this was a bit of a mind-bender today. Maybe a little bit of tough love. Maybe a lot of tough love. But I actually want to help you sort out your brain a little bit more.

So we are working on a lot of these concepts this month in Run Your Best Life as part of the whole winterize your run unit that we’re doing in November. And then next month, we’re doing a whole month just on goal setting. And we will be working on finding the reasons behind your goals so you can be assured of meeting them.

And then everybody in the group will be planning out their 2020 race calendar and working on all the skills that will carry them through the whole year. So we’ve got just into last two months of this decade. We are packed with really, really helpful stuff.

So here’s the deal; if you want in, if you want to take part in all that and really go to town on your brain, we’re basically doing a two-month brain boot camp in the group, if you want in on it, you have to join by November 8th. Now, we actually are starting the winterize your run unit on November 1st, which I think is right around the time this podcast comes out.

So you have until November 8th to actually join Run Your Best Life, and after that we’re not taking any new members for several months. Now, this was not a very easy decision to make. We wanted to keep it open so that everybody could just join whenever it’s convenient for them, and I know that there are some of you that really have been thinking, someday I will join.

And I understand that you thought it would just be available whenever you’re ready. But what I want to do is make sure that I’m taking awesome care of the members that have already joined, the ones that have already committed to their personal development. So the day has kind of come where you need to decide to either join now or wait until sometime next year.

Which means if you wait, you’re going to miss out on all the November and December bonuses that we have coming up for our members, and then we are adding a ton of amazing stuff in the next six months. We are – like I said, we’re doing the goal setting work in December, we have a new marathon class that is starting in early spring.

We have two more race-cation events. We have a Ragnar, a trail Ragnar, we have a triathlon class, we are giving the website a complete upgrade. And my team and I, we really want to focus hard on making all of that stuff happen so we are not going to be inviting new folks in after November 8th, which is basically a week from when this podcast came out.

So we also have a brand-new running basics class that will be coming out in January and that’s going to be included for all of our Run Your Best Life members as well as part of their membership. And in addition to that, Run Your Best Lifers get every single class I teach and then they have access to all the archives.

So if they show up and they’re like, I think I want to train for a 10K, boom, they can just download all the 10K class materials and do it on their own. So we have so much good stuff in there that our members have access to. We have our bonus classes on things like perfectionism and body image and fueling and motivation, just to name a few.

So again, that’s only available to members and if you’re not a member by November 8th, it’s going to be several months before we open it up again. So this is specifically if you were thinking you wanted to do the marathon class that starts in a few months. You got to join the group now.

We’re not going to be offering any race training outside of Run Your Best Life and you can’t – this past year, we’ve said okay, you can just join for the training. But we’re not going to let people do that anymore. Our goal for our members is to be all-in committed to their development as runners so we’re committed to our members. We want our members to show up and be like yeah, I’m here to train my mind along with my body.

And what we do is we get you ready for the training with all of our mindset work. We really help you get your brain in the right place, and then when training kicks off, you’re ahead of the game. And I want to give another shout-out. I know I did it a couple weeks ago but I’m going to do it again.

Shout-out to my Run Your Best Lifers who are working their asses off right now in their thinking and really managing their brains around everything. And I want to give a shout-out to Amy. She’s come so far in her training from feeling six weeks ago, running a half marathon and wanting to call an Uber, to last week when we did our 18-miler and her brain was in a totally different space.

And that’s because she has been actively managing her mind with the tools that I teach in Run Your Best Life. So as the distance has gotten longer and she’s worked on her mind, it has gotten easier for her. I’m not saying that she’s not still feeling physically challenged. So am I. But the mind management stuff has been a fucking game-changer for her.

And I’m going to get her on the podcast in the new year because you got to hear some of the stuff that’s been going on in her mind, but she’s really implementing the tools that I teach and it’s making a huge difference in her marathon training.

I want to give a shout-out to Robin who also just did her first marathon and again, she did so much work around it and she totally rocked it. And so you guys, this brain work, it works. You think oh, I’m just going to show up and run a few races and do some training runs. I just need to know what to do. But what we teach you in Run Your Best Life is the how to implement it and make it a habit and make yourself consistent at it.

So this week’s obsession is kind of a funny one. It’s a little time tracking gadget that is called Timeular. And it’s this eight-sided plastic thing that each side is a different task, and you use it – you flip it around to track the time that you spend on different tasks.

And it’s completely customizable, you can set the sides up to track whatever tasks you want to. So I’m trying to make myself a more efficient person, a more efficient CEO, a more efficient business owner, a more efficient leader because as Not Your Average Runner is growing and as Run Your Best Life is growing and we’re adding all this stuff, there are days where I’m like, fuck, where did all my time go?

So I came across an ad for this thing on Facebook and I love gadgets so I bought one, and holy shit, first of all, you can track your time in really small increments, like down to a minute or two. So every time I jump over to Facebook, I’m like, flip it to the Facebook tab.

But you can customize what you’re tracking exactly to what you want. It’s got a super easy app that you can use on your computer and on your phone. And the device is easy to flip it around but if you’re out and about and you’re working on the road or something and you didn’t bring the device, you can still use the app to track your stuff.

It gives you tons and tons of data that you can manipulate in different ways. It makes my little spreadsheet nerd heart so happy. And here’s the thing; I have had my eyes open to just how many times a day I get on Facebook to do some coaching in Run Your Best Life. That’s how it always starts. I’m like, I’m going to jump over to Run Your Best Life and coach whoever has questions.

And then I end up 15 to 20 minutes after that of just scrolling on random stuff like goat videos. Lately I’m obsessed with French bulldog videos. And I probably waste an hour or more a day doing stuff like that and I didn’t even really notice it until I started becoming really diligent with tracking with this little Timeular gadget.

So if you don’t want to find out where your time is going, do not get one of these things. But seriously, it is fun and easy to use. I highly recommend it. I am getting absolutely no kickback or anything. They don’t even know I have one of these things. I’m just a number to these people. But I fucking love it.

And my own coach – I have a coach that’s helping me with my productivity. I told her about this. She’s like, oh my god, I’m going to recommend this to all of my clients. So it’s that fucking cool. Anyway, the link to check it out will be in the show notes called Timeular.

And that is it. That is it for this week. My friends, sign up for Run Your Best Life by November 8th. I want to see you in there. I want to help you work on your brain and I will talk to you next week.

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.