Ep #181: What’s Possible for You?

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. How are you this week? I hope you’re awesome. I’m awesome. Life is awesome. And this week, I want to dive into what I think is a really fun topic, and that is what’s possible. What’s possible for you?

Do you ever think about that? Like do you ever think, “Oh, I would love to run a marathon someday, but that’s not something I could ever do,” or maybe you think, “I’d love to hike the Appalachian Trail, or the Pacific Coast Trail, but that is just not possible for me. That’s not a thing I’m capable of.”

Or maybe it’s like, non-fitness goals like finding a job you love that pays you exactly what you want to be paid. We’re like, yeah, that’s just not going to happen, I’m destined to toil away at this shitty job that I hate, and I don’t get paid enough and it feels awful to dream about something that I know I can never have, so I just pretend this is enough for me.

But is it? Is it really enough to say that’s too big of a dream, I’m just going to stay over here and be small because I don’t want to be disappointed? Is that really enough for you?

I am fascinated lately with understanding what makes some people accomplish crazy ass epic shit, and other people don’t even try. And lately, I’ve been obsessed with Instagram reels. It’s such a time suck. I got obsessed with TikTok, I had to delete that off my phone. Instagram reels came out and I’m like, alright fine, I give in.

But there’s this account that I follow on reels that just blows my mind. It’s these two dudes and they have this giant trampoline and it’s this big rectangular – the kind of trampoline that you maybe had if you were in the 70s, if you grew up in the 60s and 70s you know the exact kind of trampoline I’m talking about. It’s that kind of rectangular thing.

Although much, much safer than the ones we had when we were kids. Anyway, they’ve got this trampoline and it’s at the bottom of a two-story building. So they go all the way to the top of this building, they jump off, they fall down two stories and they land on the trampoline and then they do all these insane flips and moves and literally just land back on their feet right on top of the building. Like nothing happened.

It’s nuts. I watch this and I think, “Oh hell no, there’s no way I could ever do that.” Why would anybody think to do that? But they just do this really intricate stuff, and it blows my mind. But then I think that’s not a thing I could do, but is that really true? Is it? I don’t know.

So here’s another example that’s a little closer to home. There is this account that I follow, and you might follow her too, her name is Meg Boggs. She’s a plus-size woman, plus-size athlete, she’s strong as fuck, and she can do these insanely high box jumps.

And it’s something I would look at and think, “No, I can’t do that.” But here’s the thing; she’s about my size so maybe that’s a thing I could do. Then I’m like, “No, there’s no way.” How does she do that? It just looks impossible. And yet there she is, jumping up on a 23-inch platform. Two feet high, jumping up like it’s nothing.

It’s not like she’s jumping and her feet are kind of catching and she pushes herself forward. No, she jumps up with plenty of room to spare. And so I think about like, huh, maybe this is a thing I could do. And then my brain’s like, no, you can’t do that.

And then there’s my trainer Nancy, who by the way, she’s going to come on the podcast later this year. We talk about this concept all the time of our brains saying you can’t do that. And so she’ll ask me to do one more set of something, something that’s really hard and uncomfortable. And my brain will start right up with nope, you can’t do that.

It’s just this completely automatic response, and I think, “Alright, she wants me to do this, I’m going to do it, but when I drop the weight on my toe, she’ll see how crazy she is asking me to do 10 more reps. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” And then I’ll do one rep, and it’s hard, but then I’ll do two reps, and it’s hard, but I’ll do a third, and somehow I do 10, I don’t drop anything, I don’t die, and I’m like, huh, maybe my brain lies about things sometimes.

So it’s really got me questioning this concept of what is possible. And here’s something I notice a lot about my clients. Before they set a goal for themselves, they’ll come on a coaching call in Run Your Best Life or even in the Rebel Runner Roadmap, and they’ll say, “Well, kind of thinking I might want to run a half marathon someday, or maybe a marathon. How do I know if that’s realistic?” They’ll say, “Is it realistic for me to do that?”

And immediately I’m like, “Well, why do you care if it’s realistic?” And they say, “Well, I don’t even want to try if it’s not realistic.” And you know what? I always think to myself it’s realistic. Actually, I usually say it. It’s realistic. It is, whatever it is you can dream up. And I’m not lying about that because realistic is just a thought.

Realistic is our way of saying there’s a high probability I can achieve this. But honestly, everything is realistic. It’s all possible. Whatever you can think up or dream up that you want to do, it is possible. We live in a world of infinite possibility. And I mean, yes, there’s a component of talent and genetics and luck, like life circumstances involved in some cases.

For those of you that are five feet tall and you’re saying well, it’s not realistic for me to want to become a professional basketball player, alright, fine. But do you actually want to do that? Probably not. You can come up with a lot of examples of things that would be not necessarily what most people would say would be realistic for you to do, but let’s stay in the area of things that you want to do.

Because I promise, there is a lot of stuff that you do want to do that you think is unrealistic, but you’re like, it would be fun to do it. But you think it’s not possible, it’s unrealistic, so you’re not even trying.

Now, y’all know I’m completely obsessed with Elon Musk. He’s my idol. And yes, I know he’s kind of a jerk sometimes and perhaps somebody needs to take his Twitter account away. And he’s got all this money that helps him achieve these great things. But you know what? All the money in the world won’t create a spaceship that takes a human to Mars unless someone believes it’s possible and is willing to keep believing through all the failures, all the fuckups along the way.

Seriously, money, talent, genetics might make things a little easier, but they are no substitute for believing that it’s possible. And I mean, really believing. And then being willing to fail and figure it out and keep trying even when it seems like nothing is working. All impossible goals start with belief and you cannot buy belief. You have to create it.

So here’s the good news. You need zero evidence that something is possible for you to believe in it. Legit, you need no evidence. If you do have evidence, that’s awesome. But you don’t need it. Elon Musk had not evidence that it was possible to make a rocket that could take off and then come back down to Earth and land and be reused.

All of the evidence that we had was that rockets would take off and then that was it. There were one use. But he believed. He was like, I’m going to figure this out and now voila, that’s a thing that exists.

So I want to know, have you ever thought about what is possible for you? And what is impossible for you? I think we spend a lot of time in our brains coming up with reasons why something is not possible and you’ll always going to be able to find that. But what if you put that brain power to finding reasons that it is possible, to finding ways that it is possible?

If you think something is impossible, and you’re like, it would be so awesome if I could do that thing, but even though I really, really want to, it’s just not for me, it’s not something I can do, so I’m just going to give up and forget about it. Or maybe you’ve told yourself – and you know who you are, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you do – that you don’t want to risk anything by trying for something impossible.

You don’t want to risk anything by setting a big huge goal that you might fail at. You guys, you are risking so much more by not trying. You are risking never having the pleasure of doing it. If you don’t set an impossible goal and chase it down, you’re never going to experience it. You’re never going to have the joy and excitement of doing this thing that you didn’t believe you were capable of.

So by not trying, you’re saying nope, it’s okay, I don’t ever want that joy and excitement. Really think about that. And think about this; what are you actually risking by going for it? So say you decide and I did this very same thing, I said I’m going to run a marathon and I went for it.

And I was risking something by going for that. I was risking that I might fail and feel disappointed. And guess what? I did. I failed that time and I felt disappointed. And you know what? I lived. Because disappointment is just an emotion. It’s not cancer, it doesn’t kill you.

Disappointment is just a feeling and you can feel a feeling. You can survive a feeling. A feeling is not going to kill you. And if you don’t resist it, it just kind of flows through your body and then you move on. So by not going for your big goals, by not giving yourself the chance to believe in something and really blow your own mind, you’re saying no to all the amazingness that comes if you do it, and you’re saying yeah, I’d rather not have any of that amazingness because I’m a lot afraid of being a little disappointed.

So setting the big goal, you might fail, you might feel disappointed. Don’t set the big goal, you’re 100% sure you’re saying you’re never going to do it, you’re saying no to greatness. You’re saying you’d rather just do nothing and miss out on what that fabulousness would bring to your life.

It’s going to be some hard work, it’s going to bring some evolution, but it’s going to bring some beautiful rewards. You’re saying those rewards, I’d rather just stay small because I don’t want to feel disappointed. Are you okay with that? Are you really okay with that?

And if you are, then you probably should just skip this podcast. But if you’re not, if you recognize that yeah, there are things that I want in my life that I’m saying no to because I’m afraid of a little bit of disappointed, let’s talk about how to bridge the gap between thinking something is impossible and believing it’s possible and then going for it.

So first thing’s first, you got to decide what it is that you want. And I don’t mean decide what you want to do based on what you think you’re capable of or what you think is realistic. Decide what you want. Full stop. And if it’s running a marathon and you just started running last week, that’s totally fine. You can set that goal right now.

Might take you a couple years to get there, but doesn’t mean you don’t say fuck yeah, I’m running a marathon in 2023. So realistic doesn’t really have any time goals on it, it doesn’t have any time constraints. If you’re thinking it’s unrealistic for me to want to run a marathon, it’s not.

It might be unlikely that you’re going to start running this week and be able to run a marathon in three months. Might be unlikely, might not be the best choice. It’s not impossible. But you might get hurt.

So there’s a difference between realistic and just common sense, maybe? But I want you guys to put common sense aside, put realistic aside, and really think about what is that thing I would just love to do. And just drop into thinking, okay, I would love to do that, how possible is that? And if your brain is like, no, not possible, I feel like that’s your goal. Let’s figure out how to go after that goal.

So you’re going to decide what you want, not based on what’s realistic, not based on what you think you’re capable of or what you think you’re likely to be able to do. Just decide what you want. And then you’re going to say, I’m all in. Let’s figure out how to make it happen.

And here’s the thing; you might not know exactly how and when you’re going to make it happen. You probably won’t know. And that’s okay. Deciding you’re going to do something doesn’t mean you have the entire path and the entire plan figured out. It’s just a decision that somehow you are going to figure out and make it a reality. That’s the belief.

That’s the believing that takes your goal from this is possible to this is a thing I can do to I’m going to figure it out. And you guys, that kind of belief in the unknown is something you already know how to do. Think about the last time you ordered something online.

Maybe you ordered an iPhone, and I don’t know, do you ever order an iPhone and then sit at home going, “Oh god, I don’t know if it’s going to come. Is it going to come? I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to get here; I don’t know how long it’s going to take. What if it’s late? What if it doesn’t come on time?” You don’t sit there and fret about that stuff.

We don’t know when exactly it’s going to be shipped, we don’t know exactly when it’s going to arrive, we don’t know the post offices or UPS locations it’s going to travel through along the way. But you never doubt that iPhone’s going to show up. You just order the thing, and you go about your life. You order the thing, and you don’t doubt it. You know it’s coming; you don’t stress out.

And sure, it might come later than expected, especially if you ordered it in 2020. But you had a belief that it was going to arrive. And once you believed, you didn’t need to ask yourself over and over again, is it really possible that my iPhone is coming? Can I really order an iPhone and have it show up? Maybe it’s just not going to work out.

No. You’re like, I ordered the iPhone, it’ll be here in five to seven days or whatever. Or actually, with Apple it’s probably 24 hours. But you don’t worry about it. You knew it was coming so you put it out of your mind until UPS knocks on the door. That’s the kind of belief I’m talking about.

Just unconcerned, it’s coming, I don’t know exactly how or when, but I know it’s going to be here. That’s the level of belief. Now, once you’ve made the decision about what your thing is, what your impossible goal is that you’re going to create or do, your brain is going to want to know, how is it going to happen? How is this going to work every step of the way?

In other words, you’re going to want to predict the future. But of course you can’t. You can make tons of plans, but you know that life is going to throw some curveballs at you. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to figure out what the first step is and go all in on nailing it.

And you can make all the spreadsheets in the world with your timelines and your big grand plan. I’m not discouraging you from doing that. But if it’s not right in front of you in the next 24 hours, if it’s not the very next step on your journey, that’s not where your focus is.

You’ve got the big picture; you’ve put the address in the GPS. And so the car knows all the turns that you’re going to make, but you’re just working on focusing on making the next turn. Every once in a while, you look up, you take in the overall picture, you plan ahead, you see if any adjustments need to be made, but your focus is on mastering that very first thing, that very next thing.

Because here’s the thing, my friends; that very first step is not impossible. It’s a small step and you know you can do it. You know you can. This is how we achieve impossible goals. We set the big goal, we believe in it, we’re like, I know this is happening, I don’t know exactly how, but I’m going to work on this first thing because I know I can do that.

And when you make a mistake, which you inevitably will, it’s okay because your unwavering belief in your result combined with your focus on making just that next step happen is going to keep you going. I absolutely promise it will.

Okay my rebellious friends, that is it for today. I want to know what your impossible goals are. Hit me up on Instagram @notyouraveragerunner and let me know. Meanwhile, I love you, stay safe, get your ass out there and run, and I will talk to 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.