The Morning Mantra is available on iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, Youtube, Soundcloud, Spotify, Youtube and pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found.
Hi, this is Coach MK, and this is the Morning Mantra - a little personal cheer to ladle right in your ear first thing in the morning. Today’s mantra is: I am FANTASTIC.
I am FANTASTIC. And yes, you are. A tenant of good journalism - there are two sides to every story - is something we often use to abuse ourselves. Or something other people have used to abuse us. Sometimes there aren’t two sides to every story, and sometimes that other side doesn’t mitigate the things that have hurt us or made us a little crazy over time. Yeah, you heard me. It’s okay to be a little crazy. It’s okay to be in situations that you couldn’t get out of, maybe because you were younger, maybe because you were a dependent, maybe because for a million reasons you might have stayed somewhere because you had nowhere else to go. Few of us do when we’re ten. With somebody that made you feel like crap, somebody that treated you terrible. That toxic person is the other side of your story but they’re not part of your definition.
And here’s what I want you to remember today - more often than not, we don’t acknowledge our secret goals. I talk about them, I try to pull them out of people, that thing that you say you really, really, really, really, really wanna do someday, be it break two hours in the half marathon or qualify for Boston. Somehow that’s usually tied to a secret shame. And once we address it, maybe the secret goal stays the same, but some of the pressure comes off it. We say, “Hey, you know what? My mom’s a little nuts. Bless her heart, they didn’t know what bipolar disorder was forty years ago, thirty years ago, they didn’t have medication for it. She did the best she could. She was hard on me, she was cruel to me, but I did not deserve that. Because I am FANTASTIC. And whether or not I ever reach my secret goal, I am still fantastic. My goal is my goal because it is what I want to do. It’s not what I want to prove to anybody.”
Because I’m here to tell you this today. You got absolutely nothing to prove to anybody. I am your coach. I love you. I am invested in your progress. I am invested in you getting whatever it is you want. As long as that thing that you want makes you feel better.
If you subscribe to my Nuzzle newsletter, you will see this weekend the stories of two women that are going to be running the New York City marathon this weekend. Both of those women will place in the top 10. And both of them have serious, deeply rooted issues tied to their running. This thing that they claim to love so much makes them feel so bad.
It’s not about the running. It’s never about the running. Faster won’t make you feel better, even if you’re slated to finish in the top ten in one of the world’s largest road races. You are fantastic. You always were. There are not two sides to this story. That secret shame was not earned. You did not deserve it. You are fantastic.
You are also coached, and loved, and winning at life.
Coach MK Fleming is the founder of Fitness Protection, LLC where she coaches all kinds of runners for $30 per month and gives marathon plans away for free. Click here to download her Marathon Selection Guide!