Welcome to Running to Myself. I’m Trisha Stanton. Life and mindset coach, running coach and host of Running to Myself.
16 years ago I ran my first marathon. The process of training for that first race changed my life. This podcast is my opportunity to share some of the lessons I have learned about running and life through the many ups and downs of life during my almost 2 decades of running and learning more about who I am. It is my hope that through my stories maybe you will see a bit of yourself as well and find a nugget of truth and inspiration to take with you. Let’s get started.
Welcome to Episode 10 What are you trying to prove? If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is THE picture to represent the story for this episode and every race that Jacki and I have run together. In fact, it was seeing this picture that gave me the idea for today’s topic. It’s funny how pictures from long ago can bring up such distinct and specific memories. In case you didn’t notice the picture for this episode, I want you to pause right now to look at it. This photo was taken during the 2011 Valparaiso Turkey Trot. Take a moment to soak in the details. Look beyond the giant orange mittens. What else do you see? Actually, let’s talk about the giant orange mittens for a minute. I am extremely cold by nature and when my fingers or toes get too cold I cannot bend them. It’s quite painful and I have trouble warming up when this happens. I took a lot of teasing about those mittens after this picture was taken, but if I still had them today and found myself outside on an Indiana winter day, you better believe I would be wearing them. Sadly, not too long after this photo was taken, they were lost. And I’ve missed them every winter since.
Okay. Back to the picture. This is a photo of myself and my dearest of friends, Jacki. Over the years many people have assumed that Jacki and I are sisters and on occasion people will come up to us and ask if we are twins. We are neither twins nor sisters, but I cannot imagine my adult life without her presence in it. Jacki and I met, fittingly, at the gym way back when our kids were very young and shortly after I moved back to Indiana to be closer to family. Morning workouts were self care, me-time and sanity for both of us in those days of raising littles so we hit it off right away. Neither of us was running yet. That would come years later and at different times for each of us.
Jacki picked it up way before I did and was a natural. She found out she was good at it when she started signing up for local 5k races and winning her age group. At the time, I had NO interest. I was so uninterested that when she would tell me about winning her age group or her pace and finish time, it was all just gibberish to me. Of course, a few years later it was a completely different story and running became one more shared piece of our friendship story.
Once the timing lined up for us to both be running on a regular basis, with our similar height and build, we were perfect running partners and ran countless miles together over the years. Those training runs through town and on the country roads outside of town were like therapy. We solved a lot of life’s problems during those runs.
Races were a different story. Races were, well RACES. That’s the point, right? When everyone agrees that the whole point of racing is to race, the intent is clear. At the time, I guess we weren’t emotionally healthy enough to be clear about our intent-with each other and probably not to ourselves either. Instead we had this passive aggressive pattern of beginning the race with the agreement that “we are just running for fun this time” and then once the finish line was in sight, it was every runner for herself with a sprint to the finish line. In case you are wondering, and I was so I looked up our times for that race, Jacki beat me by three tenths of a second. She finished with a time of 53:31.1 and I finished with a time of 53:31.4. I am pretty sure that the picture I directed your attention to a moment ago represents right about the time where my brain said-it’s every runner for herself. Our end of race actions were not in alignment with our prerace words. And it wasn’t just one of us-we equally participated in this dysfunction. When I sent the picture to Jacki and asked what do you remember about this, here’s what she said: (audio recording of Jacki’s response) You heard right, we left our friend to finish on her own so we could battle it out at the finish.
Right now you are probably thinking one of two things….you are either thinking That we are terrible friends for leaving Cathie behind OR you are thinking, It’s a RACE for crying out loud, that’s the whole point of a race. I have alternated between thinking both of those thoughts. And that is probably the reason I have felt conflicted about it in my memory.
Yes, it was a race, but by agreeing to run together at the beginning of the race saying “this is just for fun” (and this is what we did every single time) and then NOT following through with our agreement we were not being honest with each other or ourselves. We have had many laughs over this, but it has always made me wonder…why couldn’t one of us just admit we wanted to race? And after the first couple of times of fooling ourselves why did we continue the pattern? Competition in the form of a race is healthy and straightforward. Hidden competition is not necessarily healthy and definitely not straightforward. Hidden competition often comes from a place of insecurity. Hidden competition can show up in forms and places that undermine and eventually destroy a relationship. Fortunately, our story does not go in that direction. With the exception of about two minutes at the end of each race where we were in direct competition, it didn’t filter into other areas and we were laughing about it as soon as we crossed the finish line.
Here’s our Life Coach Connection for today. Are you being honest with yourself about what you want or are you hiding your true desires from yourself? Are you honest with yourself about your emotions or do you hide from them like I used to with mine? When you are not honest with yourself you are out of alignment with your truest self and most likely out of alignment with your personal values. This creates disconnection within yourself.
Sometimes not being honest with ourselves comes in the form of denying our feelings by stuffing them down rather than working through them. I remember a time when my kids were teenagers and I was having a discussion with one of my daughters about something that she wanted and out of the blue she said, “Why are you so angry?” It completely took me off guard. My knee jerk reaction was to say “I’m not angry!” (as I immediately began to feel angry…) She continued. “Yes you are. You are angry all the time.”
She was right. And I hadn't recognized it in myself because I wasn’t being honest with myself. I was saying yes when I should have been saying no and I was stuffing my emotions down rather than processing them. The truth is, I really do not like to be angry. It is not an emotion that I am naturally comfortable with. At the time, I didn’t understand that the best way to get rid of the anger is to let it be there and work through it. The worst thing to do with it is stuff it down and add a new layer to it each day until it was oozing out of me.
What about you? Is there an area of your life where you might be hiding from yourself? Maybe not being honest with yourself? What are you afraid of? I would like to challenge you to look for places in your own life where you aren’t being completely honest with yourself and ask “what would it look like if I stopped hiding this from myself?
If you think you would benefit from coaching in this area, you can contact me by clicking on the link to my website in the episode transcript or by reaching out through my Facebook group, The Simple Truth Coaching. We can set up a call to see if one-on-one coaching is a good option for you.
One more thing before I let you go…September is National Recovery Month. The purpose is to increase public awareness surrounding mental health and addiction recovery.
Current statistics show that SUD is on the rise. It is more than likely that someone you know struggles with SUD whether you are aware of it or not. I am going to be talking about this all month in my Facebook group, The Simple Truth Coaching. The people I am reaching out to are the people who love someone who struggles with SUD. People who battle addiction have people who love them and those people, the families, friends and loved ones experience a unique pain because of this disease. I know this because it is my story. Later this month, I am going to be offering a workshop specifically designed to address the unique needs of those like me who have a loved one with SUD. If you know someone who you think would benefit from this conversation, please direct them to my Facebook group or my webpage. This is the beginning of an important and much needed conversation for family members who are in a very painful and often lonely situation. I’m taking the first hard step in talking about it so that you know that you are not alone.
That’s all I have for you today, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Running to Myself. You can find previous episodes on apple podcasts and spotify or on my website www.trishastanton.com. New episodes are released each Monday. You can select subscribe or follow on Apple or Spotify to automatically receive each new episode as it comes out.
If you know someone who you think would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them! I will be back next week to share a little more about my training journey on the road to discovering my truest self.
In the meantime, if you want to know more about my coaching program or have questions about life coaching in general, please visit my website at www.trishastanton.com .
Have a great week and remember, Mindset Matters!
