Self doubt has been a reoccurring theme in my life. A product of being an overly-anxious perfectionist. I have never believed that I was good enough at anything. Most of my youth this doubt seemed to hover around things that didn’t quite matter, like ballet and grammar. But after an emotionally taxing break up I found these same feelings seep into my larger self image, as I began to doubt my worth as a human. I was overwhelmed with this strong desire to be alone, to sit with myself and wrestle out all of these things I was experiencing.
That’s how the first run started, I just booked it as far away from humanity as my legs could carry me, to my emotional "middle of no where." After the most peaceful eight miles I have ever experienced, I knew this couldn’t stop here. In addition to being an overly anxious, perfectionist, I am also extremely stubborn and have never been a distance runner of any sort.
When I say of any sort, I mean that I didn’t make the cross country team in middle school because I couldn’t complete a mile. But this stubbornness landed the idea in my head that I was going to run a marathon. And after hundreds of miles of training, two shoes and endless thigh chaffing, the experience I had became a larger metaphor for life in ways I can only try to explain.
My first lesson came as I began a five-mile hill climb in the middle of the race. Yes, five miles. During, it seemed like the deeply intense burn in my thighs would never end. But that is the funny thing about the hard parts of life, they always end. In addition, every uphill has a downhill. Train yourself to be content on both sides. There are times when life is going to blow and times when it will be so wonderfully exciting, you are bursting with joy.
You can’t control where you are on the hill, just your attitude through the journey. You can’t control whether or not it is your time in life to be single, or your time in life to be in a relationship, or to be experiencing financial success or quite the opposite. Take comfort during the steep, shitty uphills in life, remembering that every hill ends and life always comes back down.
Although this journey began as a quest for solitude, I learned to never underestimate the importance of your social support system. Whether it was a training plan, hydration gear or my own personal cheer squad, my friends and family changed this experience for me. They fill in the gaps that we often overlook. Not to say that others complete you, just that our friends, families and significant others are our greatest tools in life. They provide an external sense of feedback of all sorts that we can’t provide ourselves. We are intensely social creatures and have so much to take in from our experiences together. Solitude can be necessary but don’t ever let it take over your life and become your normal.
Finally, I was reminded how powerful our minds are, over our emotions and our bodies. We can let ourselves panic or keep ourselves calm. We have the choice to keep going or let ourselves stop. It doesn’t take running a marathon to remind yourself that you are beyond capable of anything you want to accomplish, sometimes the biggest thing in the way is yourself. Your own doubt can be as powerful as your own belief to succeed. We can’t control everything, but your self worth and faith in your abilities is entirely in your own hands, or rather in this case your feet.
