The President of SUU sent out an email for finals week to students, then also shared it to Facebook. He shared his experience with going for a morning run and some lessons to be learned from it. I found it very relevant to my predicament of low motivation for running.
Some of the wisdom shared: "If I put on sufficient layers to feel good when I first step outside and start running I know I will be overheating in less than a mile. So, in order to be comfortable along a 90-minute run I have to be uncomfortable for the first three or four minutes. ... Getting started is always the most difficult part of the project- the first 3 or 4 minutes. Nothing feels better than sticking with a task until it is completed. Don't deny yourself that feeling by quitting too early.
"How do we talk ourselves into getting started if we don't want to? Well, I usually don't want to go running in the morning. So, I don't think about it. I just go through the motions to get ready. I put on my running clothes, eat a snack, get a drink, follow a pattern, and eventually I find myself outside. It's cold, so I start running to warm up. I work from easy and don't think about hard. Eventually the hard becomes easy with momentum and the force of habit.
"How do we keep going once we've started? I ususally don't think about how long or hard the run will be. That can cause me to feel overwhelmed and tired before I even get going. I just think about starting an easy run. I trick my mind into assuming I'll just go a little ways, and then, as Robert Frost wrote, "way leads on to way."
"Congratulations for making it this far. Consider how much you have been able to do, albeit less than perfectly, and take confidence from where you are to keep moving forward."
He of course related it to schoolwork and had a few more things to say, but that was the part that felt relevant.
A lot of the principles I already know, I just needed to be reminded. I think that the go through the motions and get going bit is great advice- it's a lot easier to go for a run when you're already getting ready for it than when you haven't even started. It's the getting started bit that I'm having difficulty with most.
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