I am a Runner

The inspiration for my blog comes from this simple statement.   To explain, I'd like to introduce my friend, Rachael.  She was our group leader when I joined Weight Watchers.  Her background, which I feel free to share because she told it many times in WW meetings, was losing over 60 lbs on the WW program, and turning to running, as I did, to maintain her new size.

I remember Rachael telling about her first 5K.  She showed up nervous and feeling COMPLETELY out of place.  She saw people trotting around, stretching, warming up, and wondered, "Should I be doing that?!"  She questioned what she was wearing, if she was prepared, and generally fighting the urge to just go home.  In other words, she didn't feel like she belonged among these ACTUAL runners.  Long story short, she ran that 5K.  She eventually ran the Portland Marathon.  Last fall, she ran it again and qualified for the Boston Marathon.  Rachael is a runner.

I love her story because I can identify with it in so many ways.  I fought those same feelings of inadequacy at my first running event.  Everyone else there were Real Runners,  patiently tolerating us wannabes.   Adding to my insecurity -  I was older than most of them.
"I'm a grandma, for Heaven's sake!  What was I thinking??!"

Here's the point:   I knew I could run.  I had trained.  I had the shoes, the clothes, the proper "look".  But I didn't have the identity.  Yet.  Mentally, I had not yet accepted myself as a runner.  That identity shift came over several months, as I realized I really liked running, and that I was indeed, "one of them".

When you believe you are a runner, you act as a runner acts - by running.   As Rachael stressed in one of our WW meetings, when you lose your extra weight and start to believe you are a slim person, you will act as a slim person acts - by not overeating.   If you can't shake that fat-person identity inside your head, chances are you will revert back to fat-person behavior.  If you believe you are a couch potato, then you will act like one.  If I believe I am too old to run a marathon, then I am.

Your identity is everything.  And IMO, it happens by going through the motions.  ACT AS IF you are:  a runner, a slim person, a (fill in the blank), ..... or a valued and beloved child of God.  ACT AS IF YOU ARE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE.  Then, let that identity come.  If you run, you ARE a runner.  If you have lost that weight, you ARE slim.  If you exist, you are God's child.  You ARE one of them.   Stop the self-doubt and claim that identity which, by all rights, is yours.