Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Most people are not consciously aware of their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. They assume that everything is just happening to them and it's all out of their control. They aren’t aware that they …
Continue Reading about 15. The Surprising Power of Self-Awareness →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host. And I’m a master life and success coach and a weight loss coach for runners. I teach you how to stop struggling, and start getting the results that you want from your running in your weight loss journey and in your life.
And it all starts with learning how to manage your mind. That’s what I teach you here on this podcast, I teach you how to manage your mind so you can create better results in your life, whatever that looks like for you. Today, I’m talking about self awareness and the surprising power of self awareness, I want to talk about what it means to develop self awareness, how you do it, and why it is perhaps the most powerful life skill that you can learn.
So first, let’s talk about what self awareness means. Self awareness, the Google definition is, “a conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires”. So when I hear that, I think of it being the ability for you to take an honest and objective look at yourself without any sort of attachment to it being right or wrong. So it’s the act of thinking about your own thoughts, thinking about your own feelings, without any kind of judgment.
And I think one of the things that people struggle with is a lack of self awareness. I think this is a big problem for most people. Most people are just not consciously aware of their own thoughts and their own feelings, and even their own actions, they’re not even aware of what they are doing, or why they are doing what they do.
Most people think everything is just happening to them and they aren’t aware that they are actually creating all of their own thoughts, all of their own feelings and creating all of the results that they’re getting in their life or not getting in their lives. Most people just don’t take the time to think about their thinking or to just feel their feelings or to notice what it is that they are doing.
What most people do, is they feel some kind of emotion that feels terrible inside them, which is like an alarm going off. I’m feeling something, and then they do whatever they can right now to change it to stop it to stop the feeling. You know, I can’t feel bad, I can’t be sad, I can’t be angry, I can’t be hurt or frustrated. I need to do something right now to change this. What can I do?
So what do most people do? Most people in a situation like that reach for something outside of themselves to make them feel better. They grab the bottle of wine, and the biggest glass they can find, or they go binge on some junk food or binge on some Netflix and then ah, they feel so much better, right? So this is called buffering. This is where you’re using some external thing to feel better internally.
And it’s buffering because it puts a buffer between you and reality. And it does. It feels good for a minute, but it’s actually a false pleasure. It’s temporary. And it has many negative consequences, being addicted to alcohol or drugs or, you know, chronic procrastination, lethargy, being overweight, and then all those negative things, they lead to more negative emotions inside.
And so what do you do when you have the negative emotions? You go drink more, or you eat more or you watch more TV. I hope you’re starting to hear like how crazy this is, right? You have to get out of that loop. So remember, your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive, all your actions and your actions are what produced the results that you get in your life. So eventually, you’ll want to change your thinking. So you can change your feelings so you can take more aligned action so you can get better results, right?
And here’s what I hear people say to me, my clients, they tell me this, they’re like, okay, I know I need to think new thoughts, so I can feel better right now. So how do I do that? Tell me the new thoughts to think. Tell me how to feel differently, so I can start doing different stuff.
And the answer, which doesn’t make sense at first, but hear me out, the answer always starts with increasing your self awareness. The first and most important step in creating different results in your life, in your running, in your marriage, in your weight loss journey, is to increase your self awareness.
You can’t change something unless you know what you’re changing, you can’t change your thinking. Unless you know exactly what your thoughts are, and what’s driving them. You can’t change your feelings inside your emotions, your emotional state, unless you’re really in touch with your emotions, unless you really understand them profoundly. And you can sit with them, and experience them and you know what that feels like.
And you can’t take different actions, unless you can observe yourself objectively. And honestly, which is the tough part for most of us, and determine what actions are serving you and, and what are not. So is this thing I’m doing right now moving me closer to my goal or further away from it? You have to get really honest and objective.
And that’s what self awareness is. It’s a non judgmental awareness of yourself. I think this is the most important life skill you can develop. If you can increase your self awareness, you dramatically increase your potential. Because you’re constantly analyzing the data without judgment. It’s just facts, just data. So you can constantly make improvements in all these different areas of your life. Practicing self awareness is like the most important thing you can do.
Okay, so how do you do it? So one of the things you need to work on here is to be a non judgmental observer of yourself. And that’s a lot easier said than done. I get it sounds simple. Sounds easy enough. But the truth is, we are constantly judging ourselves. This is a good thought, this is a bad thought. This is a good feeling. This is a bad feeling. I need to feel differently, how can I change the way I feel right now? I don’t want to feel this way any longer.
Like we’re constantly doing this battle with ourselves over how our thinking is messed up, or how we shouldn’t feel this way. Like, for example, you might be feeling a little stressed out right now with everything that’s going on. With the stay at home order, you’re working from home, your kids are there with you, against your better judgment, against your wishes, you know, you’re trying to homeschool them and get all your work done.
And you’re feeling completely stressed out about everything, right? So what do you do? So most people when they feel anxious and stressed out, they look for something outside of themselves to make them feel better. So they have a drink, eat some cookie dough, go buy something, you know, put that buffer between yourself and what’s going on. And most people just can’t stand to feel stressed out, even for a minute.
They can’t stand to feel anxious or overwhelmed. But what would it be like for you if you were to just let that feeling be there without any kind of judgment? And without doing anything to try to change it? What? I know it sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But what if instead of rejecting reality, the reality of what’s happening around you, and the reality of how you’re feeling instead of trying to resist it, what if you just allowed it to be?
What if you just allowed yourself to feel the stress and the anxiety without having to change it? Notice what comes up for you. When you feel it when you just sit with it when you experience it when you let it process through. You notice it with curiosity. Hmm, that’s interesting. I’m kind of feeling a little freaked out right about now. I wonder what that’s all about. And that’s it. You don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to try to change it. You don’t want it to go away. You don’t have to switch it into something else.
I know this sounds crazy. But here’s the thing, the more you can practice just noticing your thoughts. same feelings, the better you can get at managing them. And notice something managing and not changing them. So managing your thoughts and emotions means being super aware of everything you’re thinking and feeling. And then just allowing it to be as it is. Just let it be, all of it: the good, the bad, the ugly.
Well, there is no good or bad or ugly because you’re not judging any of it. Try to be a non judgmental observer of your emotions, from your thoughts. When we talk about emotions, and just feeling our emotions, like how do you just manage your emotions? It’s just being with them and experiencing them and letting them do their thing in your body.
You know, watch yourself express an emotion. How do you do it? What does it feel like for you? What does it feel like inside your body? Where do you feel it inside your body? Sometimes it’s in our chest or our stomach and our throat? So where do you feel? Is it big? Is it small? Does it feel like it’s swirling around inside you? Oh, it does. Which way? Is it swirling clockwise? or counterclockwise?
Does it move from top to bottom or the other way? Really just get in touch with your emotions. When we think about emotions, they’re just like sensations in our body. That’s all they are. They’re just vibrations that we can sort of feel inside our body. That’s it, your emotions, your feelings cannot hurt you. What can hurt you is resisting them, immediately trying to change them, reject them, pushing them down, pushing them away. When we do that, that’s what causes the internal suffering. That’s what causes our self misery.
You know, when we try to constantly reject and resist our emotions, wishing we didn’t feel this way, I should be feeling differently, we buffer them away. When we do that, that is when we suffer. But just feeling an emotion. You don’t suffer because of that. You just feel the emotion. Oh, I’m pretty angry right now. You don’t have to do anything about it.
You might feel like smashing somebody’s face, but you don’t have to act out on that. And you don’t have to judge that either. Just go oh, yeah, that’s interesting. That’s curious. So you don’t have to fix it, you don’t have to change it. Your job in life is not to change everything, to just feel better. In fact, your job in life is not to just feel good all the time. This is not what our lives are supposed to be.
Your role in life, the only things that really are things you have to do in your life, are to live and to die. And that’s it really, you exist. And then you don’t know it sounds kind of depressing. But no, those are the only things that are like your required requirements for being a human on this planet is to be alive. And then to die.
Everything else in between is what you choose to do, honestly. And we’re not supposed to feel good all the time. I don’t know where we came up with this idea. But you know, we feel good about half the time and we feel not so good about half the time and this is normal. This is like nature. This is the nature of life for all human beings on planet Earth.
We feel good about half the time and the other half is like not so good. So the meaning of your life is not to just control the show. You know controlling everything so you feel better all the time. It’s to get good at being with both halves of that equation, the good and the bad. You know when we try to just control everything so we feel good all the time.
We are miserable because everything is constantly not going according to our plan. And so we have all this internal misery when we do this. You need to stop doing this. Accept the good, accept the bad, just be with it. Have that self awareness of oh, this is interesting. I don’t feel good. I am pissed off right now. I feel hurt by what, you know, by these thoughts in my head are creating these feelings and that isn’t that interesting.
So you’ve got to get out of this victim mode where like everything is happening to you, take responsibility. Understand that you’re a normal human being feeling feelings, thinking thoughts, and doing things based on what you’ve, you know, what you feel is best for you and for others. People are whatever and just just be with all of it. Be aware of it. Be curious, don’t judge yourself. Practice self awareness.
So what if instead of trying to control everything or change everything, you were just an observer of your life? Like, what would that look like for you? And I’m not saying you never take action, you just sit around passively observing yourself going, Oh, that’s very interesting. And then, you know, waste away on a couch somewhere, that is not what I’m saying at all.
You definitely want to take aligned action and create the kind of life that you want. But what I’m talking about here is before you can do that, you have to have the self awareness to know what is coming up for you. What does your life look like, really? What do your thoughts sound like to you? What do your feelings feel like to you? And if you were to just do this, instead of trying to control everything, you were just an observer?
How would that change how you showed up in the world? How would that change how you showed up for yourself? For your partner, for your kids, for your work? For your running? Just notice everything with like a neutral curiosity. Hmm, well, that’s interesting. It’s a good phrase, I use that a lot in my life.
I think about when I start to feel a feeling that feels like a negative feeling. And to me, that’s an alarm going off. And that triggers this thought, hmm, isn’t that interesting? What is that for me? Why am I feeling this way? And usually, I can just pinpoint a certain thought, a sentence in my head that’s causing me to feel hurt or sad or angry.
So when you stop resisting, when you stop rejecting, when you stop trying to change everything, that internal suffering that you have stops, when you can notice without judgment, what’s going on in your mind, what’s happening in your body, what’s going on with your thoughts and your feelings, your internal conflicts and your internal struggles melt away.
Like this is the most important step, the first step and the most important step in becoming the badass person that you want to be. And I love this quote from Eckhart Tolle, he says, “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.” Whoa, I love this.
Whatever is coming up for you right now, just accept it as if you had chosen it. You know, developing self awareness, being aware of your own thoughts, being aware of your feelings, being aware of your actions. It’s not something that’s like, bestowed upon you like here, you get self awareness, and you don’t know it’s a learned skill.
And it’s a skill that you have to practice if you want to get good at it. But when you do it, when you do get good at developing more self awareness, you create this like neutral space, where you can make better decisions, instead of making all your decisions based from a place of judgment and fear and resistance and suffering.
So I’m going to encourage you, right now to start practicing self awareness, and see how things start to shift for you. See how things in your life become clearer. See how you start to make better decisions, and you start moving towards that badass person that you know you are that you want to be, you can start becoming that person right now.
And it all starts with just practicing self awareness. And anytime you’re thinking of thought or feeling of feeling and you’re, you’re wanting to resist it, or thinking it should, you should change it. Practice that little line that I use, which is huh. Isn’t that interesting? And then see what happens. This is powerful, powerful stuff, you guys.
So that’s all I got for you today. I hope you got something out of this. Reach out to me with questions or comments Hello at Inner Fire tribe.com I’d love to hear what you think of this. Much love to each and every one of you. We’ll see you next time.
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Today, I am sharing a conversation I recently had with my friend Sarah Buckley. Sarah is a badass personal trainer, owner of Persist Fitness Training and creator of Run Strong Cincy - a strength …
Continue Reading about 14. Sarah Buckley on the Myths of Strength Training for Runners →
Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners. And I teach you how to stop struggling, how to stop struggling and start getting results in your running in your weight loss journey in your life. And it all starts with managing your mind. And that’s what I created this podcast for. That’s what I teach you here.
I want to teach you how to manage your mind so you can create the life that you love, the life that you really want whatever that looks like for you. Today, I’m sharing a conversation I recently had with my friend Sarah Buckley. Sarah is a badass personal trainer. She’s the owner of Persist Fitness training here in Cincinnati, and she’s the creator of a program called Run Strong Cincy.
And that’s a strength training program that’s designed specifically for runners. It’s awesome. Now, there are a lot of myths around strength training and running. And today here Sarah breaks it all down for us. And she explains why strength training might be kind of misunderstood in the running community. Especially in the long distance running community. It’s kind of an eye opening interview.
Sarah and I discuss how managing your mind is the key to every good thing you want in your life from building muscle to overcoming food addictions to running a marathon. It all begins with mindset. I’m actually very excited to share this interview with you. So I’m gonna stop talking now. Here’s my interview with Sarah Buckley.
Today I am talking to my friend Sarah Buckley, about strength training specifically for runners. And she’s going to share a bunch of awesome knowledge with us today. Sarah, how are you doing?
Sarah Buckley
I’m good. Thank you, Patrick. I appreciate you having me on today.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so tell us just a little bit about you know, who you are and what you do?
Sarah Buckley
Sure. So I am a strength and conditioning coach or personal trainer. I have been in the business going on nine years. And I own Persist Fitness. That’s my business. And I work with a lot of runners. I’ve been working with runners my entire career as a personal trainer, and I have a significant running history myself, which is why I feel very passionate about working with that population. You know, I have been running since I was little. I competed in college, did the marathon half marathon kind of stuff post grad. And when I moved to Cincinnati, I didn’t know anybody. And so of course, my running community was the first place that I plugged in. And as they say the rest is history.
Patrick McGilvray
So what is it about? Well, like why do runners come to see you? What do you see? Is there kind of some of the main issues that they come to see you?
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, so I actually kind of accidentally developed this program, when I was training for, you know, half marathon marathon and triathlons and I started playing around with my own strength programming. Because I was having a resource issue. And that resource was time, I had to get my mileage in. And I love lifting weights. So I didn’t want to quit.
And I also understood how beneficial it would be for my health and my performance to continue lifting. So I started to really take a critical look at my programming and my exercise choice. So that every single movement and every single exercise that I was doing was giving me the absolute highest return for my health and performance as a runner.
And so that program started out as me working with myself and then bringing in the rest of my running community. I have probably trained over 100 runners easily in the past six years, and I have a really strong group that has stuck with me. And so yeah, we are focused on health and performance and optimizing those two, while also accounting for your running programs. So You know, you have your miles on X, Y and Z days, you are tapering for this specific race and the strength. Part of your training runs directly alongside that as a complementary, rather than a competitor story, kind of part of your training.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I think that’s good that you have that perspective as a seasoned runner yourself, to be able to coach people and train them to get get to their race goals, because a lot of trainers are not, you know, half marathoners or whatever, and they don’t understand what it is to go through that training period, how you peak at a certain point, how you taper and things like that. And so having that knowledge under your belt, I think gives you definitely a great advantage to help people.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, thanks. I agree. And then just also, I think the running mind is a little bit different than some other athletes. And so I think having, you know, been an avid runner, having been both a competitor and a recreational part of that community for a long time, I really feel you know, connected.
And I feel like I’m in a unique position to communicate kind of the benefits. And I really deeply understand their why. And I can find that, you know, what I have to offer is really strongly connected to their why, it’s just a matter of having that conversation.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, when you’re talking about the mind of a runner, you know, I always say that running is 20% physical and 100% mental. And then I follow that up with saying like, and we runners were very mental, you know, we definitely have a different sort of mindset when it comes to goals, fitness, endurance, all that kind of stuff. We’re a little little out there sometimes. And we like it. We like being out there. Not everybody gets us. So and that’s okay. Yeah, we’re okay with that.
Yeah, so I know that there are some kind of myths or misconceptions about strength training, because I’ve heard a lot of people say things like, you know, you can’t build muscle while you’re, you know, training or as a runner as a long distance runner, you know, you don’t really even need to go work out at the gym and things like that. Have you heard some of these myths?
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, definitely. And these are conversations that I have with my runners frequently. There’s a lot of information out there. And I think sometimes the strength conversation and the running conversation are happening in silos. So neither is really considering the like applications of the other, even though when we’re working with a real live human athlete, as an individual, we can’t operate in silos, because all of these things holistically are forming this athlete.
So for instance, the example of you know, putting on muscle because I’m like, way more, and then I’m going to slow down. That is something that I try to dispel immediately when I’m having conversations with runners, if you’re a beginner, in the gym, if you’re a beginner for strength, it’s very likely that you are going to build some muscle, you are your body and might actually recomp, meaning you might shed some body fat, and kind of put that weight that scale weight back on with muscle.
However, as far as the weight that you’re carrying, muscle is so much more valuable for your health and performance than that other weight is. So if you had to choose between the two, I would want you to have the muscle. And also of course, there is a point of diminishing return.
However, from a scientific standpoint, your nutrition number one and that’s a very important kind of separate conversation would have to be very, very dialed in for you to put on, you know, the maximum amount of muscle especially as a training endurance athlete, because those are kind of competing energy systems. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying you have to really be dialed in on quite a few different things to move that needle forward.
And secondly, muscle even if you’re, you know, just for general health, it is healthy, it’s safe. It’s protecting your body so it’s protecting your joints, it’s making you more resilient. You know, your organs are underneath. If you have some muscles in the front, you know, even like a fender bender, having some muscle in your structure can actually protect you from the world.
So it’s not something that we need to worry about. I’ve never worked with a runner who I thought needed to shed some of this muscle, you’re carrying too much around, in seven years.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s definitely one of the things I hear a lot people talking about. Or that, you know, you can’t build muscle as a runner like it just you’re, you know, it can’t happen, it’s impossible to do. Like, what do you say to that?
Sarah Buckley
So it’s not impossible, I think we said there’s some things that would need to be dialed in. And that would be a kind of a nutrition conversation. Just, you know, protein is something that builds muscle. And so if an athlete is interested in putting muscle on, there’s gonna have to be some, you know, kind of broad nutritional guidelines that would need to be followed in order to put muscle on.
That being said, there’s scientific protocols that basically do what’s called hypertrophy and hypertrophy is the scientific name for putting on muscle. So as long as an individual is consistent and over a long enough timeframe, so say, three to six months, depending on that individual, individual variables like age, gender, those types of things. As long as they’re hitting that rep scheme, and that volume scheme, they’ll put muscle on, especially someone who’s training age, meaning how long they’ve been strength training is low.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, that’s awesome.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, we call those beginner gains, because you get super strong super fast, because everything is new. So your body is on the fly there. It’s adapting very quickly.
Patrick McGilvray
Hmm. And so how would this help a long distance runner?
Sarah Buckley
Great question. So when we look at the physical demands, kind of zooming way, way in on what’s required of the body to actually run? First of all, it’s very high impact. So most of us who are in the running role, understand that conservatively, every single step when you’re running is three times your body weight, plus overcoming momentum, plus overcoming gravity, and each leg is landing about 1000 times per mile.
So this is a quite a high impact sport, which is, which is okay, that’s fine. But from the strength side of things, we need to look at how we can stay safe when we’re constantly pounding, constantly pounding, and all sports are reliant on one major foundation, and that’s being able to maintain correct position for specific amounts of time.
So for endurance athletes, it’s being able to maintain proper and efficient running biomechanics for a very long time. So you have this high demand for muscular endurance. So strength training is absolutely necessary for an endurance athlete, because simply running does not put the appropriate external load on your body is necessary for a scientific adaptation to take place for you to actually get stronger within those positions.
And secondly, running also requires almost all of the different ways you could move your body, it requires single leg strength, it requires Single Leg level change, where you know, you have knee bending and hip flexion, those kinds of things, it requires both stiffness and mobility in your joints.
And it requires rotation, that’s basically all of the components of movement that the human body allows for. And it’s all happening in an extremely short window of time, over and over and over and over and over again. So if that’s not an opportunity for over usage to happen, I don’t know what is. So we have to train that body to be prepared to do all of these necessary biomechanical things to run efficiently.
And like I said, you might be, it might be an hour and a half, it might be five hours that you’re required to maintain these pretty high level positions of your body. And strength is the only way that you can get to that place.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, the way you’re describing this and the way you’re describing the mechanics of running, just makes it sound like it’s so hard on your body like how could you not want to be stronger? You know what I mean? Because it would just make you be able to absorb all that impact to be able to push through the the repetitive motion and get to, you know, you know, have a successful workout or a successful race because without the strength involved have, oh my gosh, I could see how this could be, I’m could see why a lot of people get injured.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t want to discourage people from entering into the running world, I think the running community is one of the best and strongest and most accepting and accessible fitness communities that is available. And I absolutely love it for that. But just like a runner, who goes from one mile to three miles and three miles to five miles, and so on, and so forth, until they’re running their marathon, you have to earn that mileage.
And I think something that people don’t consider is that they think, oh, running is just walking like, but faster. And it really isn’t that simple. It’s highly complicated. When you kind of look at it, you know, the way that I’m looking at it, I’m looking at it from a human body perspective. So I would love people to think about their strength in the same way that they think about their progression of mileage. Which is like, I’m not ready to run five miles, because I haven’t put the base work in.
Similarly, like, I might not be ready to run at all, because I have, I don’t have these kind of specific strength prerequisites, in order to maintain position, keep my joints healthy. You know, and especially for a starter performance aside, the main goal is going to be health and sustainability in the sport. And then we can talk about performance, once we have this pretty significant bass, similar to how a runner, you know, would approach their first say, half marathon or marathon, I don’t think as much work as necessary for maybe a 5k. But you know, the longer distances certainly.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, what are some of those like beginner type of injuries that you see people coming in with? Like, what is kind of the main thing where people are, are, maybe they don’t have the right mechanics, or they don’t have the right strength in the right areas, like what are you seeing?
Sarah Buckley
So I see a lot of kind of random knee and that it’s really nothing, there’s no diagnosis, but it hurts all the time. And it’s probably like arthritis, or bursitis, or tendinitis, these things that are caused from, you know, doing the same thing over and over again. And, you know, consistent loading on a joint the same way over and over again.
So I see a lot of joint stuff. So hip, knee, even like ankle or foot things, is probably the most common. And I have to say almost every kind of pain, I want to say injury, because a lot of it is more just kind of chronic aches and stuff like that is coming from upstream, it’s coming from the hip. And the hip joint is very special and specific to what runners need, it needs to be able to, you know, rotate in it’s ball and socket, but it also has to be strong through its entire range of motion.
Or else you have a very significant energy week, which is going to likely come out in the knee because the knee doesn’t really it doesn’t. Of course, it does something. But as far as when we’re talking about performance and health and running efficiency, the knee is kind of just like following up with what the hip is telling it to do. So the hip isn’t healthy and strong, the knee isn’t going to be able to kind of execute on that follow up, and so on don’t down the line.
Conversely, if you have a lack of foot strength and toe dexterity, it can move up the chain. And that’s when you kind of start to see ankle issues. And again, knee issues, shin splints, I get a lot of plantar fascia stuff. And I truly believe that just just even just gaining some general strength, not even specific to your sport, but just lower body strength, stiffness, and bracing and breathing capabilities in your core will take the load off of those areas.
Because truly, you know, our body is designed to absorb and distribute forces through our core. And when I say core, I kind of mean like, from your armpit to your armpit and down to your hip towards your other hip and then on your back as well. So your torso is your core. That’s where forces come from in your body and that’s where we can absorb them. So the more stiff and strong we are in our center area, the less our joints have to absorb. So just some general training in the beginning can certainly start to reduce, you know, pain and discomfort in our limbs.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. And I know that there’s a lot of different exercises that people can do and different strength training circuits and things like that they can do to build up all of those areas and strengthen the hips and strengthen the glutes. and strengthen the hamstrings and calves and all this stuff.
And you know, you get the whole thing abs, whatever. What is like one exercise that somebody could do just like at home since especially we’re all locked down at home right now anyway, like what would be like the one thing you would say that people could do that would give them kind of an overall good strength exercise or whatever?
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, great question. So for all of my runners, regardless of whether we’re in the gym, or if we’re quarantined at home, I prioritize strengthening our posterior chain, which is your back and your vectors, which are the muscles that surround your spine, and they’re responsible for protecting and keeping your spine stable, your low back, your booty, your glutes and your hamstrings, because those are a runners engine, and those are a runner’s brakes.
So those are likely areas where I see energy leaks. So any movement that is a hinge. So one example would be a deadlift, where you have a soft bending of your knees, and you’re pushing your hips back and your belly button down and kind of reaching towards mid Shin, you’ll feel your hips load up, because you’ll start to feel a stretch in your hamstring.
When we’re at home, something that works great if you have a little bit of equipment, you can just stand on a band. And you can hold the band on the outside of your legs and do your hands movement from there. But also, I actually just made gallon weights by using old gallon cartons that I just taped and one of them is filled with sand and basically dirt and it’s a little heavier and more dense. And then the other one I filled like three quarters of the way with water. And it’s a little bit unstable because the water sloshes around, and I secured it with duct tape. It’s kind of whatever. But it’s working for me right now. Awful items. But I think nailing a hinge pattern, being able to lengthen your hamstrings under load is the absolute first priority for any runner, I don’t care if you have been running for two days or 20 years, you have to be able to load your hamstring in a lengthened state.
Patrick McGilvray
And doing that you said to do these bent over hinges or the deadlifts?
Sarah Buckley
Especially, you know, if you were to Google ‘deadlift’, you’re gonna see somebody probably doing it with a barbell, but the movement is the same. And it’s you’re acting as your hips, if your body is a door, your hips are your hinge, and your upper body is the door and your legs are staying in the same place. So they’re the doorframe so your upper body is opening and closing your hips will be pushing backwards as your belly button going down, and you have a soft bend in your knee, that’s the biggest thing I see is that people bend their knees all the way and they do more of a squat, rather than being a very so think about your the knee bend that you’re looking for is the same knee bend that you would have on your landing. When you’re running. It’s not very deep. It’s a tiny degree.
Patrick McGilvray
Gotcha. Like would this be like a Romanian deadlift?
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Romanian, or RDL or deadlift, do like the same thing, but different ranges of motion. So yeah, exactly. Patrick.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. That’s good. I’ve done a few of those.
Sarah Buckley
Good. Yeah. Good for everybody.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, they suck. No, that’s actually a really, it’s a really good strength training any I’ve found, and from what I understand any type of squatting, like that is going to help a lot for runners just because you’re, you’re strengthening that whole posterior chain also, you know, you’re hitting the glutes, and you’re hitting the hamstrings and the calves and the hip flexors and all that stuff. So that’s all good.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, and I really like compound movement, meaning it’s one movement that checks a lot of boxes. Yes. Efficiently from like a weight loss standpoint, I really like it because it’s not ice. Like it’s not a bicep curl. Your bicep is like three inches of your whole body versus your RDL, your deadlift, which is literally recruiting all of your muscle fibers for your entire body. It’s quite a bit more of a workout. So from a resources standpoint, I really liked the compound lifts. Not that we don’t hit isolated stuff we absolutely do. But again, if we had to choose one, and we’re prioritizing, it’s gonna be the compound lifts.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I think maybe a good rule of thumb for people when they do start going back to the gym, is to avoid the machines because those are very isolating and to do more stuff, just on the floor, you know, on the using the rig or whatever they got there, right.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah. And, you know, I don’t use a lot on machines, I don’t train within one specific kind of like program, I’m more of a hybrid. So I would consider myself working within a system where multiple tools can be brought in depending on the needs of an individual. So I will never say no to machines.
However, like you had said, they’re very isolating. So it’s unlikely that you’re going to get the benefits from a compound movement. And also, it puts you in a prescribed range of motion that may not be what you’re ready for, or be structurally what you have the capacity for. So I know a lot of people, particularly with shoulders that have big time trouble with machines.
So I would recommend having a coach look at your movement. Dumbbells are king for stability. I love using dumbbells. And I would recommend that over any machine any day, for any individual, except for maybe somebody who’s either doing like powerlifting or weightlifting, specifically, but even those folks are going to use the dumbbells for their accessories.
Patrick McGilvray
And I think what you just touched on something that’s so important, which is having somebody like watch you, that knows what they’re doing. And that can help you. I’ve seen some people the gym, the way they’re lifting weights is just terrible. And you’re just like, oh my god, you’re so doing it wrong, you’re going to hurt yourself. And we don’t want that. So having somebody to watch over you to help you to create the movement that works best for your body type for your shape for what your goals are. I think that’s so important.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. And I actually think that kind of hits on another, like myth as well, which is where I hear a lot of my runners saying two things, one of the things that they say is that they want to get in shape before they come to work out. And then secondly, you know, because I think of, and I again, love the running community.
A lot of the reason that people are plugged into running groups, or become runners is because it is so social, and it is so supportive, and it is so inclusive, and I think you can find some of those same markers in group fitness type classes.
And when we’re talking about getting assessed and using your resources wisely, and getting kind of in shape, that would not be the route that I recommend for runners based on what kind of energy system they’re trying to train based on progressions that I would be recommending for them, because you haven’t been assessed on your individual needs. So we don’t know where you stand.
We don’t know what your strengths are, we don’t know where there’s opportunity to grow. And we certainly, you know, the emphasis is on the individual to say when they’re ready for the next thing. And all of those decisions can be made by a coach who’s working with somebody because the variables are, you know, they vary.
So it could be someone who’s coming off of an injury or could simply be someone who’s having a hard week at work and their stress is really high. And there’s really no value in continuing to stress that system. All the way to okay, you have a race in two weeks, so I’m tapering you in the gym. So that’s something that those kinds of circuit, specifically kind of timed circuit based classes, I don’t necessarily recommend those for my runners because it is very depleting to their recovery tank. And it is not adding value to their long term goals, because of the lack of assessment because of the lack of correct progressions and variations for themselves.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, it’s really not a one size fits all, you know what I mean? It’s just like, it’s so individual. So individual.
Sarah Buckley
Communities are wonderful, like I said, for the workout, but when we’re talking about training, just like your training for your race. There’s a difference between going to a workout class and going to train for you, for yourself, for your goals, for your why.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s a very good point. Yeah, you touched on something else earlier that I want to kind of mention, which is you you said like doing these compound exercises are better for your kind of for your, like weight loss goals. And one of the things that I firmly believe, and I think it’s kind of one of those myths about running in general is like if I just run I’ll lose weight, you know, and when it comes down to it, running is not a very effective way to lose weight.
I think exercising in general is not a very effective way by itself to lose weight. The problem, a couple problems with it are number one, people tend to work out or run and then they overcompensate with what they eat. And so they’re just they’re negating any kind of gains they may have made at the gym or out on the road.
So another problem is that the main reason we are overweight, especially here in the United States is that we overeat. And the over eating has to do with, you know, social cultural things. It has to do with psychological reasons, hormonal reasons, but it’s mostly like there’s physical, mental and emotional causes that are sort of hidden, and that have kind of programmed us to be overeaters, you know, and no amount of running is going to fix that.
And so, you know, I tell people, like you have to address the underlying issues, if you want to lose weight and get to your, you know, natural weight, not everybody needs to like fit some perfect airbrushed model version of whatever people think reality is, but like, what is your natural weight, where should you be, if you’re not there, then we need to address those issues.
So you know, but I do, but here’s the thing, here’s where I’m getting to it, this long, roundabout way of saying it, is like running is a part of that, it is a part of staying healthy and staying fit. Running makes you feel good, you get that release of dopamine and endorphins and adrenaline and like it just it’s, it’s a good, it makes you feel good. It’s good for your mental health, it’s good for your physical health, it’s good to get outside and get some vitamin D, get some sunshine, how does strength training play into someone’s overall, you know, kind of weight loss goals for the people that are interested in losing weight?
Sarah Buckley
Sure, so just to kind of touch on what you just kind of left off with, with the running. The reason that, you know, I became a strength coach, and I push lifting the weights so hard and believe in it so deeply, you know, my, my tagline for my business is empowerment through movement is because I truly believe that pursue personal emotional mental growth far surpasses the physical gains that you will have in the gym.
And it’s a way to do something and to have success on something that you’ve never done before. And you feel amazing, you feel like a badass, you are able, you’re you feel very capable. And so there’s all these other, like high value, things, high value words that you’re getting from your lifting experience, that I think are going to again, we can’t work in a silo.
So from a holistic standpoint, that checks many boxes when I start to think about mental and emotional health. And I think, at least for me, I provide a safe, accessible place for people to come do those things. Because I understand like, it can seem intimidating. When you just go out on the road, you’re by yourself. Maybe people in cars see you but you know, you’re very separated from them.
Versus in the gym, you might be face to face with someone who you feel like it’s watching you. And so I think that, that that’s why I’m here to be on that journey with you. And that’s kind of the soft science things, and anecdotally why I believe in doing it that way. But the hard science absolutely supports that as well. So yeah, running in and of itself, weightlifting in and of itself, these are tools towards weight loss, whether you have just strictly an aesthetic goal or a weight loss goal that’s tied to help. Both are great.
So doing the high, you know, compound movements that’s recruiting a lot of muscle. You know, it’s just, it just makes more sense, wouldn’t you rather burn this amount of calories doing a compound lift and this amount of calories, doing 50 bicep curls, and only targeting one part of your body and the rest of your body now is not getting what it needs.
So and also it’s a great way to put on muscle and build muscle is to do those compound movements because you are using every muscle in your body. And so we know that having more muscle is helpful to weight loss. Even though you know muscle weighs more, I say it’s helpful to fat loss, because that scale number could potentially go up but your percent body fat is going to go down.
So that’s something that I was mentioning earlier. And so it’s the quality of the number that we see on the scale. And you’ll look different and you know your body is going to change. But the weight that you are carrying is working for you; it is adding value to your life every single day.
Versus on the other side. Maybe there’s risks that are involved with the weight that you are carrying. And so I think that you again, all those conversations need to be happening. That’s why I said this kind of nutrition is very important. But it’s kind of separate because we need to, you know, be talking about emotionally, why is this happening? It’s not just about eat this, don’t eat that, like, why are we eating what we’re eating? What, what history do we have with food? How do we address behaviors at a behavioral level? And those are probably just manifesting themselves in overeating, binging restricting those kinds of those kinds of behaviors.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and you know, I call that buffering. And that’s where you’re putting a buffer between your, your emotions and your and your mind, you know what I mean, you’re trying to stuffed those things down, so you don’t have to experience them, maybe it’s a negative emotion, some kind of feeling you don’t want to feel and so you just eat the whole bag of potato chips, or the whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s, or you sit in front of the TV and watch Netflix all day long.
And it’s a way of numbing yourself and feeling good, because you kind of it replaces that kind of dopamine hit that you would get from doing something like working out or running, you know, so it makes you feel good for a moment. But then when you’re done with that, but with that buffering experience, whatever it is, we finish the pint of ice cream, you’re gonna come down crashing from that, and you’re still left with feeling the emotions, and now you’re beating yourself up because you were you ate something you knew that was bad for you.
And it’s actually making you gain weight instead of losing weight. So, yeah, it’s, it’s just such a, there’s a, there’s a lot of factors involved here, there’s no like, you know, there’s no magic bullet. And here’s the thing, people want a magic bullet, they just want to be like, you know, I’m just going to eat these five things and work out three times a week and run three times, and I’ll be fine. Like, and a lot of times, that doesn’t work.
And they need to understand there’s so much more going on under the surface that they have to like, be willing to uncover and look at, it’s like these dark corners of our minds, and our emotions that we don’t want to look at. But once you start bringing those things up, you know, it, it’s not, it doesn’t feel good at first. But once you start to realize you can like feel your emotions and not have to eat over them or, you know, just, you know, sit around because of them. Like you can be such a more well rounded and healthy person mentally and physically.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, I’ve shared this with you before, but I have a long history of every eating disorder, disordered eating, those kinds of things, different behaviors. And I, myself, I worked on it, you know, big time in a kind of concentrated area, and then every single day, similar to other kinds of behaviors, you know. Whatever your age, I’m in recovery is how I would describe myself, like, you know, so there’s things to work on every single day. But you’re right, it’s so nuanced.
And, you know, for me, it has just been, you know, running, you know, I have a history as a runner, and now I’m more of a lifter, but those two things complemented, my, you know, emotional, well being journey. Because they’re unlike everything else, they’re very constant. You know, one mile is one mile, always. And it’s always, like, accessible to you, you know, even if it’s slower, or even if it feels crappy, you know, it’s still one mile.
That’s similar to how things are in the gym, you know, five pounds is always five pounds. And so, you know, and it’s always just a, you know, something else with running. I mean, I think some people are at the level where yeah, they are trying to beat somebody. And that happens in the lifting world as well. But you know, it’s a way for you to just kind of be with yourself. And also both things are really hard.
And I think it’s important for us to put ourselves in positions that feel really uncomfortable, even if it’s extreme physical discomfort, because that is going to train us to be unable to adapt to emotional discomfort and just be in our feelings, you know, mental discomfort feels like out of control. So, I really think that there’s so much carryover to physical training when we are dealing with like you said, those dark corners.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, that’s such a good analogy to the you know, getting uncomfortable getting outside your comfort zone because that’s the only time you can actually learn that’s the only time you grow that’s the only time you expand your consciousness that you expand, you know that you grow who you are, and become you know, a different person when we stay in our comfort zone.
We just stay stuck in the here and now and that’s it and we can never grow and be you know, we have these dreams of like, here’s who I want to be I haven’t you know this person I want to be but I’m not willing to be uncomfortable at all to get there. Guess what? You’re never going to get there. And so it takes getting uncomfortable out on the road when you’re running, it takes pushing yourself farther and, and faster and running up that hill 27 times.
It takes going to the gym, and embracing how bad it’s going to suck for those first few weeks at start doing that, but the results on the other side of that are just so good and so amazing and, and it works with our feelings to let but like when we’re pushing down our emotions and not wanting to feel them because it’s uncomfortable.
We just stay stuck there, you know, in that emotional childhood, so to speak, you know, in order to grow and become an emotional adult, we have to be able to sit with our feelings, experienced them, process them, manage them, and that will allow us to grow when we get really good at managing our, our emotions, man, we can do anything, there’s really nothing we can do if we’re not if we’re willing to feel our emotions.
And I think we get so stuck in trying to stuff all that down. And we have all these excuses why we can’t do things like, you know, go work out at the gym or, or you know, run a half marathon or whatever, we have all kinds of excuses. You know, a lot of it just has to do with us not wanting to get uncomfortable with our emotions. It’s crazy, but this is really awesome. This has been a really cool conversation, Sarah just so cool.
So where can people like find out more about you? Or like, what can they do? I know we’re kind of in a situation now where it’s can’t go to the gym, but what can people do right now to connect with you?
Sarah Buckley
Great. Yeah, so even though gyms are closed, I’m still running. My run has been strong since the strength program over zoom. And I’ve had people who are good with it. And you know, the doors are open here. I’m welcome to have additional participants. We have a couple different times a day a couple different times a week to kind of accommodate everybody’s schedules right now. So you can find information about that at persistfitnesstraining.com You can also email me sarah@persistfitnesstraining.com. And, yeah, I’ll reach out to you ASAP.
Patrick McGilvray
And this is for anybody whether they live around the Cincinnati area or not, because you’re doing it on Zoom right now. Right?
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, and actually, even when we go back to the gym, the way that my running program works is that it’s extremely flexible. So people can come in and be in the gym with me or they can train remotely. So there’s an opportunity for them to have programming delivered to them. And but we are still coaching, um, you know, we’re still communicating about their needs. And so, you know, kind of depending on where you are physically, geographically where you are in your fitness journey, those things will all be accounted for.
Patrick McGilvray
So you can do some kind of personal coaching and assessments over zoom with people, right?
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think it’s everything, of course, now it’s a little bit different with the assessments. So typically, I would have someone come in and run for me and do all of these things. But I’ve been able to do like, what’s something that’s very important for me is to look at as joint health, we talked about the hips stuff.
So that is something that I could get a pretty good handle on over zoom, just by directing people to move a certain way. I mean, I’ve been looking at, you know, human bodies move for seven years, and my hobby is exercising. So I, you know, I’m training with a bunch of people. So I’m looking at people move for like, many, many hours a week. So over Zoom, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn close to what we would be able to do if we were in person together. This is the situation we’re in.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s cool. I’m glad you’re still offering this service to people because I think it’s really important. I think it’s important for runners to get stronger and to realize that it’ll only serve them in a positive way to, you know, get stronger and build that strength and muscle fitness. Yeah.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, absolutely. And similar to your running group, we have our community too. So you know, you get to see your people. Oh, and I forgot to mention that anyone who’s interested in joining, especially now when we’re doing during quarantine, I will be gifting you equipment that you will need because I understand people don’t necessarily have access to everything and I want to accommodate for that.
Patrick McGilvray
No way. What, you’re gonna like send them stuff like in the mail?
Sarah Buckley
I’ll send them something if they’re not in Cincinnati. If they’re in Cincinnati, I’ll come and drop it off on your porch.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. Yeah. You’re so awesome, Sarah. Hey, this has been really awesome. We’re gonna get you on another time and we’ll continue the conversation because there’s a lot of things I want to talk to you about here that come up here. Yeah. So we’ll do that another time. But in the meantime, you guys go check out. Persistfitnesstraining.com, sign up for one of Sarah’s remote classes. You can do it no matter where you are in quarantine right now. So awesome. Thank you so much, Sarah.
Sarah Buckley
Yeah, thank you for having me on Patrick. I loved our talk.
Patrick McGilvray
Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.
These are some very uncertain times we are living in right now. Races are canceled, schools are closed, restaurants and bars are closed, most people are working from home, and what's next? How bad …
Continue Reading about 11. How to Manage Your Mind During Uncertain Times →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners and other cool people. What do I do? I help you overcome your obstacles in running and in life so you can unleash your inner badass. Today I’m doing something a little bit different because of the situation that’s going on in the world today, the Coronavirus and people are concerned.
And what I wanted to do is record this podcast today to talk to you about how to manage your mind during uncertain times. This, I would say, is definitely an uncertain time for everybody. First, let me tell you really quickly about The Runner’s Edge. This is my mindset, coaching and training program. It’s a comprehensive online coaching and training program designed specifically to help runners like you develop the mindset you need to achieve powerful results in running and life.
When you join The Runner’s Edge, you get weekly mindset training, you get to ask questions, get answers, much like the teaching that I do here on the podcast, but we take a deeper dive into the material, we learn it, we study it, we apply it. The runner’s edge is only $26 per month. It’s less than $1.02 per day. It’s a subscription based program. The longer you stay, the more valuable it becomes for you.
Join The Runner’s Edge, ask your questions, get answers, jump on a hot seat coaching call with me that would be fun. Connect with other like minded runners and learn how to master the mindset of running. So you can unleash your inner badass, go to innefiretribe.com/edge to sign up for Runner’s Edge today.
So onto today’s topic, how to manage your mind during uncertain times. There’s some uncertainty, there’s some very uncertain times happening right now. There is a situation going on out in the world today that’s causing a lot of people to panic and a lot of people to have a lot of fear and anxiety.
You know, this virus thing is causing businesses to close their doors temporarily. It’s causing a lot of race cancellations. People are hoarding toilet paper. I don’t know why. But here’s the thing. There is a situation happening here in the world right now. And then there’s our thinking about that situation. And honestly, people are letting their thoughts just go wild here.
They’re freaking out. They’re going out to this worst case scenario. They’re panicking. People are getting angry, they’re gonna be angry about things being canceled about. There’s no toilet paper or bananas at the grocery store. Why did you guys buy all the bananas? I got bananas today, I’ll tell you that. And I feel good about that. Still don’t have toilet paper.
People are getting disappointed. They’re getting angry because races are being canceled. Training groups are canceled, schools are closed, restaurants are closed, bars are closed, public places are closed, blah, blah, blah. Everything is being turned inside out. Like we don’t know what is going on here. There’s a lot of uncertainty.
And so it’s, you know, what people are saying is all this uncertainty is causing me to have all this fear and all this anxiety inside. You know, people have to stay home alone. You know, they’re spending a lot more time alone. Or they’re spending more time at home working from home with their kids, bugging them all the time, which is probably worse, I don’t know. But anyway, all of this stuff can lead to very unhealthy thinking. You know, remember, it’s our thoughts about the situation, not the situation itself. That is the problem, okay?
And what we’re doing is we’re causing ourselves all kinds of unnecessary suffering, you know, we might have an emotional state that is, you know, in a negative emotional state. And when we start thinking this way, it just sort of amplifies everything. And we start self medicating. Because we don’t want to feel this way. We don’t want to feel the fear. We don’t want to feel the anger, the frustration, so we go to the fridge, we overeat, we drink too much.
You know, or maybe you don’t numb your feelings with food or alcohol. And you experience things like panic attacks, or anxiety, or just depression or strained relationships. You know, stress and anxiety can trigger a fight or flight response in the body and actually release a flood of chemicals like adrenaline into your system, which can cause your immune system to become weak and compromised, leaving you more vulnerable to viral infections. Does that sound like something you want to know?
I was talking to a friend earlier today who went through a very highly stressful situation in her life some years ago, and it actually caused her to, she was under so much stress, she put her body into so much stress, that she actually got shingles, you know, and it’s one of those things where that’s a pretty bad reaction to stress and anxiety, you know.
Now’s not the time when we want to compromise our immune systems, you know, we want to be strong, mind and body, okay. But so all this stuff is happening out there. And we start to feel fear, we feel anxiety, we feel panic, we feel frustration, and all those things. And we think this is a normal reaction to what’s happening, like out there. You know, the truth is, though, this is not, it’s not normal. And it’s not healthy, and it’s not necessary.
Like I was saying times like this, they tend to amplify who we already are. So if you’re typically a stressed out person, now, you might be into full blown panic mode. Or maybe you typically manage your feelings by going to the fridge, and now you’re knee deep in edible cookie dough, or Ben and Jerry’s. Or, you know, you can power down and eat a whole large pizza yourself, whatever it looks like for you.
You know, maybe if you’re, if you’re typically a little depressed, now you’re like, in this isolation mode, and this might send you into a deep, dark place, and we don’t want that. Okay. So what we need to do is we need to manage our mind, we need to manage our mind so that we can show up during this time, in a more empowered way. Okay.
So just because things are happening out there doesn’t mean you have to respond, or you have to react to them in a negative way, okay? It doesn’t have to be this way. What’s going on out there doesn’t have to affect you in here, okay? It really doesn’t. You don’t have to react to the news, or to the rumors or their predictions, or you don’t have to worry about what might happen.
Instead of allowing the events around you to determine how you think and feel, you can actually decide for yourself, how you want to show up right here now. Who would you be without these thoughts that are causing you to feel so frustrated? So angry, sad, worried, afraid?
You know, who do you want to be while we’re all dealing with all this uncertainty, because you get to choose how you feel. That is a choice that you make, okay? Remember, every emotion that you feel is caused by a thought, it’s caused by your thoughts and by your thinking. It’s not the situation out there. It’s not the circumstances around you that are causing you to feel the fear and the anxiety. It’s your thoughts about them.
It’s your thoughts about what’s happening out there that is causing you to think these thoughts that is causing you to feel these feelings. All right, whether you like it or not, the truth is you are choosing your feelings. You are choosing to think these thoughts. You choose to feel your emotions, okay, and it’s not a bad thing. I’m gonna talk about that in just a minute here. But I think what a lot of people want is they want some sort of tools, you know, what do I do in this situation?
If I start to feel this way, what do I do? If I start thinking these crazy thoughts, how do I manage my mind? Well, first of all, I want you to take ownership of your thinking, know that your thinking is not determined by what’s happening outside of you, your thinking is 100% determined by you, you choose your thoughts 100% of the time, okay?
Now, take responsibility for your own thoughts and for your own feelings. And we call this being at cause, be the cause of everything that’s happening in your life to you, in your mind, in your body.
Be a cause for all the results that you’re getting in your life, don’t be at the effect of others, don’t be at the don’t live at the effect of the news or the rumors. Okay. So take ownership of your thinking, that’s the first thing you can do, just know that you are going to take radical responsibility for the way you think and feel. That’s a great first step right there. Okay.
The next thing you can do is separate out the facts from your thoughts about the facts. Okay, so what’s really going on out in the world? You know, is this thing that you’re hearing about actually true? You know, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the number of cases that have been reported. And I’ve heard numbers of 10,000, in Ohio and 100,000. And I’m just like, whoa, this is crazy.
I got on the CDC website, and they’re only around 3500 confirmed cases. Now. I’m not saying that it’s not going to go up. I know it’s going to go up. But there are some, there are some facts that are happening right now. And then there are predictions and there are what might happen in the future. And even if the number goes up a lot, I still can’t do anything about that, other than stay home, wash my hands, use hand sanitizer, and don’t get into fights with anybody over toilet paper at the grocery store.
So, you know, what are the facts of the situation? You know. So, for example, you know, our local marathon here, the Flying Pig marathon, which was scheduled for the weekend of May 2, and third has been postponed until October, October 9 through the 11th. That’s a fact. The Flying Pig has been postponed. Our training group has stopped meeting officially, bars and restaurants are closed in the area. Travel has been limited. I’m spending more time alone. Those are all facts.
I could say, you know, everything sucks right now, you know, or you know, I can’t go out to get food anywhere. The training groups are all canceled. This all sucks. Like, no, I’m not doing that. Instead, I’m looking at what the facts are. Okay, I’m separating out the facts from my thoughts about the facts.
Now I have some thoughts about what’s happening. You know, and I know, I take full ownership of what I’m thinking, I’m disappointed. You know, I’m a little I’m, there’s some uncertainty about what’s going to happen going forward here with our training group. And, and that’s okay, like, I don’t have to have all the answers right now. You know, but it’s not causing me undue stress or anxiety. Okay.
So what are the facts about the situation? Just make sure you know, what’s true. And what are the facts? Okay. And then what are your thoughts about the facts? Now we can separate out? What is true, what are facts? You can separate those from your thoughts about it. What are you really thinking? What are the stories that you’re telling yourself about what’s happening? What are the opinions that you have? What are your judgments?
You know, where are you like, going out in the future and thinking about the worst case scenario? You know, are you seeing only the bad things? Or do you have positive thoughts about your circumstances, like, what are your thoughts? Sometimes it’s helpful to just write all that stuff down, just get it all down on a page, and you can actually see, oh, these thoughts here, those are kind of crazy. I should probably check those.
You know, right now I feel pretty good. I feel pretty calm about things. There are things that are happening with this situation that are affecting me. And as they come to my attention, I can respond to them, I can respond to them with clarity and understanding, I’m not reacting to them with fear, frustration and anger. And, you know, craziness.
You know, I’m calm, I have a clear head. And I have a lot of understanding. And I’m being very practical about what I can and can’t do. I can only control my thoughts. I can only control how I show up in the world. I can’t control what other people are doing at all. Honestly, I think I’m going to be fine.
I think most people are going to be fine. I’m not going to entertain a different thought, I’m not going to entertain a thought that everybody I know is going to be, you know, infected or something like that, you know. I’m just not going to go there until that situation changes and warrants a different thought. I’m going to maintain the thought that like, hey, right now I’m fine. Right now everybody I know is fine. And I think most of us are going to be fine. Okay.
And then I think like, okay, when I think these thoughts, how does that make me feel? It’s important to notice what thoughts are causing your feelings because all of your thoughts cause your feelings. Okay, the situation out there isn’t causing you to feel fearful. The situation out there isn’t causing you to feel frustrated. Situation up there is not causing you to feel sad.
You choose those feelings too. What is it that you’re feeling? What is the name of that emotion? Because sometimes it’s hard to determine, like, what is it that I’m really feeling here? Is that sadness? Is it fear, anger, hurt? Guilt, loneliness, frustration? Are you just pissed off? Are you frustrated with the lack of toilet paper in the world today? What is the feeling that you’re feeling?
And then here’s the part that seems counterintuitive. Don’t try to make that emotion go away. Don’t try to suppress that feeling. Feel your feelings. It’s okay. Feel it, allow it. Let it be. Don’t fight against it. We suffer when we resist our emotions. Resisting our feelings is what leads to most or all of our suffering. It’s okay to feel frustrated. It’s okay to feel sad. I’m frustrated.
You know, it’s okay to be pissed off because your race got canceled. I’m pissed off because, you know, our race got canceled. I was really looking forward to this. You know, it’s okay to feel like you’re going crazy trying to work from home with kids asking you a million questions and bugging you every 14 seconds. You can feel frustrated, it’s okay. Just don’t allow those feelings to consume you. Okay?
Don’t get lost in your feelings. Remember that you are in control. Always you are choosing these feelings. And it’s okay, you can have them, it’s okay. You know, you don’t have to allow them to dictate, you know, your behavior, you don’t have to allow your feelings to overwhelm you so that you can’t take action.
A lot of times we feel stuck. And so we just feel like we can’t do anything. And a lot of people that have depression that will feel like doesn’t, you know, whatever they do doesn’t matter. And so they just stay in bed, you know, they stay on the couch, whatever.
That’s when your feelings kind of can consume you. And they get to the point where it becomes unhealthy. But don’t don’t get lost in your feelings, it’s okay to feel your feelings. It’s when we try to push them away, that we start to see issues. And one of the ways we push them away is by numbing. And we do that with food and alcohol and drugs, or shopping, whatever.
But if you’re not showing up as the person that you want to be because of how you feel, that might be something you want to look at. Because that might mean that you’re not allowing those feelings to be just allow them to be and then look at how you’re showing up, how are you showing up in this world today? You know, what are you doing or not doing because of how you feel?
You know, what actions can you take despite how you feel, you know. Things get bad for us when we feel like there’s nothing we can do about our situation. And here’s the truth, there’s always something you can do about your situation. And the first and foremost thing and one of the most important things you can do is to manage your thoughts about your situation. Okay?
So some actions, you might take some actions, we can all take, I think, to stay more positive, more, more focused, more present moment, more thoughtful. First of all, stop watching the news. Because you know what, this steady stream of like, fear mongering, which a lot of the news is, it just goes, it goes right to our subconscious minds, you know, and it creates all kinds of innate fear and panic and anger in us.
So instead, I would encourage you to consume something positive every day, read a personal growth book, listen to an awesome podcast, like this one you’re listening to right now, watch some good, you know, YouTube videos, some TED talks, some good speakers, read some blogs, soak up good stuff, from high vibe people, you know.
Something else you can do is connect one on one with people I know, there’s a lot of isolation going on right now. We can still connect with each other. You know, I feel like I’m connecting with you here, through this microphone through this video camera, through this social media platform, whatever it is, but you know, get together with people, it’s okay, you know, stay six feet apart.
Or connect with people over the phone, you know, let’s get back on the phone and talk to people. Jump on a video conference like this. I’ve been doing this lately with some people. I talked to a guy today, who lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and we just did a Zoom call. And it was awesome. Had a fun little chat. And they’re dealing with the exact same stuff we are here. It’s no different. Okay?
Everybody’s dealing with this right now. All right. But take the time to like work on yourself right now. You know, who do you want to be today? Who do you want to be right here? Now as we’re going through this, as we’re all going through this together? How do you want to? How do you want to remember this time? How do you want to remember how you showed up?
How do you want to remember yourself in this experience? Do you want to remember it as being like, sad and lonely and frustrated? And you know, crying all the time? Or do you want to remember it is like that was an amazing thing that I did there? Like I transformed myself? Like, what can you learn? How can you grow? What lessons are here for you?
Right now, I would encourage you to get outside, take a walk, go for a run, keep running, run with a friend with a small group of friends less than 10. And you don’t have to react with fear. Okay? No matter what is happening out there, you don’t have to react with fear instead, respond with conscious thinking, on purpose, purposeful, conscious thinking.
The bottom line here, yes, these are uncertain times. Okay, we’ve never had to deal with anything like this before. But you know what, we will get through this, you will get through this. And you get to choose who you want to be while you’re getting through this. So who do you want to be? How do you want to show up for yourself? How do you want to show up for your kids? How do you want to show up for your friends and for your family? How do you want to remember this time? How do you want to remember the plague of 2020?
And I’m not making light of this. Okay, not at all. I do think I’m kind of funny though. All right, my friends. I would love to hear what you think about this, drop a comment. And if you liked what you heard here today, I would love it if you share it with a friend. Also, it would be incredibly awesome if you’d leave a review on iTunes. I truly value your feedback because it helps make me, it helps make the show better. Reach out with questions or comments. Always hello@innerfiretribe.com And I hope you all have an amazing day, much love to each and every one of you.
Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.
The most powerful thing in the entire known universe is the human mind. So how do we use it? Most people use their minds to create stress, anxiety, and depression for themselves. They don’t use their …
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My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners and other cool people. And what I do is I help you overcome your obstacles, both in running and in life, so you can unleash your inner badass. I like the way that sounds.
And I think you should join my monthly coaching and training program called the Runner’s Edge. It is a comprehensive online training program, designed specifically to help you develop the mindset that you need to to be able to achieve powerful results. When you join the Runner’s Edge, you’re gonna get weekly mindset training.
So each week, you’re gonna get a new training, where you could ask questions and get answers, much like the teaching that I do on the podcast, but we take a deeper dive into the material, we learn it, and you’ll learn how to apply it. And you get to ask questions. That’s the big thing. You get online coaching.
So most group coaching programs only share generic one size fits all content. And I want to help you with your individual issues. So you get a chance to ask your own questions and get them answered. And occasionally, you can get on a hot seat coaching call with me for some powerful one on one coaching.
You also get the supportive Facebook community of other runners just like you, it’s fun, supportive, safe, you can ask questions, you get to learn about how to build mental toughness, overcome failure, gain confidence, and so much more. And then everything we do in there is archived onto a Members Only website where you can go back and watch all the trainings. And I also have courses and things that are available there that you can’t find anywhere else.
I’ve got an awesome goal setting course out there right now. The best part about joining the Runner’s Edge is that it will not break your wallet. You get all this mindset training, you get the ever growing Video Course Library, you get live online coaching and a supportive community of runners all for only $26.2 per month. That’s less than $1 per day people.
It’s a subscription based program. And the longer you stay, the more valuable it becomes for you. Because I’m always gonna be adding new training, new videos, new coaching sessions, so you get to continue learning. As you go, there’s no contract, no commitment, you can cancel anytime.
So join the Runner’s Edge, ask your questions, get answers, jump on a hot seat coaching call with me, connect with other like minded runners and learn how to master the mindset of running so you can unleash that inner badass that I know is inside you. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/edge to sign up. All right, cool.
Onto today’s topic. Today, I want to talk about the incredible power of your mind. Here’s what I believe. I believe that the most powerful thing in the universe is the human mind. There is nothing that we know of in the universe that’s more powerful than our brains. Our brains can create something from nothing.
We can conjure up ideas and then make them happen. Our minds are amazing, our minds can make beautiful art just for the sake of having something beautiful to see, hear or feel. And our minds create feelings. They create emotions, deep, meaningful, powerful emotions that drive us to do all kinds of amazing things. Our minds are incredibly fast learners, and we get faster all the time.
Look at how far we’ve come in the last 100 years. So our brains have like evolved and they’re evolving even faster. Our minds are self aware. We can contemplate our own existence. We don’t know of anything else in the universe that does that. There’s nothing in the known universe that we know of that comes close to the power of your mind. It’s an amazing, amazing tool that we have.
And I was thinking about this because my son Colin and I were at the National Museum of the US Air Force last weekend. And we were checking out the SR 71 spy plane. Now this spy plane was the most sophisticated piece of machinery ever built at that time, they built it in the 1960s. And at the time, they did not have computers. So they used slide rules as their computer to build this amazing, amazing machine.
But we got to talk to pilots, engineers and the maintenance crew of the SR 71. The complexity of this machine is staggering. And the fact that human minds created all of that just blows me away, we’re standing there, you know, and looking into the cockpit of this thing and looking at the sophistication of the tools and all the gauges and everything in there.
And then looking at the complexity of like, the jet engines that make this thing go, like 2700 miles an hour or faster, the thing flies at like, over 80,000 feet is crazy. And it would take pictures at that high altitude, it would take pictures that you could tell the difference between a man and a woman between like a Ford and a Chevy. It’s crazy.
And all that just because all that was somebody’s idea in their mind at one point. They just had this idea, let’s build this thing. And then we, as humans, went and did that. It just, it blows me away. So I was just thinking like, oh, my gosh, our minds are so so powerful. So I hope you’re on board with this idea that your mind is the most powerful thing in the universe, then the question becomes, how are you using it? How are you using that mind of yours?
So most people use their mind to create all kinds of stress and anxiety and depression for themselves. Most people live their life in this place of dissatisfaction of, you know, this feeling of lack or unhappy with themselves. And most people don’t know how to change that. They don’t use their minds to create positive thoughts and positive emotions and positive outcomes. They constantly worry that things aren’t as they should be, you know, if I were only thinner. If only my husband would treat me better. If only I made more money, then I would be happy.
But then what happens? They get thinner, their husbands treat them better. Or they leave that relationship thinking there’s someone, quote unquote, better out there. Or they make more money. But then they’re still stuck in misery. They’re still full of fear and anxiety and worry, and depression. Because you know what, wherever you go, there you are.
But the truth is that you can be who you want to be today, right here, right? Now you can be happy. You can have abundance, you can feel good about yourself, you can have all the confidence that you need, all the motivation that you want, simply by tapping into the power, the incredible power of your mind.
But here’s what we do, we create all kinds of stress for ourselves with our minds, you know, we use our imaginations to create future worst case scenarios that cause us, like so much anxiety, some people have panic attacks, because they’re thinking about something that may happen in the future.
And it causes a physiological response in their body. And that response is just to the thoughts in their head, the thoughts that they are thinking. Think about the implications of this for a moment. You know, how much money do we spend every year on anti anxiety medication or antidepressants like, so I looked it up. It’s something like $17 billion globally. And in the US, there’s something like 42 million people on antidepressants, 42 million people, that’s like 13% of our population is taking medication, because of stress and anxiety that they bring on themselves.
Okay, now, I fully understand that, you know, depression and anxiety, some of these things are diagnosed conditions, and some people do need to be on medication, I totally get that. But the vast majority of people, I would, I would guess, are on those medications, simply because they can’t change their thinking.
Not crazy. But what if you could use your thoughts? What if you could use your imagination to create inner peace? Joy, love, happiness and abundance in your life. How do you think that would change how you experience the world and your daily life? I think it would be pretty amazing.
Unfortunately, most people are living, you know, in the past, they’re living their past over and over and over again. So the way most people live their life, as they get up in the morning, they brush their teeth the same way, they eat the same breakfast, they drink the same coffee, drive the same way to work at the same job, do the same stuff day after day after day, they come home, eat the same dinner, go to bed at the same time, then do it all over again tomorrow.
And while they’re doing all of that pre-programmed stuff, they keep thinking the same thoughts over and over again, the same thoughts, they’ve been thinking for decades, they feel the same feelings they felt. And they respond to situations in the same way. They’ve been programming their minds for years and years, and reinforcing those programs every day, day after day.
And then they wonder why they aren’t happy, they don’t feel fulfilled, their life isn’t changing, nothing’s getting better. It’s like choosing to live the movie Groundhog Day, every day of your life. You’re thinking the same thoughts, you’ve always thought you’re feeling the same feelings, you’re doing all the same things, you’re living your familiar past, over and over and over again.
And we all do this to some extent, okay? No one is immune to this. And I’ll tell you why here, there’s something going on in your brain. And I’m going to get a little nerdy and talk about some neurons and neural pathways and stuff like that here. But it’s, it’s cool when you know this, okay, maybe you already know this. And that’s awesome.
But here’s what’s happening inside your brain, okay? Our brains are really, really good at creating habits, creating routines, our brains are very, very powerful. They actually use very, very little energy. So our brains do everything they do. You know, all the processing that our brains do, they only use about .07 volts of electricity.
Just to put that into context, a one AA battery is 20 times more powerful from an electrical standpoint than our brains. Okay, because our brains use so little energy, they’ve evolved to be incredibly efficient. So whenever you learn something new, your brain has to use a lot of energy to learn that new thing.
So let’s say when you’re first learning to tie your shoes, as a little kid, you know, that’s very, it’s a, it’s a hard thing to learn how to do, you know, it takes time, it takes energy, it takes a lot of mental energy to do that. Or when you learn how to drive a car, right, you got to learn, you got to remember 27 different things when you’re learning how to drive a car.
But over time, your brain gets better and better at that new task. And then it gets to a point where you can do it so well, you can do it almost unconsciously. Your subconscious mind is actually, you know, kind of running the show at that point.
So like, do you have to think about tying your shoes now? No, you just do it. You probably can’t even explain to somebody how to do it. Because it’s such a subconscious thing for you now, or driving a car. You know, do you ever like find yourself driving? And then you like, totally zone out? You’re like, Whoa, I don’t even remember the last 10 minutes? How did I get here?
That’s because your brain is on autopilot, okay. Your subconscious is kind of running the show, you don’t have to consciously think about driving a car anymore, or tying your shoes. And what’s happening in your brain is this, your brain uses neurons to communicate signals to different parts of your body. So to tie your shoes, there’s a bunch of neurons that all have to fire in a certain sequence, right.
And they tell your hands to grab a lace in this hand, grab a license and pull them tight, the right goes over the left, blah, blah, blah. The same for driving, there’s a bunch of complicated steps that your brain has to do in order to, quote unquote, what we call drive a car.
Now, we can just like get in and drive because most of the stuff we’re doing is subconscious. Okay, all these little steps, all these neurons have to fire in sequence or whatever they require firing precisely at the right time in a certain sequence every single time you want to drive a car, right? Well, your brain wants to be as efficient as possible.
So what it does is it strings all of those neurons together. It puts them all together and creates something called a neural pathway. So neural pathways are like superhighways made up of neurons in your brain that all work together to accomplish a task, subconsciously, we have something like 100 billion neurons in our brains, as in a staggering number.
But those 100 billion neurons can connect in so many different ways that can create over 100 trillion neural connections in our brains. This is like, blows my mind, literally. It’s like mind blowing 100 trillion neural connections can be happening in our brains. Anyway, so our brains are really good about taking these pathway, taking these connections and creating pathways. So these are like, well worn ski slopes, things move very quickly down these neural pathways.
Again, the brain wants to be as efficient as possible. So it uses the path of least resistance. So neural pathways are where a lot of our habits occur. And these can be good habits or bad habits. But if you think the same thoughts or react the same way over and over again, you create very efficient neural pathways in your brain for those thoughts and feelings.
Okay, so every time your husband leaves his clothes on the floor, you react by internalizing it, you get a little angry, maybe a little resentful about it, you might choose to believe that it means he doesn’t care about you. Okay? That may happen a couple of times, but then it keeps happening over and over again, your brain will start to react more and more efficiently.
And then you’ll start to see more evidence that he doesn’t care about you and everything he does. And again, your brain will race down those net neural pathways from seeing the clothes on the floor to feeling angry, immediately. It just happens without you even thinking about it. It’s instantaneous. You know what I’m talking about? You’ve felt this way before, maybe not this exact situation. But we’ve all reacted in what we think is an instant reaction to something somebody’s doing, okay.
So, this is a problem, though, because this is where the efficiency of your brain can start to become a problem. Because it’s reacting so fast to situations in your life. Those thoughts come so fast, you create the feeling so fast, you can’t stop it, right? You’ve gotten so good at creating the habit of feeling angry, or maybe it’s unloved for you, or you feel hurt or, or depressed, whatever emotional state you’re in, you know, you created that state.
And it can become a habit. And it’s this habit that you’ve created. And you think, well, that’s just the way it is. You know, for example of the person who gets mad when her husband leaves the clothes on the floor, it almost seems as though the clothes on the floor are causing you to feel angry. But you know, that’s not true. It’s not the clothes on the floor. The clothes on the floor aren’t beaming magical anger beams into you, okay?
It’s your thoughts about the clothes on the floor. It’s the story you’ve been telling yourself for years about what the clothes on the floor means. That’s the real cause of your emotional state. And it’s not true. It’s just a story you’ve been telling yourself over and over and over again, so many times that your brain has created new, very efficient superhighways of neural pathways to make sure you feel those feelings very quickly and very strongly. Okay.
So this is what’s going on in our brains. And we all do this, our brains are very efficient, and it’s okay. You know, it’s not a bad thing, okay. But sometimes, we keep thinking the we keep living in our past and we keep thinking these same negative thoughts over and over and over again, and we don’t know what to do to get out of them. And your life basically becomes a series of habits that you have created.
Every thought that you think every emotion you feel, you know, all habits that you’ve been working on your whole life. So I think this is good news, because it means that if you’ve created these habits, that means you can create new habits right, you can break the old habits and create new habits you can start using better thoughts, you can start taking control of your feelings.
And you can start managing your mind to begin working for you instead of against you. You know, for me, I’m no longer operating on autopilot. I’m flying this plane now. And it’s an incredibly powerful way to live your life, honestly. But here’s the thing, changing your mental habits, like creating new neural pathways, takes a little bit of work, and most people won’t do it.
And it hasn’t been that long that we have figured out that we can actually create new neural pathways for a long time. I think people thought that the brain was static, and that you couldn’t really change the brain very much. But new studies have come out in the last couple of decades, really.
And they’ve seen that they’ve dubbed this thing, neural plasticity, neuroplasticity. And why do I have a problem saying that word? Anyway, it’s the fact that your brain is, you know, has plasticity and it can change and grow and create new thoughts and new pathways and new connections, like you can change your brain, you can do it, and you do it by thinking new thoughts and feeling new feelings. But here’s the thing, it takes a little bit of work to do this, and most people just won’t do it. They won’t do it.
Think about all those well worn ski slopes of habits in your brain, all those neural pathways that are so smooth and super fast, they’re so fast and efficient, your brain just keeps choosing those same things over and over and over again. And to create a new neural pathway means like, it’s like hacking a new trail through a dense jungle, you’ve got to hack away at that for some time, and it’s uncomfortable. Your brain doesn’t like uncomfortable. We don’t like being uncomfortable. And it takes a little bit of time.
So what happens is, most people start working on new thoughts, you know, maybe they start living their life in a new way. And it gets hard. And it doesn’t feel good, and it’s uncomfortable. And so they quit. It’s like that person who wants to lose weight. So they join a gym, and then they say, I’m gonna go to the gym and workout every single day, I’m gonna lose so much weight, and they go a couple of times, and then it’s hard.
And they feel terrible because everything hurts and it’s hard work. And then they’ll just say screw up one day and go back to living their very comfortable, but very unhappy and very unfulfilling life. And just a little sidebar, by the way, exercise has been proven to be not a very effective way to lose weight. It’s not very effective weight loss.
Honestly, it’s great for a lot of things. Exercise is extremely important for our heart health, for our happiness levels, for you know, relieving stress, and everyone should exercise. But when it comes to losing weight, it’s not that effective. I know a lot of runners who struggle to lose weight, even though they’re always training for something, they’re always training for a marathon or something like that. And they always say that they’re struggling with their weight.
There’s a much better way to lose weight based on changing the way you think and feel about food. And I’m actually going to be sharing more about that in upcoming episodes. So stay tuned for that. That’d be cool. Anyway though,little sidebar, we’re talking about creating a habit here, okay, and creating new habits and how uncomfortable it is, you know, it takes getting through that uncomfortable period, maybe being very uncomfortable for a while if you’re want to create some new neural pathways, okay, but you can do it, I know you can do it.
You just have to embrace that uncomfortable. You know, and Ironman, they say embrace the suck, because you know what, at some point that race is going to suck, you got to embrace that. Because what’s on the other side of that is amazing. You just know that it’s gonna suck for a while before it gets better and it will get better. So how do you do this?
Well, you’ve got to practice new thoughts, okay, it takes a while for those new neural pathways to emerge. So you got to practice thinking the thoughts that you want to think so what thoughts should you be thinking well, what thoughts will create the emotional state you want to be in? You know, how can you change your thinking, to create better feelings?
You know, if our thoughts create our emotions, what emotions do you want to feel and what thoughts might help you to create that emotional state that you want? That positive, resourceful, emotional state? You know, write down those thoughts right? Write down those things that you want to believe about yourself about others. And then read that read that a few times a day. This is how you start to train your mind, okay? And then visualize the person that you want to be, who do you want to be, you know, maybe hold that vision in your mind for 10 minutes a day, in like a meditation.
You know, this is one of the most powerful things I do with my coaching clients, I help them figure out who they want to be. And then we start creating mental habits that get them there. And it’s not just about sitting and visualizing, we’re talking about things like I use NLP, neuro linguistic programming techniques to show them how to actually reprogram their subconscious mind to release those old habits.
And you can release some of these old things like, instantaneously, it’s awesome. And then what we do is we install new programs that help them become the person they want to be. Okay. And if you want to take a really deep dive down the rabbit hole on this topic, this topic of like, neurons and neural pathways and neuroplasticity, Dr. Joe Dispenza, has an amazing book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. He gets deep into the science behind all this, and I’m really into this kind of thing. And if you’re into it, it’d be a great book for you to check out. It is very dense and really, really awesome. It’s like, life changing stuff here.
But you can do this, you can change your habits, you don’t have to keep living your emotional past, you can start creating a future from a new state of mind. You know, you can, your mind is the most amazing, most powerful thing in the universe. Start harnessing that power to get better results in your life. Cool.
One quick note, before I wrap up here. I started this podcast with the intention of interviewing runners because I wanted to talk to them about how they’ve used the power of mindset to help them accomplish amazing things. And my intention was to do mostly interviews, and then the occasional teaching episode like I’m doing today.
Well, I’ve received so much positive feedback on these teaching episodes that I’ve decided to flip things around. So I’m going to do mostly teaching episodes like this, with the occasional interviews sprinkled in here or there. Is that cool with you? Drop me a message and let me know if this works for you.
And while you’re at it, I would love it if you would leave a review on iTunes. Let me know what you think of the show. Just go down there, go to the podcast app on your iPhone or whatever, scroll down and just hit those stars. However many you feel is appropriate, five’s a good number, whatever, but whatever. And then write a little review and tell me what you think of the show because it does help me to make things better.
If you have comments or questions you can always reach out to me at hello@innerfiretribe.com. I’d love to hear what you think of this topic or anything really. And honestly, I hope you all have an amazing day. Much love to each and every one of you.
Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.
Last week I talked about how all of your problems are actually created in your head - by your thoughts. Today on the podcast, I explain how your feelings drive all of your actions and those actions …
Continue Reading about 6. How Your Thinking (More Than Anything Else) Determines Your Results →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Hey there, and welcome back to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m a master life and success coach for runners and other cool people. And today, I’m going to follow up from last week’s episode. Last week’s episode was all about how your problems are all created in your mind.
It’s a very empowering way to look at the world, it’s the way the world is, it’s kind of like seeing the matrix once you understand how this stuff works. And I’ve received a lot of great feedback on last week’s episode, and people have been sharing their feelings with me about it and their thoughts about it. And it’s creating some really interesting conversations.
And today, I want to kind of follow up with that, with the second part of that episode. So when we talk about how our thinking, how circumstances are neutral, and our thinking is, we get to choose our thinking and our thinking causes our feelings and how we feel about things. And we can see things as a problem or not as a problem.
Today, I’m going to give you kind of the rest of the formula, the next two pieces of the formula for mastering your mindset. So you are going to enjoy this. I mean, seriously like this is if you want to get different results in your life, if you want things to be different in your life. It’s going to start with changing your thinking. And it’s going to start with learning the things that we’re going to be talking about here on this podcast, not just today.
But going forward. I want to help you get whatever it is you want in your life seriously. And you can do it. And I can help. But first I want to talk a little bit about my group coaching program, which is called The Runner’s Edge. And this is where it’s a private membership group where I take this teaching and this coaching to the next level. It’s a monthly membership program, it’s only $26.2 per month. Do you like what I did there with the price? It’d be easy to remember, but I wanted it to be just less than $1 a day.
I wanted it to be a simple, no brainer for you to say I want to be a part of that. Because what you get in the program is you get more of what I’m doing here, you know, we take it to the next level, we take it go a little bit deeper. And then you can also ask questions and get questions answered.
And I can do some, you know, kind of one on one coaching with you in that group as well. So we get the mindset training online coaching some one on one stuff, which is what a lot of online programs don’t do, they don’t offer. You know, from a group perspective, they don’t offer a one on one component. And I wanted to do that for you.
So you’ll get some one on one time with me. It’s a fun, supportive community composed of other runners just like you. You can ask questions, learn from others about how to build mental toughness, how to gain more confidence in your running and in life. And then everything I do in the program is going to be archived on a members only membership site.
And on that site, I also have courses that I create. And I’ve got a really cool course on there right now on goal setting and how to find a better way to do goal setting, okay. And all that is included. Like I said it’s $26.2 per month, $26.20. And you will get the edge that you need to perform your best whether it’s in running or just in life. So get The Runner’s Edge and start becoming the best all around version of yourself.
Okay, so today, we’re going to be talking about how you’re thinking more than anything else determines your results. Now we want to do a quick little recap from last week, in case you’re brand new to the podcast that this is your first time listening. Or if you just want a quick little recap, you know, like when you’re watching Netflix and they’re like, here’s what happened last week on you know, whatever it is and then they show you and you’re like oh yeah, I forgot about that. Well, that’s what I’m going to do here for you. Okay, so here’s what happened last week on The Running Mind podcast.
So you sit, you ration the circumstances in your life, the stuff that’s happening around you, is neutral, it’s always in neutral. It’s your thoughts about your situation that cause you to feel the feelings inside, okay? So you know, if you get a flat tire on your way to work, the flat tire doesn’t cause you to be pissed off. Okay, it’s your thoughts about getting the flat tire that caused the emotions, okay.
And then your thoughts about a particular situation will be different depending on how you experience the world. So whatever your model of the world it is, which is based on your past experiences, your beliefs, your values, your religious views, and on and on, these are all filters that we use to kind of, it’s how we perceive the world around us. And they’re different for everyone.
So we each have our own model of the world. We each experience, quote, unquote, reality differently. Okay, the way you interpret the circumstances in your life, that is your reality, the way that I interpret the circumstances in my life, that is my reality. So we each have a kind of a different reality. We call this the model of the world, your model of the world.
But the empowering part about this is that you get to create your own reality, and everyone else does, too. So what you actually think is like, just the way it is, isn’t the same for me, it’s not the same for everybody else. Just the way it is, is the way it is for you. Okay.
And an example I gave was like, if you are running a marathon, and you get a cramp in your calf at mile 18 and it hurts, and you have to stop and walk. So that’s just a circumstance, that’s just what is happening. You can choose for it to mean nothing, no big deal. I’m going to finish a little bit slower than I thought. Or you can choose it to mean, I’m an utter failure. I can’t, you know, ever be successful at running a marathon. I can’t believe I had to walk. I’m a terrible person. I’m unworthy.
Yeah, the cramp in your leg is not causing those feelings. Okay? This is what you’re thinking about it. All right. So situations are always neutral. There’s just circumstances in your life, your thoughts, you get to choose your thoughts. That’s your thinking, which causes you to feel emotions, and emotions are those one word things like anger, sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, even like joy, happiness, confidence, love. These are all emotions that we feel based on how we think.
Okay, then today, we’re going to fill in the last two pieces of this puzzle, which is actions and results, okay. So your thinking causes your feelings, your feelings, determine your actions, okay? And then your actions, the actions that you take, determine the results that you get. Okay?
So let’s talk a little bit about actions. Actions, our actions are the stuff you do. Actions are the behaviors that you engage in the steps that you take. Actions can also be stuff you don’t do. Now, inaction is a form of behavior, right? Or an action. So every action you take is driven by your feelings.
And you might be thinking, Well, no, I just, you know, I do things because I know I have to or whatever, but think about this for a second. Have you ever gone out? And just like you went for like a 10 mile run? And you’re like, I don’t know, when I did that, I just felt like it. Right? Or if you’re, if you’re Forrest Gump, and it’s like, why have you been running for so long? I don’t know. I just felt like running.
Or maybe you were supposed to go out for a training run and it was like cold and rainy and you’re like, I don’t really feel like it today. So your feelings about the situation are determining what you’re going to do or not do? Okay? Another example is like, people with depression, they often don’t feel like doing anything, you know, and hear me out on this like depression is a diagnosed mental disorder. And I’m not saying it’s something you can just turn on and off with your thinking.
But, you know, depression is caused by things like you know, it’s biological, psychological and social sources of distress cause depression, the definition. You know, the Google definition of depression is a mental health disorder characterized by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life. In other words, if you have depression, you don’t feel like doing anything. You have a lot of loss of interest in activities.
And I’m not saying this is all there is to it, but it’s part of it. It’s part of the equation of depression. But think about this for a minute. If you’re feeling lonely, if you’re feeling sad, or depressed or unworthy, how are you going to show up in the world? What actions are you more likely to take? Or what are you not going to do?
You know, how are you going to show up for work? For your partner, for your kids? What behaviors good or bad do you think you’ll partake in? If you’re feeling lonely, sad, depressed and unworthy? My guess is that you’re probably going to take some negative actions, you’re gonna engage in some negative behaviors, you probably make some poor choices, you might even, you know, start doing some escape-ism stuff, you know, checking out and numbing.
But what if you felt differently inside? Like, what if you felt feelings of confidence? What if you felt feelings of contentment, of peace? What if you were grateful and happy? How would these feelings determine your actions? What do you think you would do if you felt that way?
You know, what actions would you be more likely to take? And then think about how you would show up for work if you were feeling that way? How would you show up for your partner or for your kids? How would you show up for your training runs? What do you think you would do or not do?
So it’s so important to understand that, you know, everything that we do, we do because we are feeling a certain way. And a lot of times, you know, there’s things we do, because we don’t want to feel that way anymore. So this is like in painful situations. We can engage in some, you know, I call it like escapist or escapism, numbing behaviors, you know, overeating, drinking too much. lethargy, you know, spending money.
A lot of people, you know, shop, they have that shopping addiction. And I’m not making fun of that, but I saw this meme recently that I thought was pretty funny. And at the top of it, it just said, you know, therapist says, “Now, what do we say when we’re feeling sad?” And then the patient says, “Add to Cart”. The therapist was like, “No”.
But it’s true, it makes us feel good, we get that little hit of dopamine when we purchase something, or when we, you know, have that drink, or take that particular drug or eat the french fries, and the burger and the milkshake. You know, it makes us feel good temporarily. It does help us to not feel the feelings of pain or sadness, or loneliness, or unworthiness or whatever.
And it does work, it works for a minute, it kind of makes the pain go away temporarily, but then when that little buzz wears off, the pain is back. And then it becomes worse, because now we beat ourselves up about engaging in this bad behavior. And then the cycle just continues. So our feelings can really determine that our feelings really determine our actions.
And we have to be careful about the kinds of actions we take when we’re feeling certain ways, okay. And then these behaviors that we engage in can become habits after a while, and they can actually form new neural pathways in our brains. And so they can become easier to do over you know, over time, they become easier and easier to do these things, they become habits, and they become part of our subconscious.
And this can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the behavior. Okay. So just to kind of summarize what I’m talking about with actions, your actions are the things we do or don’t do, they are the behaviors we engage in, or don’t engage in, they are good or bad behaviors. And then it’s our actions that actually determine all of our results. Okay.
So results are the things that you get in your life, or the things that you want in your life. These are usually tangible and measurable. So results can be things like, hey, I ran a half marathon and under two hours, that’s a tangible measurable result. I lost 10 pounds. I got a promotion at work. I made $100,000 last year, these are all tangible, measurable results.
Something like there’s a little bit of a gray area, but it’s like I have a great relationship with my partner. So that could be an opinion. But you could quantify that by saying, like, oh, we communicate clearly and openly and regularly, we work through all of our issues. You know, we spend quality time together, we speak each other’s love languages, that could be a measurable way of saying that that is a result that you have, okay, but every result that you get in your life is determined by action you’ve taken or your inaction, okay?
So what you do, or don’t do, determines what you get, or don’t get. And if you want different results in your life, if you want something to change, you have to take different actions, right, the definition of insanity, that’s doing the same things over and over and over expecting different results.
And the crazy thing is like, we all do this, we’ve all done this at some point in our life, right? You know, I just, I’m going to keep training the same way, every season for my marathon, and I’m not getting any faster. And it’s still way, super hard. But I’m not changing my diet, I’m not changing my training plan, I’m not doing anything different. And I keep getting the same results. Why is this happening to me?
It’s like, Hey, you gotta switch some stuff up, right? But what we do, determines what we get. And what we do is driven by how we feel. So if you want to change your actions, you’re going to have to change how you feel. First, you have to change the emotions that you’re feeling. And since your thoughts determine your feelings, you’re gonna have to change your thinking first. So basically, what I’m saying here is if you want different results in your life, you have to change your thinking, Okay?
How you’re thinking more than anything else is going to determine your results, how you think about your situation, or how you think about, you know, whether you can do this thing or not, you know, if you think I remember when I sign up for my Ironman, that was a big deal for me back then. I was scared to death.
I hit the, you know, submit button when I paid for it, which was like $700, by the way. So there was fear. And there was like, a sense of like, am I doing the right thing here? But anyway, I was full of fear, like, can I do this? Can I accomplish this really hard thing? I mean, it’s a crazy event, you know?
And so I had to change my thinking, at some point, I had to sort of become an Ironman, like I had to, you know, get into the thinking of like, Yes, I can do this, in order for me to get those results. Because if I thought the whole time, like, there’s no way I can do this, there’s no way I can do this. There’s no way I can do this.
Guess what? When I show up at the starting line, my habitual thought patterns and feelings around this are all going to be I can’t do this. That’s a terrible way to approach something like that. So instead, I had this thought of like, I’m going to do this, I am going to do this, I can do this. You know, I was still nervous and fearful and things like that. But I pushed through that. I thought and felt in my heart that I could do it. And I did. Okay, so here’s a great question. Ask yourself, what do you want? Seriously, what do you want? See, very powerful question. And unfortunately, we don’t really take it very seriously. But think about it, like maybe you want to run a full marathon someday.
Or maybe you want to start your own business. But you’re thinking like, I could never do a full marathon like, I’m just I’m not capable of that. Or I would love to start my own business, but it just seems so complicated. I just don’t know enough. You know, or maybe what you want is a better relationship with your husband, or you want that promotion at work or you want to start your own business or you want to hike the Appalachian Trail you want to vacation in Italy.
Or you want to spend a month on a tiny island in the middle of the South Pacific. Seriously, that’s what I want. I want to spend a month on some remote little island in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. That’s what I want. But think about it, like what do you want in your life? Start asking yourself that question seriously, and figure out the answer, figure out what it is that you want. Because it’s a very, very important question.
So I’m going to give you guys a little writing exercise this week. And this is going to help you to see how this all works. I’m gonna give you an example here in a minute, but it’ll help you to see how this works. But it will also help you to start in creating some new realities for yourself and start getting some results that you want. And when you start doing this work on a regular basis, you will start to create better habits, and you’ll start to create those new neural pathways like I was talking about.
So here’s the exercise I want you to do, I want you to think about something that you really, really want, okay? And just write it down. And then write down all the thoughts you have about that thing, just brain dump everything out on the page doesn’t matter, good, bad. Otherwise, just break down everything you’re thinking about. It’s really interesting, when you start doing this, to see what it is, your thoughts are around something like that, you’re going to surprise yourself with what you’re actually thinking.
And then write down how those thoughts make you feel. You know, some might make you feel good, some might make you feel terrible, but just write down the feelings you’re feeling. You know, the emotion words, those one word emotion words. And then think about the actions that you’re taking or not taking because of those feelings. And then are those actions going to get you the result that you want? Are those actions going to get you what you want or not? Okay?
So that is like step one is to write down all that stuff. And then what you want to do is on a separate piece of paper, you know, write down that thing that you want again, but then, you know, write down what you want to think instead, the thoughts that would make you feel differently. You know, a lot of times, it’s going to be kind of the opposite of some of those thoughts that you had that maybe the negative thoughts.
So write down the thoughts you want to think instead. And then write down the emotions that those thoughts cause you to feel. And then write down the actions that one might take, because of those feelings, and then see if that is going to move you closer to that thing that you want. And I think you’re going to find some very interesting results from this. So here’s an example. I want to spend a month on a tiny little tropical island in the middle of the South Pacific. Okay, that’s what I want.
My initial thoughts when I just think about it is, oh, my gosh, that’s gonna be really expensive. I don’t think I can afford it. I don’t know if I can be away from home for that long. I would really want somebody to go with me, but I’m not sure who so I don’t know, do I just go alone? That sounds lame.
And I just don’t know if you guys need to know this or not. I’m going through a divorce right now. It’ll be finalized soon. I’m doing good. I’m doing pretty good through all that. But when I talk about things, like, you know, maybe I should go alone or find somebody to go with me. I’m not cheating on anybody. Just so you know. Okay.
So those thoughts are like, it’s expensive. I don’t know if I could be away from that long. Who should I go? You know, who would want to go with me? Do I just pick a friend? I don’t know. Maybe I go alone? What are those thoughts cause me to feel well, they caused me to feel fear, like financial fear, like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can spend that much money. You know, there’s that fear of the unknown of uncertainty.
Then I’m feeling things like loneliness and sadness about it. Because if I go by myself, is that lame? Does that make me feel sad? Maybe? And then what actions would I take? Because of those feelings? Probably nothing, I probably wouldn’t do anything.
And what are you thinking about this right now, as I’m saying this to you? Are you thinking like, do you just go? It’s going to be so much fun. What a fun adventure. I know, that’s what you’re thinking. And I’m kind of thinking that too. And I’m looking at this and going like, I don’t want to feel those feelings. You know, if this is something that’s important to me that I want to do, I need to take some different actions, I need to feel differently, I need to think about it differently.
So the results I would get would be nothing. I wouldn’t go on this trip. I just wouldn’t do it. Now. Piece of paper number two. Let’s say I write the same thing on there. I want to spend a month on a tropical island in the middle of the South Pacific. What thoughts would I want to think instead? Well, first of all, I can probably save money for this. It wouldn’t take that long. You know I can work, get out so that everything is covered from a work perspective, you know, get all that stuff covered. Because I don’t think I’m gonna have access to the internet in this place. I think I just want to be unplugged.
You know, workout, social connections and meetings. And although I can get my schedule figured out, my schedule is flexible on purpose. So I can do things like this. And I bet I could find someone to go with me. I mean, who wouldn’t want to go to a tropical island for a month with me? It would be amazing. Are you kidding me? So oh, my God, he’s so amazing. I could even go alone and just make it an opportunity for me to like, really discover myself. I mean, that sounds right there.
When I say it like that. It’s like, Whoa, that sounds so cool and empowering. And how does that make me feel? Oh, my God, now I’m feeling excited and adventurous. And it sounds like fun. I’m feeling joyful, and even grateful. Grateful for my schedule, grateful for these kinds of opportunities. And I’m even feeling a little bit of fear. But it’s okay. It’s like, it’s fear. But I know, it’s like, the fear of like, of the unknown. And that’s okay, like, I can handle that.
All right, then what actions would I take based on those feelings? Well, oh, my gosh, I’m gonna start planning this thing, I’m gonna start a savings fund, I’m gonna grab a map and start figuring out what island I want to go to and figure out how to get there, gotta take all these little planes or whatever, and I’m going to talk to some friends and find somebody to come with me.
And then, you know, the two of us will start talking about it and planning together and all that into anticipation. And all the planning just sounds so fun. Like, that’s the kind of action that I want to take. And then the result would be that I go on this life changing adventure to this little island, you know, and it all starts with thinking about it differently. You know, so that result that I want in my life, that thing that I want, I can get that and I can see how I can get that by changing my thoughts by changing my feelings and changing my actions.
I feel I want to go on this trip now. I’m gonna have to do that. And like keep you guys posted as to what is happening with that, because this would be amazing. So here’s a quick recap. circumstances in our life, the situations where it’s always neutral. Okay, we get to choose our thoughts about how we feel about each situation, okay, choose our thoughts.
And then our thinking determines our feelings and our emotions, our emotion. Our emotions drive our feelings. I’m sorry, our emotions, drive our actions or inaction. And then those actions determine the results that we get. And if you want different results, you got to change your thinking, okay.
So there’s like five little components to this, these little five things, you learn these five things, and you’re gonna learn how to master your mindset, for running and for life. Okay, I hope you’re seeing how this all fits together. This is the secret to the universe.
Seriously, if you understand this, and you start to really grasp these concepts, and understand how this works, you are going to live a more empowered life, you’re going to start getting what you want in your life. And you’re going to start feeling amazing. And you’re going to start doing amazing things and start getting amazing results. Cool.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this, you can always reach out to me directly at hello@innerfiretribe.com. Questions, comments, anything. And then you know, I post these things on the socials. So follow me on Facebook @pmcgilvray and on Instagram @pmcgilvray.
You can always drop comments on my posts there too, or send me a message or whatever. I’d love to hear from you. I love connecting with you guys individually. I love hearing how you’re thinking about this stuff and how it’s changing the way you’re thinking and seeing the world. And I would love to hear about the results that you’re getting. Cool. I hope you all have an amazing day. Much love to each and every one of you and I’ll see you next time
Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.
Today on the podcast, I talk about how ALL of your problems are actually created by your thoughts. You can't have a problem unless there's a thought and an unwanted feeling about something. The …
Continue Reading about 5. Your Problems Are All in Your Head →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Well, hello there. And welcome back to the podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And today, I’ve got kind of a different kind of episode for you. Today, I’m going to do more of a teaching episode. Now, I’ve been doing interviews up to this point. And I will continue to do interviews because I love hearing stories from real runners. And to hear how they have developed the kind of mindset they need to do amazing things. So that’s gonna continue for sure.
But every now and then I want to throw in an episode like we’re going to do today, I’m going to introduce you to some concepts, some that you may or may not have heard of. Some like today that you, I don’t know, you may or may not agree with me.
But I’m a board certified Master Life and Success Coach. And what does that mean? That means I help people get what they want in life, I help them to overcome their limitations. I help them to resolve inner conflicts, I help people to really become the best version of themself. And I do that through coaching. And we’re going to talk a little bit about that today.
In this episode, I want to talk a little bit about how I work with clients. But really one of the big, big concepts that I want to introduce you to is that you can start sort of applying to yourself. And that’s about how all your problems are just in your head. And I know you’re thinking like, alright, I need to hear more about this.
But first, let’s talk a little bit about The Runner’s Edge. So I talked about this in a previous episode. This is my group coaching program. And I really didn’t have a name for it. But now I’ve decided I’m going to call it The Runner’s Edge, because this is something that is going to give you an edge, an edge that most people don’t have, okay. They just don’t want to do this kind of work. Or maybe they don’t believe in this kind of work. They don’t believe that mindset has anything to do with running.
But if you’re listening to this podcast you do so you will get the edge that a lot of people won’t. So The Runner’s Edge is a comprehensive online coaching and training program. It’s designed specially to help long distance runners to help you bring your mind and your body into alignment so that you can achieve the results that you want.
When you join The Runner’s Edge, you’re going to get mindset training. So this is where you’re going to train your mind to work for you instead of against you. This is actually one of the most important aspects of running. The problem, though, is that most training plans and most coaches don’t really teach you how to do this.
As a master coach, a master mindset coach, this is all I do. I focus on this. I am the expert on building mental toughness, on using the power of your mind to make running easier for you to make you faster and have more fun running. You will also get online coaching so when you join The Runner’s Edge, you’re gonna get live online coaching, I have a private Facebook group.
And, you know, most group coaching programs that work like this, they have these sort of generic one size fits all content that they share with their members. And I don’t want that, I want to give you results. I want to help you with your individual issues. So you’ll get a chance to ask me questions, you can bring your own questions to the table. You’ll get them answered, and maybe even get on a hot seat call with me for some live one on one coaching. It’s very powerful stuff right there.
So you get that supportive community to the Facebook group, which is a small but mighty group right now, but it’s going to continue to grow and become more powerful and more effective and just a big, supportive, fun community of runners just like you it’s a safe place to ask questions get help learn all about building mental toughness, how to overcome failure, how to gain confidence, and more and more and more.
And then everything I do is archived into a video training library. including all of the coaching and training that I do in the group, but also courses that I create. So I have a course out there right now on goal setting for runners, which is a really cool course all about goal setting, from a mindset standpoint, and from a subconscious mindset standpoint.
So you’re gonna get all the courses that I create, including that one, when you join. And the best part about the runner’s edge is that it will not break your wallet. So you get the mindset training, the video archive library, live online coaching, courses, a supportive community, and it’s all for like less than $1 a day. All right, it’s only $26.2 per month. And it’s a subscription based program, the longer you stay, the more value you’re gonna get out of it.
Because it becomes, it keeps growing. It’ll grow with you. Each week, I’ll be adding new training videos, live coaching sessions and more. There’s no contract, no commitment, you can cancel anytime, without any questions asked. I want to encourage you to get the edge you need to perform at your best and running and in life.
Because this is all about life, you know, running is just a metaphor. Everything you learn here is applicable to running, sure. But more importantly, it’s going to help you in all areas of your life and your business and career and your relationships with your friends and family money and financial stuff with your health and fitness with your personal growth. Get The Runner’s Edge and start becoming the all around best version of yourself. To do that, just go to innerfiretribe.com/coaching or click on the button that says The Runner’s Edge.
Alright, let’s get on to today’s topic. I’m very, very excited to share this with you guys today. And this is all about the problem is all in your head. So let’s kind of start out by just saying this, think about a problem that you’re having right? Now, it can be a big problem, it can be a small problem.
But I want you to just have a problem in your mind as we are talking through this topic today. Because I want you to start thinking about that problem in a different way. Okay, and you will start thinking about it in a different way. But it kind of helps to have something.
So just take a minute and like, kind of think about what’s the problem is that a small, tiny problem, or it could be a big, you know, problem that just driving you crazy and keeping you up at night doesn’t matter. But just think about this problem that you have. Okay.
And then I’m gonna go ahead and talk about this topic and how you may be able to feel differently about this problem by the end of this episode. Okay, cool. So you got that problem in your head, right? So think about that problem. It’s a problem that you want to solve, right? You don’t want this problem anymore anymore, you want it to go away.
So some examples of a problem that people have that I talked to that want to go away could be something like, running is hard. Or I’m too old to run a half marathon, or a full marathon or I’m too old to start running. Or I always bonk.
Every time I run a marathon, I bonk. Or I can never get any faster. So think about that problem you’re having. It can be running related or anything. But know what’s, what’s the problem? What’s your problem? What’s your problem? It’s really a great question, though. I love asking my clients this question, what’s your problem?
Because a lot of times people don’t even know what their problem is. They think they know what their problem is. But it’s really not what the problem is. We’re gonna get into that here in a minute. So here’s something that’s going to blow your mind. A problem isn’t a problem until you make it a problem.
Okay, until you make something into a problem in your head, it’s literally just a situation. It’s just a fact. It’s just a circumstance, okay? It’s not actually a problem until you think certain thoughts about it. That causes certain feelings inside you and usually negative feelings, okay?
I mean, if it caused positive feelings like joy or love, you wouldn’t be a problem, though because our thoughts cause these negative feelings inside us. We label it as a problem, okay? Because we don’t want to feel those feelings. Okay, those are unwanted feelings, feelings. We don’t want to feel their emotions that we don’t want. So a problem isn’t a problem until it causes unwanted emotions inside of us. All right. Right.
And I’m going to break all this down. And you’re gonna very much understand this in a minute here. But I want to give you a little example of how this kind of works. And I love this little analogy, I use it all the time. So if you’ve heard it before, I’m sorry, you’re gonna hear it again.
So, two people are standing on the beach, and they’re both standing by the ocean and looking out over the water. And one of the people standing there is deathly afraid of the ocean, it scares him to death. It causes him anxiety to be there. And to just look at the ocean and just thinking about the ocean causes him, you know, to almost go into a panic attack. To him, the ocean is a dangerous place that should be avoided at all costs. Okay? The person standing right next to him, loves the ocean, loves swimming. In fact, he’s a professional surfer.
So he goes out in the water every single morning and serves for a couple of hours. The ocean to him is a source of happiness, joy and exhilaration and excitement. It’s where he goes to feel calm and peaceful. And the reason he feels that way, is because of the way he thinks about it. Okay.
The other person who thinks the ocean is a dangerous place, had a near drowning experience as a child, nearly drowned in the ocean. And so for him, the ocean is very dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. Okay? So here’s what we have, we have a situation, we have a circumstance, we have the ocean, okay, the ocean is neutral. It’s just a thing.
Okay, the ocean does not cause emotions or thoughts. The ocean is completely neutral, it’s passive. The two people standing there have different thoughts about the ocean based on their past experiences. And so those thoughts cause feelings inside of them. And so for one person, the feelings of fear and anxiety, and panic and danger, are very, very real, and very powerful.
And for that person, the ocean in his version of reality, the ocean is dangerous. This other person’s feelings of joy and peacefulness, and excitement and happiness. In his version of reality, the ocean is a beautiful thing. And it’s the cause of all joy and happiness in his life. Okay.
Two completely different versions of reality, right? So what is reality? Reality is whatever you say it is. So I love that analogy. It’s just so very, very clear to me about how we see things differently, how we all experience the world differently based on you know, our past experiences and things.
So I want to break this down into some definitions and just kind of give you guys a little bit of, I want to peel back the onion a little bit here and peel back some layers. So you can kind of see how these things work. And see how you can start applying some of these principles to your own thoughts, feelings and problems that you’re experiencing. Okay.
So the first thing I want to do is define what a circumstance is, okay? So a circumstance is just a situation, it’s just a thing. And it’s just the facts. Okay. So in this case, we’re talking about the ocean, it’s just the ocean. It’s just a thing. Okay, it’s neutral. It’s passive.
When we talk about facts, when we talk about a situation, this is something that is going to be true for everyone. Okay, everyone would agree that the sky is blue, okay. Everyone would agree that the ocean causes waves, you know, that the ocean is wet? Okay. Whatever the circumstance is. See, if it can be proven in a court of law, then that’s just facts.
Okay, this marathon is 26.2 miles. I got a cramp in my calf at mile 18 of my last marathon. That is a fact. That is just a circumstance, that is just situation, okay? Doesn’t mean anything. I did not finish my first 50k. Okay, just a fact, just a situation. Okay, I got a flat tire on my way to work this morning. You know, it’s not like, oh, man, my morning sucked. It was terrible. I had a bad day. No, I just got a flat tire. That’s just a fact.
Okay, or like, I weigh 150 pounds. That is just a fact. Okay. So when we’re, when we’re defining what a circumstance is, what a situation is, we want to break it down to just the bare minimum, just the facts. We don’t want to assign meaning to thoughts or anything else to it, we don’t want to interpret things, we just want to see things very clearly for what they are.
If you just did this right here, if you just started to see everything that’s happening in your life, for what it is, as a passive situation, this is going to start to cause some amazing changes in your life. Okay. But there’s more. So the next thing I want to talk about is our thoughts. Okay, so this is where things start to get interesting.
So we can all agree that there are facts that there are things that happen in our lives, okay. But then there are thoughts, we think things about the things happening to us, okay. So when I define thoughts, this is basically like our thinking, our beliefs, these are our values. And a lot of these things are like our filters, okay.
So like our past experiences, are kind of like a filter that one of the filters that we run things through in order to create our thoughts, okay. So our past experiences, our memories, our beliefs, our values, maybe our culture, our family, of origin, our customs, all those things kind of shape, the way that we think, okay, this is why things are so different for everybody.
That’s why the two people standing by the ocean, one person has beautiful experiences and memories of the ocean, other has very scary experiences. Okay, those are different filters that they’re experiencing reality through. And so the way they feel about the ocean is going to be different. Okay, so your thoughts are going to be different, everybody’s thoughts are different, okay?
Your model of the world is going to be different from mine. We can both be sitting at the same time watching the same movie, and have totally different experiences. I’m sure you’ve probably done that before where you sat with somebody at a movie. And you were like, you came out of it. And you’re like, Oh, my God, that was the greatest movie, wasn’t it, in there?
Like I remember going to a concert, I went to a Wilco concert, and Wilco’s an amazing band to see live. And we had like, fifth row, center seats, it was great. I went with like three or four friends of mine. And after the show, we are all sitting around, you know, drinking coffee and talking about how awesome this show was.
And I look over and this one friend just had his arms crossed. And I was like, man, wasn’t that the best show you’ve ever seen? And he was like, I’m like, what were you even in the same theater as us? Well, what is happening here? But it happens all the time.
Or maybe you have siblings and you guys remember a family event? You’re like, remember that Thanksgiving when so and so did this or said that? And they’re like, what are you talking about? Were we even at the same table? That thing’s, I don’t even remember that, you know, I know that happens with me and my family.
But so we all have these different experiences and this way of interpreting reality, okay. And we call that your model of the world. We each have our own model of the world based on our past, our values, our culture, customs, all that stuff, and it’s different for everyone. But your model of the world, this is how you experience reality. Okay?
So it’s actually your thoughts. The thoughts that you have in this moment? are what determine reality for you in this moment. So it’s actually your thoughts, your thinking, that creates your reality. That’s kind of mind blowing. I think this is mind blowing. This blows me away every time I think about it.
Because I’m just sitting here looking at a computer. You know, I’m reading some notes. I’m talking into a microphone. And this version of reality that I’m experiencing right here is, is going to be different for somebody else. If they were sitting right next to me here. It blows me away. This right here is mind blowing. Okay.
But I love this little line, I always hear people say, well, “It is what it is.” And I always counter that with no, it is what you think it is, you know? Because it really is what you think it is. Stuff is not just stuff out there. Okay. I mean, it kind of, I mean, the situation is just a situation. So that is what it is. But reality for you is what you think it is, you create it with your thoughts, okay?
So remember situations, they’re just passive, they’re neutral. They don’t have any meaning at all. It’s our thoughts about a situation that give it meaning. Okay, there’s no meaning to anything. Unless there’s a thought. I’m going to say that again. Because this is another thing that’s blowing my mind right now. I’m blowing my own mind. Talking through this with you.
There’s no meaning to anything unless there’s a thought. So if you get a flat tire on your way to work, it only makes you mad. If there’s a thought about it, that makes you mad. Otherwise, it’s just a neutral situation, it’s just a flat tire. Saying I weigh 150 pounds, it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s just numbers on a scale. It’s how much this body weighs.
It’s only when we think we should weigh 125 pounds that that number becomes a problem. Seriously, if you get this if you are getting this right now this is one of the most empowering things you will ever learn okay? That a problem is not a problem until we make it a problem. So every problem you have, you are creating.
Okay, so we have a situation which is passive, it’s neutral. It’s just circumstances we have our thoughts that are different for everyone. And then we have feelings, we have emotions. Now, emotions are those typically there like a one word emotion word like fear, anger, sadness, loneliness, hurt, guilt, frustration, confusion, joy, happiness, elation, excitement, pride, love. These are all emotional words.
And you can’t have a feeling you cannot have an emotion without a thought first okay. You cannot have an emotion without a thought about it. Your thoughts are what cause your feelings, okay? So you have a circumstance, you have a situation and then you think a feeling or you think something you think a thought which creates a feeling inside you, okay.
Your thoughts, cause your feelings you cannot experience a feeling, you cannot experience emotions. Without thinking about what the particular situation is you’re in, what that means to you. So you are assigning it meaning and that’s creating a good feeling inside you maybe a neutral feeling or a bad feeling inside you. All of your emotions are created by your thoughts by the thoughts in your head. Okay. So if you get a cramp at mile 18 in the marathon, that is just a fact. Right?
When you think thoughts like I’m a quitter, I’m no good. I suck at running marathons. I can’t do it. I’m a failure. Those thoughts are going to cause you to feel sad, to feel frustrated, to feel unworthy or angry. The leg cramp in itself is not causing your feelings. It’s what you think about the leg cramp that’s causing your feelings, okay? Getting a cramp in your calf does not cause you to feel unworthy. If it does, I mean, that’s crazy. Anybody that got a cramp any time would feel unworthy or angry. Okay.
It’s the meaning that we assigned to these these thoughts, okay? It’s a meaning that we assigned to the situation that cause our feelings inside. Okay? So your thoughts are what cause your feelings. So then anything we say is a problem is actually just a feeling we don’t want to feel. All right.
So a problem is only is an unwanted feeling basically. Okay? So if our thoughts cause us to feel happiness, or excitement or love, you know, we typically don’t label that as a problem, right? You don’t pick up your baby, and look at your baby and feel love, and then want to be rid of those feelings. You don’t want to be like, oh, I don’t want to feel that anymore. No, you want to feel those feelings.
You choose to feel love toward some people, you know that you probably choose to feel hatred towards some people or to feel ambiguous towards some people, you know, you’re choosing all your feelings here, okay, you choose all of them, you create every emotion you feel inside, good or bad with your thoughts. So the problem is only a problem because you don’t like the emotion you’re feeling and you want to feel something different.
Or you don’t want to feel that feeling at all, you want to feel just something different from that feeling you’re feeling right now. So the problem is the unwanted emotions that you’re feeling that you create yourself, by the way.
And here’s the thing that we do, though, so many of us don’t want to feel those unwanted feelings. So we do things like we numb out to those feelings, you know, we want to feel good. So we overeat. Or we drink too much, or we veg out on Netflix. Which, by the way, I love my Netflix and Hulu and HBO. So don’t get on me about that. But I don’t sit all day watching it. You know what I mean?
I’m not using it to feel good. You know, it’s a different situation. Maybe I do use it to feel good, I don’t know. But I’m not watching hours of Netflix at a time, maybe like an hour. I typically watch like one show per night. Anyway, so we do things to numb out like we overeat. We veg out on Netflix, we drink too much, we medicate ourselves.
Even things like over exercising, this is a way of numbing out for some people. Okay? So that you don’t have to feel those unwanted feelings. We do this all the time. It’s a real problem. It’s a problem that causes addiction, you know, the problem when we try to numb out like this is that we’re just covering over the unwanted emotions for a very short amount of time.
They’re still there inside you, okay, those emotions are still there, and you might feel good for a minute. But as soon as the buzz of that numbing wears off, you know, as soon as you you know, when you’re done over eating, and you’re you know, you’re hungry again, or, or when you know, you wake up from, you know, drinking too much the night before, all those feelings are still there, and you’re gonna feel them again, they don’t go away, all you’re doing is just postponing, feeling them. Okay.
Now, oftentimes, you start creating a lot of other unwanted feelings along with that. And then you numb out more, because you don’t want to feel those feelings. And the cycle goes on and on and on. And I know this from firsthand experience, I’ve done it. I used to drink way too much. I don’t anymore. I’ve been sober for almost 13 years now. Because I know what it’s like to just try to numb out and not feel my feelings. Now I’m not afraid to feel my feelings. Honestly, I can sit with feelings today and it’s okay.
But I want you guys to understand this here. So I think this is some crazy amazing stuff. Okay. It’s like seeing the matrix you know? Once you see it once you understand that your thoughts are what is causing you to feel these unwanted feelings. Your thoughts about a situation are causing you to feel those unwanted feelings. Those unwanted feelings are the problem once you understand this. It’s like seeing the matrix, you can never go back to the way things were again.
You know, it’s like having the key to the universe. This unlocks everything for you, anything that you want in your life, anything that you want to experience or feel, or have, you can have, and you can do it. And this is the first way, this is the best way to get started doing it, honestly.
And like I said, we’re going to talk more about this in later episodes. I’m going to talk about how to, you know, change your thinking if you want to, and how to change your behaviors and your actions based on the emotions that you’re feeling. But for now, I just really want you to understand that situations are passive, that your thoughts cause your feelings and your unwanted feelings are what you deem as problems. Okay.
So let me give you a couple of quick examples here. So let’s say you get a flat tire on your way to work, right? That’s a situation, it is a flat tire, done. The thoughts about it, though, are things like, I’m going to be late for work, I’m going to get written up again, I might lose my job, I won’t be able to pay my bills. And then the feelings that those thoughts create are like fear, stress, anxiety, maybe even like shame. Okay?
Now somebody else might have different thoughts about that. So here’s, here’s a different perspective on this, okay, flat tire. This person is like, hey, I got a flat tire. I’ve never changed a tire before. This will be kind of cool. Those feelings might be feelings of excitement, or adventure, or maybe even pay, this will be fun. Same exact situation. But different thoughts about it and different feelings about it.
For one person, it’s a huge problem for another person, it is not a problem at all. In fact, it’s an opportunity for some excitement. Or you know, a little bit of an adventure, let’s change a tire on the side of the highway.
Okay, here’s another situation, I always bonk in the marathon. Okay, or this is what you know is happening right? To some people, they might say like I always bonked in the marathon. Well, the situation might be like, hey, I’ve run five marathons and three times I’ve had to walk around like mile 18 to 20. You know, my time was slower than I expected it to be. I got a cramp in my calf once like that is, those are the facts, okay?
The thoughts might be, you know, I always bonk or I’ll never hit my PR, or I trained so hard. And now it was for nothing. It’s all for nothing. I suck at running the marathon. I hate running. And those feelings that that caused those thoughts would be feelings of like, disappointment, unworthiness, frustration, anger, sadness.
Whereas somebody else might see that same situation and go, okay, you know, I’ve run five marathons and I’ve had to walk three times around mile 18-19, whatever. My time was a little slower than I wanted to be, I got a cramp in my calf. So their thoughts might be, I’m going to figure out this whole cramping thing and figure out why I’m cramping. I am going to adjust my training so that I know I can get through those last, you know, six, eight miles, hey, this might be a fun challenge to figure this whole thing out, you know, look at it as like a little research project.
Either way, it’s no big deal doesn’t mean anything about me. It’s just running after all. And I love running. So the feelings that those thoughts cause that person might be feelings of excitement or determination, maybe even confidence and motivation. Okay. I mean, here’s the thing, if walking at mile 18 of a marathon, causes the feelings of frustration, sadness, anger, and unworthiness, nobody would want to walk.
But there’s people that walk all the time. There’s people that do the whole run/walk thing, you know, they run all all through the whole marathon or walk through the whole marathon. So it’s not the walking that causes the feelings, okay? It’s the way you think about it. Okay. You create all of your problems with your thoughts, all of your problems are created in your head, every single one.
And I know what you’re thinking, you’re like, well, Patrick, what about if somebody just comes up to me, like punches me in the face? Well, first of all, if somebody just walks up to you and punches you in the face, I want to know what your life is like, what is happening in your life, okay? But if somebody walks up and punches you in the face, that punch in the face does not mean you’re going to feel angry, sad and hurt, you know, frustration or whatever.
You know, there’s people that get punched in the face for a living, they’re called boxers, you know, and MMA fighters, whatever, they punch each other all the time, they get punched in the face for living. And they don’t get angry about it. You know, that doesn’t mean anything other than, oh, you know, I got hit, I better like counter with this other punch or whatever.
They even think about that differently. It’s not the punch in the face that causes the feelings, okay? It’s the way you think about it. It’s what it means to you. And you get to choose that this is the thing that’s like, so important is that you get to choose what you’re what you’re thinking, you get to choose your thoughts. Honestly, this is like mind blowing transformational stuff.
Okay, honestly, I hope you think it is too. I hope your like mind is getting blown right now. Mine is, I talk about this all the time. So just a quick summary here. situations, they are always neutral. It’s just it’s just a thing, okay? It’s just a circumstance, it’s passive. Your thoughts about a situation. That’s what causes the feelings that you feel inside.
Feelings, emotions, they’re all caused by your thoughts, okay? Your feelings are not caused by the situation, your feelings are caused by your thoughts, okay? Anything we label a problem is just you experiencing unwanted feelings. That’s it. All of your problems are in your head. You choose what problems you have, you choose what your problems are, every minute of every day. But you love that you are choosing and creating your problems every minute of every day. Okay, so I’m gonna leave you with that.
If you have questions or comments, drop me an email. I’d love to hear from you. I want to hear what your thoughts are on this. I want to hear what your thoughts and feelings are about this. You can drop me an email at hello@innerfiretribe.com. You can find me on Facebook @pmcgilvray, and on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. I want to hear what you think of this topic. I think this is a big one.
And this is just the foundation of the coaching mindset coaching work that I do. And I kind of start with this with all my clients you know, we start talking about how it’s your thoughts that are creating all the problems that you have. And really we break it down from there and everything gets easier from here but getting this concept and understanding these principles is a game changer for sure. Alright guys, that’s all I got for you today. I will talk to you next time.
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