Five Steps to Improve Your Running Mindset
In order to achieve an ambitious goal, whether it be in running or anything else, you need to improve your mindset while running and develop a mental strength that allows you to tolerate discomfort. In some cases, this discomfort may be minor, while at other times it may seem insurmountable. Regardless of the intensity of the discomfort, the ability to push through it is critical to ultimately getting where you want to be.
Developing mental strength is difficult because it runs counter to basic human nature, which is to make decisions that have the lowest chance of failure. As a result, our mentality becomes one of setting boundaries and limitations for the actions we take based on what we believe will be the least risky outcome. In many cases this makes sense, especially when either our own safety or the safety of others is concerned. In other cases, however, such as in running, this becomes a very limiting approach that leads to plateaus in our training or less than maximum efforts in races.
To overcome these self-imposed limitations, you need to develop a mentality centered around proving yourself wrong and challenging the preconceived notions you have about yourself. Here are 5 strategies I’ve found useful in improving my mental strength, which you can implement in your own training to begin improving your mental fortitude as well:
1. Know Your Purpose
What is your purpose? It’s a simple question, the answer to which guides the actions you take as you try to accomplish your goals. When you face adversity, as you undoubtedly will, your purpose must be greater than the discomfort you face. When it is, you can find deep reservoirs of courage and determination inside that you didn’t know you had.
Your purpose must be bigger than a single run, race, or individual goal. It needs to be the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning and the last thing you think about before you go to bed at night. It must help you define a roadmap through what is a very bumpy ride. While we all veer off the path from time to time, knowing your purpose will help you more quickly find yourself again and continue progressing in the direction you want to go. You cannot have mental strength without knowing your purpose, and you should spend a significant amount of time considering what you want that to be.
2. Set Measurable Goals
Too often we set vague goals that are difficult or impossible to measure. It’s much easier to exercise mental strength when the goals you are trying to achieve are directly measurable. As a new runner, your goal might simply be to run three miles without stopping. If you are preparing for a race, setting a specific time goal gives you something to train for. Whatever the goal, making it quantifiable will make it easier to use it as a motivating force and will help you keep your mental focus as you work toward achieving it.
The goals you set for yourself should always be front and center in your mind and need to be constantly reevaluated to make sure the progress you are making is leading you in the right direction. When you do this, it’s important to be honest about where you really are. If you find your current goals are too aggressive or outside factors such as injury or illness necessitate adjusting them, you shouldn’t be afraid to do so. This doesn’t represent a failure. Rather, it is simply admitting that the journey may be a longer one than you’d originally anticipated.
3. Keep Showing Up
Anything worth having requires a tremendous amount of effort, and the path that leads you to your goals will rarely be a straight one. Obstacles and other unforeseen roadblocks will distract you from always clearly seeing the path ahead and will require you to have the wherewithal to quickly adapt to change to improve your running mindset. During the typical training cycle, there will be a few very good runs, a lot of very average runs, and some that you’d just rather never happened. Being mentally strong means that you can accept them all as part of a larger process that will prepare you to reach your goals. If you constantly get discouraged after bad runs, consistently fail to complete runs as required, or spend too long celebrating the good ones, you are depriving yourself of building the mental strength it takes to keep your eye on the big picture.
Each run matters but none in isolation. It’s the compilation of your work that is ultimately a measure of how prepared you are. The key is consistency and always keeping an even temperament no matter what obstacles are placed in your way. Keep showing up day after day, run after run. This will build both the physical and mental strength you need to succeed.
4. Keep Getting Up
You have undoubtedly hit the wall at some point during a run or race. This is essentially when you are unable to provide your body with the fuel it requires to continue running at a given pace. There is literally nothing left at that point. The wall is very real, but what if I told you that often when you think you’ve hit the wall, in reality it’s just you waving the white flag.
It’s not something you probably want to hear, but in many cases it’s a very uncomfortable truth. You need to develop the ability to ignore the voice inside of your head that’s telling you that you are finished and have nothing left. The more you push through discomfort and adversity rather than giving into it, the easier it will become. You must shift your mindset from one of surrender to one of courage and pride.
5. Never Give Up
Despite your best efforts, you will fail, sometimes spectacularly, and not only is that okay, but it is necessary in order to improve your running mindset, grow and progress. Not only do you need to accept failure, but you also need to understand why it happened, analyze it, dissect it, and come up with a plan for correcting it. Having mental strength requires having the ability to be introspective and understand that great strength is born from our weakest moments.
It can be extremely painful to see all the time and effort you’ve put into reaching your goals end unsuccessfully, but all that work doesn’t simply get erased. It remains for you to use as a foundation for the next attempt and each attempt thereafter. If you know your purpose, have set clear goals, are willing to show up day in and day out to put in the required effort, and are willing to continually pull yourself up off the floor when you get knocked down, your chances of success will increase dramatically.
