Confidence Returns to my Running Shoes

I was sup­posed to do it this morn­ing, but I decided to linger over my morn­ing cup of cof­fee just a lit­tle longer than usual. I was going to do it dur­ing a mid-morning break, but there was a book I wanted to catch up on. So, dur­ing my usu­ally cov­eted lunch hour I had to drag myself out­side, in the oppres­sive Florida heat, to get my run in.

As I was lac­ing up my run­ning shoes, I almost talked myself into going to Scoop Daddy’s for an ice cream cone instead. I had lost my con­fi­dence in my abil­ity to run since late last year.

This was the week I decided to get that con­fi­dence back.

The humid­ity was so thick you could have cut it with a steak knife. I ran my usual 3 mile route down by the ocean, try­ing to duck under any shade I could find. By the end of the run I was a com­plete sweaty mess, so I rewarded myself with a cold shower.

It felt so good to have checked that off my daily dis­ci­pline list. It wasn’t easy, but I had just recom­mit­ted to run­ning 3 days a week again.

Right now you may have that daily dis­ci­pline you know you need to do, but you just keep putting it off. Maybe it is mak­ing those sales calls you so badly need to make. It may be call­ing up that friend to deliver some bad news. Maybe, like me, you need to tie on those run­ning shoes that have been gath­er­ing dust in your closet.

Regard­less of what that dis­ci­pline is, it doesn’t get eas­ier the longer you wait. It actu­ally gets harder.

Heck, if I had run in the morn­ing, my face wouldn’t still be red from over­heat­ing. I could have actu­ally sat down and enjoyed my lunch dur­ing my already busy day. But I chose to put it off and I had to suf­fer the consequences.

Hon­estly, I put it off because I just wasn’t con­fi­dent enough that I could do it at all.

In Tim Sanders’ new book Today We Are Rich, he talks about “har­ness­ing the power of total con­fi­dence.”  He sums it up for me in Chap­ter 3: “When you believe you’ll be suc­cess­ful, you achieve a calm­ness that improves your abil­ity to slow life’s game down and see things more clearly.”

I went out, believ­ing that my feet would hit the ground and pro­pel me for­ward like they used to when I was run­ning con­sis­tently. I believed that my lungs would sup­ply my body with enough oxy­gen to com­plete the task.

I also believe that I will be get­ting that ice cream tonight, because I put in the hard work and I deserve a reward.

What have you been putting off due to a lack of con­fi­dence? What can you do TODAY to regain the con­fi­dence you once had?