Mind Games

     I am fortunate that I have run for 60 years. I only have to defeat one devil on my shoulder. There are two, constantly whispering defeat messages. One says my body can’t make it. That one can be right and needs to be slowly defeated every day as I add miles or speed. The other devil whispers that I am not capable of doing this. My 60 years allow me to know that is bull. If I put in the miles and slowly and not even purposely increase my speed, I will succeed.

    

     Like the trick of getting dressed even when I don’t want to go, I am also able to fool myself by negotiating. When the mind devil whispers that I am too tired and I need to walk, I negotiate with him and change the big picture of not being able to make the whole run, into a small picture: I am tough enough to run 200, or 300, or 400 more steps. Because I can’t multitask, I start counting steps and a couple of hundred in, all I am thinking about is the count. All whining about not being able to make it is gone and even if I do give in, I made 400 extra steps, so the next time the negotiation is for 500 steps because I now know that I can do 400. Wasn’t it Abe Lincoln who said “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time”, but you can fool yourself every time?

    See you on June 6^th.

Casey