Your Purpose to Start Running

What to expect

I recently made a list of the things I would do if I was a beginning runner and had to do it all over again knowing what I know now.  My first point was that I would figure out what my ‘purpose’ was.  My thought was that by knowing your purpose going into a new exercise program it would become stickier.

You’d be less likely to quit if you knew why you were doing it.  You’d be less likely to quit if the activity was somehow aligned with a higher purpose.  You’d be less likely top quite if you really understood and owned your ‘why’.

I thought this was important because the typical trajectory of people is to start an exercise program but quit before it becomes part of a sustainable healthy lifestyle.  It is too common.  Maybe they quit when it gets hard.  Maybe they quit when they get bored.  Maybe they quit when they don’t get fast results.

I figured that having a purpose would enable new runners to get through the effort, the pain and the setbacks to get to that place where it starts to be a necessary part of your life.  Wouldn’t a purpose buy you enough time to internalize running?

I was wrong.

I took an esoteric thought and tried to retrofit it onto the reality of why people start running.  I was guilty of being academic, not realistic.  Sure, it would be nice for beginning runners to have some sort of high-fallutin purpose that would create the passion and gravitational pull to get them to stick with it.  That would be nice in a perfect world.

What the heck, while we’re out in imagination land where everything is perfect why not have every new runner take a government funded ‘purpose seminar’ where they are led through several forward looking brainstorming sessions by a facilitator, named Willow, from San Diego, who’s a vegan and a life coach.  Then when they finally got to put their feet on the pavement they’d be rock-sure in their commitment to a life time of running.

That’s not how it works.

I actually did a wee bit of ad hoc research.  Research is the wrong term.  Survey is a better term.  I asked a bunch of runners what their purpose was when they first started running.  (I did this by posting in Simon Man’s Positive Running Facebook group).

What I found was that people didn’t necessarily have a purpose to begin running, but they had a reason.  That reason then evolved into purpose.

The spark to take that first step was something much more mundane.

Most people, myself included, started running ‘to get in shape’.  That’s it.  I remember thinking that if I could just get out and do 5 miles 3 times a week I could lose and keep off ten pounds of jiggly belly fat.

That’s another big reason people begin running.  To lose weight.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  That’s a valid reason to start exercising and no exercise is going to get you there faster than running.  They started with a vague intention to lose some weight and somehow made it past the hard bits, fell in love and got hooked.  Their purpose evolved from their short term need.

That’s the way change happens in us humans.  We get to some point where the pain of being out of shape outweighs the pain of getting back into shape.  That’s where the journey begins.

A better question might be “Why did you stick with it?”  How did it change from a short term goal into a lifestyle?  If we could isolate the aspects of that inflection point we would have something useful.  Some tactical causality we could use to increase the percentage of survivors.

Another very positive finding is that people make a difference.  Some reported starting running because of a sibling or a spouse challenged them or even just set a good example.  This means that you are making a difference within your circle of influence just by doing what you do, making yourself a good example and making yourself available to help.

Another response was people who started for someone else.  Maybe to not suffer the ill health of a parent.  Maybe to be there for their own kids and make a good example.  Maybe to support a charity for someone they love.  This is probably the closest we come to true ‘purpose’.  These people started not because of pain, but because of love.

Progress is never a straight line.  People start and stop exercise programs all the time.  There is no text-book reason to begin running.  There probably doesn’t have to be.  It’s probably more important to start than to spend time with Willow understanding your purpose.

How do we use this?

How do we help people get started?  How do we help people stay with it?

We help simply by telling our stories.  Not preaching, not cajoling and not judging.  Just telling our stories.  Telling the story of how we did it, why we stuck with it and the joy and passions we have found in the process.

We tell our stories with all the warts and bumps too.  The blisters and broken bones the successes and the failures.  The struggles and the triumphs.

We let them know that there is no straight line.  There is no success or failure.  There is only to start and to try.