Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown

368: Are You Running Out of Fear or Love?

• Angie Brown

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In this episode, we delve into the emotional foundation of actions, discussing how all actions are fundamentally driven by emotions, particularly fear and love. We explore how a fear-based approach to running can lead to unsustainable actions, stress, and potential injury, and identify fear-driven motivations in both beginners and experienced runners. 

We also highlight how a love-based approach fosters a healthier, more sustainable running practice and overall lifestyle. Running is emphasized as a means to connect with oneself, God, and others. The episode encourages listeners to reflect on their motivations and make conscious, love-driven choices for a joyful, healthy life.

Tune in to learn how to shift your mindset from fear to love and transform your running and life into a more fulfilling and balanced experience.


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Angie:

Welcome to the Real Life Writers Podcast, episode number 368. Today we're going to be talking about an interesting concept of fear versus love. So all of our actions and decisions are based on emotion. And this is something that I believe to be true based on years of psychological research, personal reflection, and experience. And I was recently reading a book I made the bold claim that all actions are either rooted in fear or in love. So if we assume that this statement is true, we then have to ask ourselves, which one am I acting from? Are these actions that I'm doing in my running and my health and my life, am I acting out of fear or am I acting out of love? And so today we're going to talk a little bit about that and obviously apply it to our running. So stay tuned. What's up everybody. Welcome back to the show today. We have, if you just listen to the intro, which obviously you did, you might be like, what does this have to do with running? And don't worry, we're going to, like all of our episodes, we're going to tie everything back to running and take this concept, which seems like a very big idea and a big concept and tie it back to how can this idea make us better runners? How can it make us stronger and healthier and able to live a happier life?

Kevin:

I mean, I don't, I know we don't want to dive too far into the original premise of all actions come from fear or love, but I swear that we just watched a movie and there were more characters than fear and love. I don't even remember love, but joy was there and sadness. That's interesting. Anger and That's true. Disgust.

Angie:

Inside out too and also inside out doesn't actually have love as an emotion and you can really debate and I've read different books, um, kind of that talk about this idea of is love actually an emotion or is love just a driving force in our life? Um, is it?

Kevin:

Aren't emotions kind of driving forces in our life?

Angie:

Yes. Right. And that's kind of what I just talked about, about how all of the actions and decisions in our life are rooted in an emotion and in a feeling. So basically anything that we do, we do based on some sort of feeling. Um, if we are feeling. healthy, we act in a certain way. If we are feeling scared, we act in a certain way. If we are feeling worried or anxious, we act in a certain way. So all of those actions have a root in some sort of feeling or some sort of emotion. And I think that I don't know if we're, I know, I don't think I'm prepared to get into a debate on whether or not love is an emotion. Um, nor do I think that that's super relevant for this discussion right now.

Kevin:

No, I think, I think just the overall framework of, we essentially have two major emotions that we're dealing with, or at least two buckets of emotions that we're dealing with. Whether you want to say that love is one or not, essentially you're doing things based off of a positive or negative feeling and, and fear is certainly one of the emotions that we can. So I think we're dealing with, with fear versus a bucket of various positive emotions that could go into a bucket of love.

Angie:

We're going to call it love, you know, for, for this podcast, we're going to call it fear versus love. And I just

Kevin:

like the idea of having a bucket of love.

Angie:

I, that sounds like fun. Right. I'm on board. Um, so. If we kind of zoom out and look at the culture that we live in, we essentially live in a culture based on fear, the news, the healthcare system, the food industry, big pharma. They all want us to be afraid of something and ultimately look to them for help. We, they want us to believe that the answers are there. are outside of ourselves. And so really today, the goal of this discussion is to help us bring more consciousness and more awareness to our decisions so that we can take that power back and decide how we want to live our lives and how all of this applies to our running. So if we assume that this statement is true, which we're just going to do that, um, in order to have the rest of the discussion that we want to have. Um, we have to ask ourselves, you know, are we acting out of fear or are we acting out of love? So let's first talk about what does acting out of fear look like?

Kevin:

Okay. So essentially, and before we get to this, I, I like what you've got set up of so many of the, the world around us, but it's the ads coming at us essentially say, this is a big, giant, scary problem in your life and for 29. 95, I'll fix it for you for whatever the issue is. So I'll. I will, I have the problem, I have the solution to this big scary problem, whether or not it's a big scary problem or not, the advertisement suggests this is the big giant scary thing and therefore this is how we're going to have to fix it.

Angie:

Well, and if we look at the pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry, it's the same thing, right? Like we are bombarded with ads on the TV. Or in podcasts, on the radio, there's ads all the time for different pharmaceutical drugs. And all of those drugs are based in fear, I would argue. Like, if, if you have this problem, just take this pill and it will all go away. And while that sounds positive, I think it's really making us hyper aware of like, every little symptom that we might have that could just be something, you know, It's not that big of a deal and all of a sudden they want you to rush to your doctor to make sure it's not something more serious.

Kevin:

Well, yeah, I mean that's the thing is with the one sleep medication, do you see a giant butterfly flying around your room? Perhaps you should talk to your doctor and we'll get you on this drug and it'll help you sleep through.

Angie:

That's not what the ad means. I

Kevin:

think that's what the ad is for. Have you ever tried to fall asleep? a glow in the dark butterfly around your room, you should talk to your doctor because they've got the answer, and they will write you a script for it. Like, that's, that's how a lot of them are. Like, everybody seems to be joyful in the commercial, everybody's sad at the beginning, and then they go get whatever the, the pill is. And then they're like dancing down the beach, like it's a phenomenal little side effect.

Angie:

Right. So they, it appears like it's happy and, but the way that the, all of the commercials are targeted essentially is saying that the medication or the drug is what's allowing you to live that happy life. It is something outside of yourself. It is not something that you can fix on your own. You need this pharmaceutical intervention. And I'm not saying that all medication is bad by, by no means am I going to make a Any sort of sweeping statement like that, because there are some times that people need to be on medications. Kevin is one of them.

Kevin:

Yeah. I mean, I, I take a pill every morning and evening, like it's, it's a thing I've done since 2018.

Angie:

2018. Yeah. You started in 2018. Yeah. But the point is, we just have to start to be more aware of all of the fear in our culture, like it's all over the news, it's very unnatural for us to have this 24 hour news cycle, for us to just be bombarded on TV, on our smartphones, you know, like, We're getting binged notifications all the time, letting us know about like wars happening all around the world. And we get into a discussion about whether that's good or bad, but ultimately it's causing a lot of fear and it's causing a lot of nervous system dysregulation, which I mean, that's a whole nother topic that maybe we'll do that in another podcast. But today we want to talk about, are we acting out of fear or are we acting out of love? So let's first talk about how we know whether or not we're acting out of fear. And this is. It's so common that we oftentimes probably don't even realize it because this can often work in the short term if we are acting from this place of fear, this fear based type of um, thinking, but it doesn't feel as good and fear stimulates our stress response, which can be counterproductive to the results that we want and it often leads to actions that are unsustainable. So. The first thing that comes to mind when I think about running out of fear is running because we don't like our body. And this is one of the reasons that I started running. So this is not pointing, me pointing fingers saying that you're doing something wrong. I started running because I didn't like my body. I started running because I wanted to lose weight. And so, and I think that that's one of the reasons that a lot of people do this. Or they get into running Later in life because they went to the doctor and the doctor is like you have early stages of heart disease or you have high cholesterol or you have some sort of medical condition that is either you already have it or It you're right on the brink of it, right? And so people are like, oh shoot. I don't want to get that thing I better start doing something so that I can get

Kevin:

healthier. Yeah, cuz we started You don't have this disease, but you have the precursors to the disease. That goes back to our previous discussion, but let's not tangent there too much. So you started running because you wanted to lose weight. You want to change the way your body looked. When I started running, I was competing in high school. You want a direction of, of running for fear. I was afraid that it wasn't going to beat enough people on the team around me of my group of friends that I was going to finish too far back on them, let them down or lose my spot on the team. Like that is also literally, I was racing out of fear during workouts. It was a very different feeling. My team was big. We bonded well together, but you put yourself into a race environment and it wasn't just competing against other people, which has kind of an, an aspect some positives and negatives coming from that. But I had this fear of, especially when I, in my first couple of years, I was trying to hit the varsity team. I was right on the edge of it. And so I was, I was afraid I was going to get beat by my teammates, which ultimately would have been a better thing for the team because more of us would finish higher up in the race. But that was not a good sustainable way to get faster over the season.

Angie:

Yeah, and the same thing goes for me with like trying to lose weight because oftentimes when we are running because we don't like our body and we're afraid of gaining weight, then what happens is that we eat less. When we eat less and start running more, that often leads to a state of low energy availability, which You either will lead to more negative health consequences or you eat less and then you end up binging later because you're so hungry and you're not giving your body what it needs. So again, you might, when I talked about earlier how this can sometimes lead to positive short term results, if you start running more and eating less, you probably are going to start to see a change in your body composition at the beginning, right? That might be the favorable results that you were hoping for. Or you might notice. that you do start to gain weight, but that becomes unsustainable because then your body is just not getting the energy that it needs. And then you actually start gaining weight or plateauing in your weight loss, which then leads oftentimes more people to pushing harder and doing more, which can just make the cycle even worse.

Kevin:

Right? So I was constantly living in this idea of, well, I need to keep getting faster. Like I was worried that I wasn't going to be fast enough, which led to the same thing. Like ultimately I was. pushing and, you know, you transition me over to college. I'm running and trying to keep up with my teammates. Like I was pushing so hard and trying to do as much as I could and really pushing through the workouts, but afraid that I was going to fail. Like almost every time we had a hard day. Easier, longer runs. I could go out and be with people, but on like harder track workouts, it was like, how long am I going to be able to sustain this workout until I get spit out the back and cannot keep up with them anymore, which, I mean, you're going to come in here with your doctor perspective off of this, but I feel like that's just going to be a ridiculous flood of hormones that I'm probably not then actually making any physical adaptations of from that workout because I can't, I don't know, probably. Gain muscle. What you talked to me on this one?

Angie:

Well, I mean, it's not that you're not going to make any gains from the workout, but it is going to be counterproductive because your body, when you do a hard workout, your body is already like the stress hormones in your body are already elevated. The issue is then we don't recover. Well, and so the stress hormones stay high. So our body stays in that catabolic state, which is a state of breakdown. Like whenever we do a hard workout, your body is breaking itself down. That's what we want to happen during recovery. It builds itself back up stronger than it was. So you trying to constantly keep up with the team. You're constantly breaking yourself down. You definitely weren't recovering well because you weren't sleeping well. You were a college student, you were partying with your friends, you were staying up late to get your schoolwork done and doing all of that stuff. So your body was constantly breaking itself down and that's ultimately why you ended up. Injured and not able to continue as part of the team.

Kevin:

Okay. But what are your thoughts like directly during the workout itself? Uh, I

Angie:

think that you, yes, when you're work, when you're in the workout itself and you're stressed out and you're fearful that you're not going to be able to keep maintaining it, what happens? Think about what happens when you're in a state of stress, like. When you are in a state of like anxiety or worry, like if you're just even watching a scary movie, that's a stressful situation, right? What happens?

Kevin:

I mean, my first thought is elevated heart rate, which is not going to then help me try and complete the workout. If my heart rate is already higher than it's supposed to be, because I'm freaking out.

Angie:

Exactly. And that's one of the easiest ones to point to, right? Is like your heart rate elevates. That's what happens in In times of stress. And so all of a sudden this workout that was already supposed to be hard is now harder. So because your heart rate and your fear is adding to that, the difficulty of that workout.

Kevin:

Right? Like as soon as I start getting dropped off the back of the pack, instead of being able to like summon extra energy and cling onto them, my everything went through the roof and I freaked out. And suddenly the gap that was like a step is suddenly boom, immediately 10 steps and I'm off the back and I've lost contact.

Angie:

Exactly. And so that's a really great. Example of it in like a very specific one off type of situation, but imagine this feeling just overarching your whole training experience, which it kind of sounds like it did for you, right? But that's also for us in our forties and fifties and sixties. We're afraid of getting slower. So we push harder, we do more, we feel guilty about taking rest days because we have this idea that I need to be doing more so that I don't fall off the back end of the pack, right? Like what you were just talking about.

Kevin:

The back end of the pack or the ghost of yourself that used to be able to run those times, like that was. Uh, I mean, I don't want to dive too far into, into the ultra running thing, but Western States was just a couple weeks ago and Jim Walmsley won it. And one of the things that he pointed out in the, in his pre race interviews, cause people are like, Oh, the weather seems like it's going to cooperate. Do you want to chase your own record for this? And he goes, I don't see a benefit of trying to chase a ghost of myself. And at all of the, like, aid stations, he would sit down, he was cooling himself down, and you could argue that that's why he was able to run so fast. He missed his course record by, like, three minutes. And towards the end of the race, you're like, man, if he had gone through some of those aid stations quicker, he probably could have gotten the course record. Maybe. Or maybe the calmness that he put himself through the aid stations allowed him to get so close to his record. But the thing was, he didn't care. He just wanted to go out there and see what he could do on his own. on that day as the person that he was showing up. He brought no fear or worry about Jim Walmsley 2016. Like he didn't care if he could beat that person. He cared about the other actual people in the race.

Angie:

Yeah, and so, I mean, I would argue that that's a great way to look at it too, because The way that he, this is one of those things that you will never know if it would have been, if it wouldn't have been, and this is one of the things that I think every runner experiences when they cross the finish line is like, could I have pushed myself a little bit harder? Like, what if I would have done that one thing different? What if I didn't take that last walking break? What if, what if, what if, what if? Like all the what ifs that run through our head, those are all, again, things that we based on fear,

Kevin:

right?

Angie:

Like fear and insecurity. And so if that's where we're acting out of, are we making the best decisions for ourself? Some people would say yes, because they would say that they're forcing themselves into doing better based because they're afraid of the negative repercussions. But I would argue that acting out of love and positive reinforcement Is so much stronger and so much more sustainable. It's the same thing like with raising kids, you know, we can punish our kids, but they're they've done so many studies in the world of psychology that says that positive reinforcement is is way better. The negative reinforcement when it comes to trying to change behavior,

Kevin:

right? Like there's there's a level where you have to like the kids can't cross a certain line Like there have to be some boundaries on them

Angie:

That's not what I'm talking about there

Kevin:

You have to lead with with positive like you have to lead with love Well still kind of guiding them in in safe positive directions like you're not talking about Well, just let the kids do whatever they feel like no like

Angie:

well and there are times to be negative, right? There are times that you need to point out to your kids that that behavior is not acceptable, but it's again where we're rooted. Like, are we ruled? Are we trying to rule by fear, which is how a lot of us were raised, right? Like our parents typically were raising us according to fear. Like we were afraid of our parents. We were afraid of some of the negative repercussions of our actions. You know, you, we can argue, we're not, I mean, this is not a parenting podcast, so we're definitely not going to jump into all of that. But you know, if we are basing our running on, and our health decisions on fear alone, it becomes unsustainable and it becomes counterproductive because really we're just stressing ourselves out, which is one of the last things that we need if we want live a healthy life. Like stress management is one of the most important things that we can do for ourselves for long term health.

Kevin:

Yeah. I mean, I think that you hit, hit it perfectly there. The underlying point is if we're constantly doing things out of a sense of fear, it has a point, like there are times that you can make decisions and be like, yep, I am definitely making this decision out of fear, but that should not be your go to most of your decisions. Even when do

Angie:

you think it's a good time? A good thing.

Kevin:

I mean, running wise, I think mid race, it sometimes fears the appropriate time.

Angie:

Give me an example.

Kevin:

You hear footsteps behind you.

Angie:

Okay,

Kevin:

if you literally go with it go back and be like, oh, no It's like I'm getting chased by a predator. You might find an extra gear. Okay to counter that you might freak out and be like Oh, no, the footsteps are coming. I'm gonna get caught this happened in a previous race. Oh, no It's all going downhill and your mind slips in that direction But some people can take this take more negative feelings whether it's fear whether you I would argue that anger You Kind of slides into the side of fear and it can have short term kind of motivation aspects. Well,

Angie:

that's what I, and that's my point is that it's more short term. And I think that you can argue on what the definition of short term is, but if it's going to be sustainable, it needs to flip over from fear to love.

Kevin:

Yeah, I think that maybe you can recognize the situation because fear like shoots off alarms at you, but then how you necessarily react to it, you might not want to react from a place of fear.

Angie:

Yeah. And so let's then talk about acting out of love. Like, what does that look like? So one of the first places we went to with fear was running because I don't like my body. What, what's the opposite of that is running because we love our body and we love ourselves and running is a way for us to take care of our body. Running is a way for us to get stronger. So we can ask ourselves, instead of, I'm afraid of gaining weight. So that means I have to eat less and I have to do more. We can ask ourselves, how can I build a strong and healthy body? That's going to be a much better question. And that's going to be a question that's rooted in love of like, okay, it's not that I'm afraid of gaining weight. It's not that I'm afraid of. Developing this chronic disease. It's that I want to nourish my body and I want to take care of myself so that I can live a strong and healthy life and not be limited in the things that I want to do in my life. I mean, you could argue that that's like a fear of being limited, but I would argue back that it's not a fear of being limited. It's just A conscious choice of how I want to live my life in the future.

Kevin:

I mean, I think that's one of the big differences here is fear is not always making good conscious choices. It's, it's a much more reactive way to live, as opposed to seeing something come up and then deciding what choice you want to make out of it. That's usually living from a place of love is The thing comes up and you get to rationally decide your response to it. You know, living it, running training in a way that is, is rooted in love, is rooted in honoring your body. You know, following 2017, I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to run again. And so there was a point most of 2018 was literally like, I was just so happy And joyful with every run that I got to do. It was like, man, that run was awful, but it was better than not being able to go out and run because I wasn't sure what it was going to look like. You know, we've got a way old podcast of my first marathon after that year. And it was not a great. Time, numbers wise, according to a clock, but it was one of my most joyful races that I've run because I didn't think I was going to be able to do it.

Angie:

Right. So, when you're running out of love, how does that shift things for you?

Kevin:

I mean, it, it, it moves things. Everything becomes more joyful. Even if it feels momentarily It still has this underlying, I get to do this thing. It's a choice.

Angie:

Yeah. So before you said, like when you were acting out of fear, like when you were racing and you were afraid of losing your spot on the team versus now acting out of love and acting out of, you know, this, this love for your body, for yourself, for your mind, like, how does that. Look differently for you.

Kevin:

Think I ever would have signed up for an ultra if I was still acting out of fear because I wanted to go out and win races and or at least, you know, finish fairly high in a race. Maybe like, you don't, you don't know who's going to show up. Somebody shows up and you're like, well, I guess I'm not taking that one. But I kind of knew roughly where I was going to be able to do with most of these things. Suddenly you were like, Oh, let's quadruple the distance. I don't know. I didn't know if I could make it to the finish line of a hundred, let alone what place I would be in. That, you've got to love yourself before you start. Like there has to be some acceptance of the massive possibility of failure during this thing and to accept that that's a possibility and I'm still going for it. And that's where that, that big choice gets to show up.

Angie:

So You, by accepting that failure is a possibility and that you're choosing to essentially do it anyway and love yourself no matter what. The results are, is that kind of what you're talking about?

Kevin:

That's what I'm going with is love yourself regardless of results.

Angie:

Yeah. And I think that that's really important is when we, I think acting out of love oftentimes requires us to zoom out, right. Versus fear. Oftentimes we, we. Tend to have a much more narrow focus where we tend to be much more zoomed in on, like, I want to avoid this one thing. I'm afraid of this one specific result. Whereas acting out of love, I think kind of makes us zoom out and see the bigger picture of, okay, even if I don't get the result in this one thing that I want, ultimately, The lifestyle that I'm building and what I'm trying to do here is in love for myself. Yeah,

Kevin:

I mean you can see the the it's a lot easier to see the big picture of your health journey You're running journey when you're living out of love You just think of being afraid and you can picture somebody like cowering in fear arms tucked in like you're just you're You're like a turtle. You're trying to ball yourself up as tight as possible. My vision of someone with love is arms open, ready for a hug. Like those are very different ways to interact with the world

Angie:

or arms up in the air as you're crossing the finish line.

Kevin:

That'll work. All right. Like,

Angie:

so grateful that you were able to do that. So this, you know, we've been saying love this whole time. I guess you could also replace the word love with gratitude in a lot of ways. Yeah. Or joy. Like they really are words that. Um, and, you know, you could debate on whether or not they're interchangeable just in general as well. I think.

Kevin:

I don't think you would have the same reaction if I told you, I joy you.

Angie:

I joy you. Um, but like, I think that like, when we also think about acting out of love and running out of love, like we can ask ourselves kind of these questions that And like Kevin said, and still choose to love ourself no matter what the result is. So how can I get faster because it would be fun? Not because I'm afraid of getting slower, not because I don't want to slow down as I get older, but just like, huh, like I wonder if I can get faster. How can I get faster and still make this really fun? Or how can I run longer just to see what's possible? That's kind of what you were talking about with the ultra marathons. And another place I like to. To take it is to, you know, how does running help me connect better to myself, to God and to others? Because I think that ultimately that's really what running and running out of love is all about, is learning how to connect to yourself and support your body, your mind, your body. And your spirit, all three aspects of your health through the activities that you choose to pursue.

Kevin:

Yeah, it's, it's awfully hard to connect with yourself from a place of fear because fear usually leads towards trying to hide things. Like you're not going to connect well to yourself. You're not going to connect to the community around you. Well,

Angie:

it hides so much. things and it also makes things a much bigger deal than they are. Like, it, it tends to, like, make things explode and, and like, take these little symptoms and like, oh my God, what if this means I'm never going to be able to run again? Right? Like, it, it leads to this, um, Expand. Expansion is not the right word that I'm looking for. No, it's the

Kevin:

opposite. It's a literally, it's a narrowing that you already said. Like, fear narrows your vision. It narrows everything. It's this tiny little thing that is suddenly catastrophic. And to go back to our very original thing, Oh, did you, did you catch a symptom? Do you have a tiny little itch? Perhaps you should talk to your doctor because it might be this like, no, it's might just be an itch, perhaps just scratch that spot and you're going to be okay. You know, like it doesn't have to be an all encompassing life ending event. It might just be an itch,

Angie:

right? But at the same time, symptoms are not something that we want to just ignore because symptoms are signals that our body is not okay. Are sending us and we're going to be doing an episode in the next couple of weeks, um, specifically about that. So stay tuned for that one as well, but you know, for today's episode, the point is, you know, just one little thing doesn't always mean that something catastrophic is right around the corner, right?

Kevin:

Yeah, don't, don't ignore it, but don't blow it up bigger than it is. Like. Look at it, address it, but address it rationally. That's the difference between fear and love is you're not just seeing the symptom and immediately having to take some reaction to it. You can casually, you can logically respond to

Angie:

it. Or completely ignoring it either. Right. Because that also is a way that fear would manifest itself. It's like, I'm just going to ignore this thing and pretend it doesn't exist because I'm afraid what that means.

Kevin:

Yeah. Cause eventually if you ignore it for long enough and then run a hundred miles on it, then you have to have hernia surgery and no one wants to that. Nobody

Angie:

wants that. So this is a kind of a shorter episode for you guys this week, but that's really what we want you to take away from this is, are you acting out of fear and are you acting out of love? And the answer is both, right? We all, we as humans act out of both places. So again, it's just to bring that awareness and to bring that consciousness to you so that you can say, you know, when you're signing up for that next race, what, what's helped driving that decision when you are. Lying in bed and deciding whether or not to get up out of bed and run what's driving that decision like just understanding kind of what's driving your daily decisions and helping you get out the door so that you can live the strongest, most active and healthiest lifestyle that you can.

Kevin:

Yeah. I think that's a, that's a great synopsis is just to have some thought about where your decisions are coming from.

Angie:

All right, you guys, if you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and leave us a review on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you like to listen to us. And as always, this has been the real life runners podcast, episode number 368. Now get out there and run your life.