418: Push Through

Pushing Through Life’s Challenges: How Running Builds Your Resilience

In this episode of The Real Life Runners Podcast, I’m getting real about feeling overwhelmed — from home repairs to family chaos to just life piling up. Honestly? My first instinct is often to shut down. But that’s not where growth happens.

Today, I’m sharing how running teaches us to keep moving forward, even when life feels heavy. The same skills we use on the run—taking one small step, focusing on the next breath, shifting “I have to” into “I get to”—can help us navigate life’s messier moments too.

I’ll walk you through how I’m leaning into these strategies myself right now, and how you can use them to stay grounded, find your strength, and keep showing up… both on the run and in life.

00:00 Introduction: When Life Feels Overwhelming

01:10 A Messy House and a Heavy Heart

02:34 Pushing Through the Tough Times

05:06 The Power of Gratitude and Reframing

05:55 Running as a Metaphor for Life

08:46 Zooming In and Zooming Out

12:58 Taking the Next Right Step

18:51 Embracing the Journey

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:24

You ever have a time where you feel like nothing is going your way and it all just seems like it's piling up on you and feels really heavy? If so, I can relate to you and you can probably relate to some of the things that I'm feeling right now too. I'm literally sitting in my closet recording this episode because. Everything is, my house is just a complete mess. So I'm gonna explain all the things that are going on, but the point of this episode is to really get real and raw with you in those times where you feel like you just wanna shut it all down and things aren't going well. How important it's for us to keep pushing through, whether that's in running or in the rest of our lives, and how running really helps us develop that skill and the endurance to keep pushing even when we just wanna curl up and avoid it all. So let's get into it. What's up runners? Welcome back to the show. I am in my closet, like I mentioned, staring at my clothes. And if I were to walk out of this closet, you would see, or if you were here with me, you would see my house is a mess. As I look around my house, I've got. P, like literally plastic zippers around like in the hallway that is blocking off the whole bathroom and hallway area because we had a leak and turns out there was mold. And so essentially we had to. Rip out basically the whole bathroom. And so there's just dust, there's clutter. Everything that was in the bathroom is now in boxes in our living room. Nothing is where it should be. And I just, it's starting to feel very heavy because I'm looking at the timeline of what's going on and. Part of me wants to just curl up. I just want to shut it down, hide under a blanket, not deal with any of it. And so if you've ever felt that way, and I feel like everyone probably has at some point, then you're gonna be able to relate to this. And I think that it's really important for us to talk about this when things are not going the way that we want them to go. And what do we do? Those times because I can't just hit the pause button. I can't just ignore what's going on. I have to deal with this. Life doesn't just stop because we're stressed out. So this episode is really about getting real, about pushing through when life feels heavy. And I know that a lot of times in this podcast we talk about the importance of rest and recovery and listening to your body and pulling back because it's true. There's a lot of us that. Our condition to just push through and to just keep going, even when life is tough and it just builds and builds on us. And I think that's important. It is important for us to recognize that and feel the feelings and learn how to deal with that and learn how to take a step back. And then also, sometimes it's important for us to just push through and to avoid our. Desire to just shut it all down because I'm safe. Everything is fine here. I just don't wanna deal with it. And sometimes that happens in our running too. Sometimes we're out on a run and you just don't wanna do it. And so there's a difference between really listening to our body and figuring out when we need to pull back and when we need to stop pushing. And then. The difference between that and when our brain is having a temper tantrum and just doesn't wanna deal with it and wants to shut it down, because it all just feels very heavy. And that's where I am right now because sometimes life just piles on and sometimes it all feels like it's just hitting at once. There's just one thing after another, and that's what's going on with me right now. And so I just think it's important for me to be real with you so that you understand. Just because I have a podcast and just because I have, all of this training and personal development and things that I've gone through, we all still go through crap and it can be very overwhelming sometimes when we talk about, the home and the family and what's going on with my kids and my business and training, it all stacks up. So it's not about. Ignoring your feelings. It's very important to recognize what's going on, and I've done that. I went on a walk this morning. And was just feeling a lot of emotions. Like I've just been feeling an emotional rollercoaster because up until this week I feel like I've been doing pretty good, like rolling with the punches, keeping a positive attitude, oh, it's, everything's gonna be fine. And. It is. I know that is the truth. Everything is going to be fine. It will all work out and we're gonna have a beautiful new bathroom after that. And I do keep going back to that. And I keep going back to, being grateful that we have a second bathroom and that my family's healthy. And thank goodness it doesn't seem like this mold has affected us health-wise. And so I do keep going back to gratitude and that is a very important thing. For us to, focus on sometimes, and then sometimes it's also. Very normal and very human to feel it all just piling up and all just stacking up on you. And we can use gratitude and we can use reframing and thought rewiring. And I've been doing that and it, it works. It does work it, there's sometimes that your brain's just dude, this really stinks, this really sucks sometimes. And it's okay to suck, but. I think that's where, really where some of our training as runners comes in.'cause sometimes running sucks too, and we have to keep pushing. It's not oh, this run sucks now I'm just gonna quit. I'm gonna keep walking. You're not gonna make much progress if you do that. And so I think that running is really the perfect training ground for life's hard moments because there are so many days that we don't feel like running, but we do it anyway. Even yesterday, I woke up at five 20 because on Tuesday mornings I do speed work with my friends. And even though it's a summertime,'cause in the summer I've been enjoying kind of slower mornings. My kids don't have school, so I've been sleeping in a little bit more and, giving myself a slower morning, which has been great. But on Tuesdays. I still run with my friends. And so I woke up, my alarm woke me up at five 20 yesterday and my brain immediately started throwing a temper tantrum. My brain immediately went to, no, I don't wanna go. I don't wanna do this like that. Whining three-year-old toddler throwing a temper tantrum. And that's sometimes how our brains are. And I think it's really important that, there's nothing wrong with you when that happens. If that happens. Every single time, then we can look at something, right? But there's always going to be times where you just don't feel like going. You don't feel like doing the thing, but we have to do it anyway, or we get to do it anyway. I guess I should say too. I know, especially those people that are listening that are on our team. That I've gone through my programs where we talk about how to rewire our thoughts. One of the big things that we talk about is this idea of shifting from I have to, to I get to, I, instead of, I have to go for a run. It's, I get to go for a run today. And that simple word change, that simple shift in the way that we think about and talk about what we have to do or what we get to do makes a huge world of difference because instead of this then becoming an obligation of I have to do this thing, saying I get to makes it seem like a choice. Because it is a choice. We always have a choice, and that's part of what I'm going through right now too with this situation of part of it feels like it's forced on top of me, right? Like we can go back and forth and argue about this or debate this, but it's not like I planned on this mold. It's not like I obviously chose this to happen. I would never have chosen this, but I get to choose how I deal with this. I get to choose, how I wanna move forward with this. And that's really. What running keeps teaching us day after day, like even in those days where our brains wanna throw a temper tantrum and we don't wanna go out, get out the door. We can remind ourselves that I get to meet up with three awesome other ladies to go run and to push our bodies and to challenge ourselves. Like what a gift, what a blessing that my body's able to do that. That's definitely not what my brain was saying at five 30 in the morning, of course. But we can continue to reframe these things and. One of the other beautiful things that running helps us to do is to build that muscle of just take the next step. And this is one of the things that I think is really important in any area of our life. When we feel like we don't wanna do it or we just wanna shut it down. We just have to take the next step. And sometimes I know, like part of what is making me feel overwhelmed with this whole situation is when I zoom out and I look at all the things that I'm gonna have to do, I'm gonna have to, now they're still in the middle of the remediation, right? So they're still tearing things out and dealing with the mold and getting that outta the house. So once that's done. Then we have to have a contractor. I have to deal with the insurance. I have to design a new bathroom and pick out all the choices, which I can see as something really heavy and stressful. Or I can choose to see that as fun and exciting because now I get to design a whole new bathroom, right? It's, I have to design a whole new bathroom and pick out all these things. Or now I get to design a whole new bathroom. There's a big difference there. And then I think about, than dealing with the contractor and the rebuild and the timeline, because right now it's the summertime, so it's not that big of a deal that the four people in my house are all sharing one bathroom. But when school starts, it's gonna be a little bit more inconvenient that I have two teenage daughters that are. Normally they share a bathroom, and then Kevin and I obviously have our master bath, but now all four of us are gonna be sharing my master bath. And I don't have a big bathroom. It's a pretty small master bath, so the, I know that they're gonna be annoyed. I know that they're gonna, it's going to cause some more fighting, like I should say. I know that. But I can anticipate we all right. Like when you have teenage daughters and they feel like they don't have their own space too. I get it. That's how I'm feeling right now too. I feel like I don't have my own space either. I, like I said, am literally in my closet recording this so I can lean back then on running of okay, instead of trying to zoom out and see the big picture, which. It can be helpful at times, but I'm noticing right now that zoom out is making me feel more overwhelmed. So right now I need to zoom in and just focus on the next right thing. Just take the next step. What do I have to do today or tomorrow to keep moving this thing forward in a timely fashion? And I think that this is very different than ignoring the need for recovery, right? There are some times that. We keep pushing ourselves and we just push through even though our body and our mind truly need. Rest and recovery. So that is not what I'm talking about here.'cause right now I know like I'm fine physically, I'm fine mentally, I'm fine. I just feel like I don't wanna deal with it. So it's not that I'm ignoring my body's need for rest and recovery because I did that. I've been resting, I've been sleeping a little bit more. I've been reframing things and rewiring things. I've been feeling the feelings.'cause all of those things are really important and. We have to just keep going sometimes, right? So sometimes, like right now, it's just discomfort and it's just overwhelm. So I need to keep going through it because I'm not going to let the overwhelm win. I'm not going to let this discomfort of this situation win because it's not true pain, right? We don't wanna push. Pain but discomfort. This is part of growth. And so I ask myself, okay, what is this all preparing me for? What is this helping me to practice? That can sometimes be helpful also what lessons am I supposed to learn from this? That can help me a lot of times to zoom, zoom out again in that bigger picture and kind of look okay in the big picture of things. Is this that big of a deal? No, it's really not. It's going to be a month or a couple months of our lives, depending on how long this whole process takes. And oftentimes, we'll probably, down the road we'll probably look back and laugh about it and recognize like how ridiculous this whole situation was. But right now it does feel really heavy. And so I am focusing on the next right step, not the whole remodel, not, the whole. Big picture thing, but just the next phone call or the next small cleanup that I can do. And sometimes if we wanna take this and apply it to running, maybe it's just the next run. Maybe. Maybe. If you think about a big goal that you have right now, say you're training for your first half marathon or a 5K, whatever it is, whatever goal that you're trying to work towards, and it feels heavy. It feels big. You feel like. You're never gonna get there. Just focus on this goal right now, what you're doing. Maybe it's today, maybe it's just the next run. Maybe it's the next strength training workout. Maybe it's the next week. Maybe you can, zoom out a little bit and be able to take a look at, okay, what do I have to do this week? That's okay. You don't have to always be looking at the big picture and sometimes it. Looking at the big picture can put us into freeze mode because overwhelm is a very suffocating thing. Sometimes when we feel overwhelmed, our brain and our body oftentimes just wants to freeze, wants to curl up, wants to go, wants it all to just go away. And so when you know, basically the two tools that I can offer you that I've been using. Regularly during this whole process are, like I said, the zooming in and the zooming out, and on different days and even different times of the day, one of those tools is going to be better for me than the other, and so I, I use them interchangeably, and so I would love to offer those for you as well. If you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, whether it's with your training or maybe you're dealing with an injury right now and you're thinking, oh my God, it's going to take six weeks, eight weeks, three months, whatever it might be, depending on what you've got going on. Or maybe you even have an injury and you don't even know how long, and so your brain wants to go to, oh my gosh, what's the next three months, six months, year, gonna look like? If that feels overwhelming, focus back in, zoom back in. Okay. What do you have to do right now? Maybe you need to make a, an appointment with a physical therapist. Maybe you need to reach out to a coach that knows what they're doing to help get you back into running safely and effectively. Maybe you just need to go out and you need to actually walk on your runs, and you have to get over that mental hurdle of okay I don't really wanna walk, but I know it is better for my body for me to do a run walk on my way back to recovery. Recovery at this point. So it's staying present and choosing what part of the picture that you wanna look at, because sometimes when you look at the full picture, it can lead us to spiral. And we don't wanna do that because again, when we spiral, we get into overwhelm. And when we get into overwhelm, we just freeze and we don't get into action and we need to be in action sometimes. Sometimes we just need to push through, right? So if your life feels like a construction zone right now in any area, I want you to know that I see you because I'm living it too, and you've handled hard things before. You've gotten through them. Remember that, and you can do this. Whatever it is that you're dealing with, you can get through this. And pushing through doesn't mean that you're ignoring how hard it is. It means that you are. Taking action anyway, that you can acknowledge the discomfort. You can acknowledge how hard it is. You can acknowledge the challenge of it all and take action anyway, because that's going to make you stronger and more resilient on the other side of it. And maybe that's something that you can do in your workout, right? This technique that I just talked about today of zooming in and zooming out, that works in workouts. Also, like today, yesterday I did a workout where I was doing, like a minute hard and say you're doing quarter repeats, right? I won't, I don't need to explain my exact workout, but say you're doing quarter repeats and you've got. Nine of them, or eight of them, or 12 of them. And when you think about that whole workout, it seems very overwhelming. Just focus on one at a time, zoom in, focus on one at a time, right? So maybe that one workout is feeling really heavy. Zoom out and look at your whole training plan. Okay I only have one speed workout this week, and then I get to enjoy some other easy runs. Great. Or maybe you really like strength training. Like me, focus on your strength training exercises, right? And just know that all of this is part of the plan. And like another thing that I did too today is I was just feeling a lot of emotions and I was, I couldn't even name it. And I, so I went for a walk and I went for a walk around. We have a little lake by our house and I just started walking and it was hot and I just let myself, my body sweat and I just allowed whatever needed to come up for me. I didn't have headphones, I didn't have anything with me. I didn't have anybody with me. And I just allowed myself to be in it and it, what I recognized is I was actually angry and I don't get angry a lot. I don't feel that emotion, anger a lot, but I was feeling very angry and then I was. Like mad that I was feeling angry, like I was angry about the anger. It's like we have these emotions and then a lot of times we judge ourselves on top of them, and that just complicates the situation even more. Like when I'm feeling overwhelmed and then I judge myself for feeling overwhelmed or. Confused or whatever the emotion, the uncomfortable emotion is that we don't really like. Then a lot of times we put another secondary emotion on top of that, whether it's judgment or anger or guilt or shame. There's a lot of other things that we can then layer on top and that just makes the situation even worse. So using the zoom in and zoom out technique. Is really helpful. Whether that's in a workout or in real life, dealing with some situation that you really don't wanna deal with, it can be really helpful. So that's pretty much what I have for you guys today. I hope that this was helpful. I hope that you could connect to it. But this was just what was on my heart and I wanted to be raw and real and let you know that. Sometimes it feels like a lot and it's our job to just push through and keep going. So take a moment to breathe. Think about the next thing, the next right step that you wanna do. There's a song in Frozen two. I'm not like, I wouldn't call myself a Disney person, but I love the movie Frozen and I love the movie Frozen too. And I love the music in them. And there's a song. And frozen two and honest things. It, and it's about taking the next right step. Like I just have to take, she was at a point where she just wanted to shut it all down too, and we just have to take the next right step sometimes. And so whether that's in a workout where you just focus on, okay, I just have to get to that stop sign. I have, just have to get to the next light pole. I just have to do one more quarter repeat. I need to just run one more mile. Five more minutes, one more minute. A lot of times I'll tell myself I can do anything for a minute, right? Sometimes we just have to take that next right step, because once we take that one, then there will be another one. And another one after that. And if we just keep taking that next right step, we're going to get to where we need to be and know that you're not alone in this process. Like we're all just figuring this out together. And if you need help, come reach out. I would love for you to send me a message on Instagram. You can reach me at real life runners, or I actually have my own personal account called it's at Dr. Angie Brown. I would love for you to reach out and let me know what you thought about this episode, because this is a very different episode than what we normally do, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it. But yeah, that's what I got for you guys today. So I hope you are all having a wonderful summer. If you are in a heavy season, I'm here with you and we're gonna get through this. No doubt. And we're gonna be able to support each other throughout all of it, and we're gonna come out stronger and more resilient on the other side with a beautiful bathroom to show, right? What are we gonna get at the end? Because there's always something, and we might not be able to see it yet, like I have no idea what this bathroom is going to look like, but I know that we're going to have a new bathroom and I know that it's going to be beautiful and I know that it's going to have been worth it. I'm gonna decide right now that going through all of this process is going to make that end result worth it, and sometimes that means it looks different than you expected. Maybe you don't hit the exact PR that you were hoping for, but you worked through something really hard and you came back to yourself in a way that you didn't expect. It's all worth it. We just have to keep going. We just have to push through and just take the next right step. So if you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to write a review. I would love for you to share it with a friend, and I would love to hear from you over on Instagram at Dr. Angie Brown or at real life runners. And as always, thanks for joining us. This has been The Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 418. Now, get out there and run your life.