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Believe Harder
Sherrie Shepherd
When I was a newer runner, I was content to just be running whatever it was I could run. I didn’t own a Garmin, Strava didn’t exist, and I had no idea what my pace was. I just drove around to map a course and then went out and ran it. Sometimes on my own, sometimes with friends. When I decided to run my first marathon, I didn’t have a time goal, I was just happy to cover the distance. Over time, I started to think more about running for time, and setting goals. I had friends who qualified for Boston, but it seemed like such a distant place for me. I never even considered the possibility that it was something I could ever do. So why try? I loved running and I was happy with what I was doing.
The switch flipped for me after I gave birth to my last baby. When he was 6 months old, I trained for and ran my 6th full marathon at the St. George marathon. To that point, I had never run a marathon in under 4 hours. But I believed I was a good, strong runner. My younger sister and brother both signed up to run with me. It was their first full marathon. My sister and I are close in age, and close in heart, and we have always been somewhat competitive with each other. That day she beat my time by over 20 minutes, beat my personal record (which I had achieved a few years earlier), and ran a sub-4 hour race. Before me. I was so thrilled for her achievement. But, it lit a fire under me. She commented in passing about training the following year to try to qualify for Boston. It seemed so big. Huge! And nearly impossible. But I wanted it so badly!
I started training harder than I’d ever trained before. All I needed to do was believe I was capable of achieving that goal and hold on tight to that belief. That belief is what fueled me and motivated me to keep training hard. I remember some of my running friends commenting that whenever the topic of Boston came up, I would get a grin on my face and start running faster. I hadn’t even noticed. It was subconscious. My next marathon the following year earned me, not only, a Boston Qualifying time, but a 29 minute PR! This experience of believing and then working for it inspired more and more goals in my mind. What more can I do, if I just believe it hard enough?
“Believe that you can be and are the person you will be after achieving that goal. It is possible to be that person today. Right now. In this moment.“
On our social media posts, we frequently use the hashtag #believeharder. It has become a mantra of ours that we want to share with all of our followers.
What does “Believe Harder” even mean?
To me, it means taking it to the next level. In running, in training, in life, we follow the schedule, we show up, we do what needs to be done. But hard work isn’t the only factor. We have to believe that all of our efforts are going to reap the results we hope for. To Believe means to envision ourselves crossing that finish line. To Believe Harder, we must become the person we think we will be when we achieve our goal.
One of our mentors, Brooke Castillo, puts it so beautifully. “The most important thing when it comes to a goal is to identify as the person that believes in the achievement of it. Committing to believing something is more important than actually achieving it. Thinking the way you will think, feeling the way you will feel, and here is why: the only reason why you want that thing is because of how you believe you will feel in the achieving of it. And in order to achieve that thing, you need to feel that feeling now.”
“All great successes are built on a pile of failures. So when you think about committing to that thing that you want so much, you have to recognize that you have to keep committing to it when all the evidence is to the contrary. When all the people tell you that it’s not possible. When you keep reminding yourself that you’ve never done it before. When your brain keeps telling you that you’re not good enough and you’re not capable and you don’t have the time, you don’t have the money and you’re never going to be able to do it. That’s when believing is the most important, and that’s when most of us stop believing. Most of us believe in the how, and when the how doesn’t work the way that we want it to work, then we stop believing in the whole goal in the first place.”
Whether your goal is in racing, daily health, financial, business, parenting or personal, the concept is the same. Believe that you can be and are the person you will be after achieving that goal. It is possible to be that person today. Right now. In this moment. You can feel that person’s feelings, think that person’s thoughts, believe that person’s beliefs. Because you ARE that person.
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