Celebrating Your Own Journey

I’ve come an extremely long way in my training and racing over the past three years, but I still struggle to truly appreciate and celebrate what my body is capable of doing.  Even after covering 70.3 miles in a single day using nothing but my own physical power, it’s still so easy to discount my accomplishments because I, like many others, naturally start comparing myself to other people.  The thoughts in my head run something like this… My Half Ironman time was so SLOW.  It was ONLY a Half.  I’m such a SLOW runner.  I wish I was as fast or as fit or as [insert adjective here] as [insert person’s name here].  

Three years ago, I could barely run a mile without frequent walk breaks, I hadn’t swam since I was a kid (never competitively), and biking was just something I did casually and infrequently with Zach.  This summer I did my first Half Ironman, yet I find myself telling others about my accomplishment with caveats about how slow I was, etc.

This endless comparison of myself to others is absolutely ridiculous & it’s something I’m trying hard to break myself of doing because I realize that it’s not beneficial.  We’re all on our own individual journeys and we each have amazing bodies (including our brains, which I often think are forgotten in conversations like this) that are capable of doing different things – whether that’s running a 100-mile race, completing a 5K walk, or being a brilliant individual who uses those smarts to help other people – every accomplishment, no matter how big or small it seems, is equally worthy of celebrating.

So, next time you feel like you might be starting to compare yourself to someone else I encourage you to try to take a step back and just remember how amazing you are because of all the things you’ve accomplished, whatever those things may be – you are on your own unique journey that is absolutely worthy of celebrating!