”...be aware of the tendency to live up to someone else’s expectation.”
“Anyone can do anything for 3 weeks. Take it through 4 weeks, and you have yourself a new habit.”
“The late George Sheehan, one of the running community’s greatest philosophers, wrote that we are all athletes. Some of us are just in training and some of us are not. You may have spent your entire life as an athlete who was not in training. But that doesn’t sentence you to a life of sedentary confinement.”
”...the limits we imposed on ourselves weren’t our limits.”
“Even the last-place finisher beat everyone who stayed home.”
“In a life without limits, it isn’t achieving that matters, it’s trying.”
“Postponing the joy of the journey until you reach your destination is the worst possible plan. Waiting to celebrate until you’ve gotten to where you want to go means missing all the wonderful places you pass along the way.”
“Running is about now. Each step teaches us and transports us. Each footstrike carries us closer to who we really are.”
“The miracle is that you have everything you need to change your life at your disposal right now. You don’t need to be any smarter or thinner or more disciplined than you are at this very moment in order to accept the grace that an active life gives you.”
“The miracle is that I locked away everything I had previously thought about myself and my abilities and showed up.”
“Courage is often confused with the absence of fear.”
“The people who love us the most are sometimes the same people who don’t want us to change.”
“A young child has to be taught to be afraid… Children are not afraid to fail. Children are afraid to accept that who they are right now is all they are going to be. Do you have a the courage of a child? Do you have the courage to fail? Are you more afraid that who you are is all you’ll ever be than of the struggle to find out what you can be? If so, you are ready to be a penguin, just like me.“
“There is no failure so devastating as the fear of failure that we create in our own minds.”
“Beginning today, you can become your own best cheerleader. Beginning today, you can look at yourself as a flawed but hopeful character ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Beginning today, you can find not only the courage to start but also the courage to change.”
“You were born to move. You were born to walk and run and chase. You were born to be an athlete. No matter how far out of shape you think you are, there is still a road back. It may be long. It maybe fraught with setbacks and frustrations, but it’s there. All you need to do is take that first step. That that one step toward a new you. The take the next and the next.”
