After you watch this, you’ll ask yourself two questions: Who is this man and why am I now willing to die for him?
How I found this video is a long story. 26.2 miles long to be exact.
As a disclaimer: I’m not “sporty”. But, because I am a great indoorswoman, if I weren’t a runner, I would be completely sedentary.
I am a runner because I run. But before I ran a marathon, I was a marathoner because I said I was. Most of finishing a marathon is mental. And your mental training starts with learning to lie with a causal aplomb matched only by televangelists and the tabloid press.
“I am a marathoner,” you say, even if you can only run for 30 seconds before gagging into some shrubbery.
“I am a marathoner,” you say while pretending that $35 is a reasonable price for socks.
You say this casually to strangers, working it, non sequitur, into the amount of conversation required to buy the paper and hoping that no one you actually know is standing behind you. You say this, even though at first it sounds indistinguishable from saying “I am Napoleon”.
You say this because behavior motivates attitude. Faking it starts the momentum. But that alone won’t get you over the line. Once the momentum gets going, you are required to have the unquestioning faith of a North Korean General.
An article of your faith can be, say, that the first time your Supreme Leader picked up a golf club, he shot a 38-under par round that included 11 holes in one. Or – more handy for a marathon – an article of your faith can be that when the time comes where everything is telling you to stop running and drop by the side of the road, you will simply refuse.
I’m not one for motivational aids usually involving posters of zebra migrations or “secrets” involving minimal effort and deep thoughts. I’m also not one for teams or sports (see disclaimer above). So I can’t really explain why I love this video so much, except to say that this is what self belief sounds like and it works. As Mr Christopher Wallace said, ‘Stay far from timid. Only make moves when your heart’s in it. And live the phrase Sky’s The Limit’.
While I don’t endorse anyone to “arrive violently” or “rip the heart from [their] enemy”, I did cross the finish line powered by my knowledge that ‘my heart and my mind would carry my body when my limbs were too weak’. Not everyone’s a runner. I get it. Some people like a full complement of toenails. That’s cool. But faking it and mad determination to keep putting one put one foot in front of the other are going to come in handy, eventually, in everyone’s life. Anyone can do it and everyone will need it. So start now. Watch this video and be mighty. Because you are a champion.