Building Consistency with Jill Angie
Hello there beautiful humans and welcome back to the show! I am so happy you’re here and boy are y’all in for a treat today. It’s the beginning of a new year and I thought it would do us ALL some good to bring on a dear friend of mine who inspires me like no other, and I just know will inspire you too.
Today’s guest is Jill Angie, the founder of Not Your Average Runner, a badass community of women breaking the stereotypes of what it means to be a runner. She is an author, a life coach, and all around badass helping thousands of women all around the world silence their inner mean girl, build their strength, and grow self-confidence in ways they never imagined.
In this episode, we’ll chat about:
How language impacts our lives & challenging beliefs about who can be a runner (spoiler alert: ANYONE can!)
The good & bad of New Year resolutions and how to reframe your goals
Tips for building consistency and confidence
Okay Climbers, before I let Jill introduce herself I need to spill the beans on how I manifested this friendship with her. About a year into my health journey, after learning that all of the “truths” I knew about myself and my abilities were total BS, I decided I wanted to continue to challenge the identities that I had embraced for myself. One of which being the lie that, “I am not a runner.” If that’s a belief you have about yourself, hold on to your seat folks because we’re about to unpack it.
Anyhow, I had a lot of work to do to challenge this limiting belief and that is when I discovered the Not Your Average Runner Podcast that a friend had shared with me. I fell in love with it! Jill was witty, called me out for my crappy thinking, cursed like a sailor, and challenged me in such impactful ways. She didn’t know that I existed yet, but she was absolutely one of my closest friends and personal coach, speaking goodness into my earbuds while I was on my walks, jogs, and attempted runs.
One day I decided to work up the nerve to reach out to her on Instagram and TOTALLY fangirled when she responded! Basically, we’ve been friends ever since and I’m so grateful for it. Without further ado, please welcome Jill to the show!
MEET JILL ANGIE
Jill describes herself as a plus-sized middle-aged woman who helps other plus-sized middle aged women build confidence and feel differently about themselves. She wants them to realize they are not too fat, not too old, and not too out of shape to do what they want to do, especially running.
She wasn’t always a runner, though. Her professional career started in the pharmaceutical industry where she worked for twenty years. While she was there she had a lot of thoughts about things she wanted to change about herself in order to be happy. Spoiler alert, none of those things even when achieved actually “fixed” her.
She hated running in high school but started running in her late 20s with the goal to lose weight, but instead realized she just really enjoyed it; however, she felt really ashamed about how she looked and how slow she was, so she would do it late at night after dark and didn’t tell anyone. Moving her body brought her a lot of joy even though she had a lot of mental baggage with it.
She ended up hiring a personal trainer after signing up for a 3-day 60 mile breast cancer walk. That personal trainer helped her shift her beliefs from thinking she needed to be smaller to be worthy to thinking she was okay just as she was while working to get stronger and focusing on the mental aspect of it. Within three years of working with her, Jill quit her job and opened a personal training studio. She knew she was meant to help other women, too.
CAN ANYONE BE A RUNNER?
The short answer… YES. I myself used to be someone who despised running with every fiber of my being. I believed deep in my core that I was not meant to be and could not EVER be someone that defined herself as a runner. But, I was wrong.
Jill says there is some confusion out there that in order to call yourself a runner, you have to be thin, fast, and always run without stopping. One of the things Jill teaches her clients, though, is the run-walk interval approach. It’s a great and accessible way for people of all body types, ages, and abilities to become runners without feeling hard, punishing, or overwhelming.
If you find yourself challenging the belief that doing the run-walk interval method doesn't make you a runner… Jill reminds us that ultrarunners (runners who run 50+ miles) use this approach as well! If an ultrarunner can do it and consider themselves a runner, so can you.
PERFECTIONISM, NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS, & REFRAMING GOALS
If you find yourself stuck in perfectionist black or white thinking, you might be keeping yourself stuck. Some people believe that their perfectionism is simply holding themselves to a higher standard, but in reality it simply leads to a small, frustrated life where you simply don’t try.
Jill feels that she would rather live a life where she allowed herself to be messy, imperfect, and try all the things to see what she really likes.
Jill has strong opinions about New Year’s resolutions, well, she jokingly says she has strong opinions about everything.
In her opinion, New Year’s resolutions aren’t inherently bad. The problem is our thinking around them and the expectation that we have to be perfect or quit. Instead, set those big audacious goals and even if you fail spectacularly at them, look at the byproduct of your effort while reaching for the goal. THAT’S where true growth is. It’s about the journey and the person you become along the way, not the goal. That’s just a moment in time.
Be mindful of the language you use and reframe your goals to encompass the work that goes into it, rather than putting that moment of achievement as the goal. It shifts your belief in yourself and allows you to look at it in different ways that don’t make you feel frustrated if you don’t achieve it.
HOW LANGUAGE IMPACTS OUR LIVES
Our language, whether spoken or just internal, is EVERYTHING. The sentences we think drive our emotions, and our emotions drive our actions.
For example… If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think is, “Ugh, I don’t want to go for a run today,” you may feel resentful. When you feel resentful, the actions that you take likely won’t be putting on your shoes and walking out the doors, but maybe instead saying, “Screw it! I’m sleeping in. I deserve this.”
Instead, try reframing it or having a backup thought to go with it. If your first thought is, “Ugh, I don’t want to go for a run today,” try following it with the thought, “and that’s okay, I can still go.” It will feel more empowering and more likely to inspire action.
Running is 80% mental, at least. The magic isn’t in the training plan, but the magic is in the thinking.
TIPS FOR BUILDING CONSISTENCY
Start with compassion. If you’ve been inconsistent in the past, there is nothing magic about January 1st. You’re still going to have all the same thoughts and feelings you had on December 31st. Decide this is the year you’re going to be consistent, you’re going to mess it up, but that’s okay because you’re going to learn from it. Don’t expect perfection, create space for messing it up.
Get curious. When you mess up (which you will), ask yourself why. What were you thinking that drove you to not take action? This is an opportunity to learn, grow, and do better with time.
Find understanding. After getting curious about your thinking and what created it, see if there is an alternative way to think instead. Create a counterproposal for the thoughts that lead you to inaction.
FAILURE IS THE SECRET TO SUCCESS
The biggest thing getting in the way of our success isn’t failure. Instead, it’s our unwillingness to fail or inability to recognize failure as the most important part of the growth process.
My wish for you this year is that you fail. I hope you fabulously fail forward in pursuit of your dreams. That is the ONLY way you’ll build the strength and skills to achieve them.
So, if you failed today, go little rockstar. You’re right on track. Keep going.
BUILDING CONFIDENCE
We are often mistaken in thinking that we need to succeed before we feel confident. But that’s twisted. If we need the confidence to be good at something, then we’re never going to succeed.
Instead, Jill likes to think of confidence as an emotion she feels as a result of her thinking. It isn’t necessarily the belief that she’ll succeed, but the belief that she’s got her own back, that she’s a worthy human, and that she has a lot to offer. It’s more about who you are as a person, not the belief that you’re going to be successful at everything.
Try these thoughts for yourself:
I am smart.
I am resilient.
I will take care of myself.
I have my own back.
If these thoughts feel hard to believe, start by asking yourself what tiny piece of that you can believe. If you want to believe that you always have your own back, think back to a time in the past that you DID have your own back. Look at examples to start building evidence and belief in yourself.
NOTE: Changing the way you think and believe in yourself is really a matter of practicing thinking those thoughts on purpose over and over again. The beliefs you have about yourself weren’t given to you at birth, you learned them over time. They were strengthened with repetitive thinking. Be gentle with yourself, start small, and practice new thoughts on purpose with baby steps.
START SMALL
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million more times: the magic is in the baby steps.
When it comes to resolutions, what is one you can make that you KNOW you can do without question? Choose something that is below your “drama threshold,” the place in your brain where you start to make a long list of excuses.
START RUNNING WITH JILL ANGIE
Jill’s goal is to teach one million women to start running. She’s taught about 2,000 so far, so only 998,000 to go!
If you’d like to be one of those women, the doors are currently open through January 17th to join the Rebel Runner Roadmap program, which I can’t recommend enough!
The Rebel Runner Roadmap is a 30 day course for anyone new to running, coming back to running after time off, or struggling to make progress in their running. The course teaches you the technicalities of running as well as the mindset tools to help you stay consistent, create motivation, and build confidence in your running practice.
To join the program, click here.
To tune in to my guest episode on Jill’s Not Your Average Runner Podcast, click here.