Interaction with a new colleague of mine has left me pretty frustrated and exhausted recently. In my eyes, he’s good at what he does. He’s on the ball and uber-efficient. But he doesn’t see it. He hides behind his computer, he lacks confidence and when I rave about his work, he refuses to acknowledge it. He’ll make excuses and shrug off every compliment he receives.
In a way, he reminds me of a lot of myself whenever I mention my running. I must be the most insecure runner I know. I keep making excuses for my pace. I tell people I’m more of a ‘jogger’ but in my head, I know I’m running as best I can. When people ask me what distance I ran, I’ll say “Agh, only the 21km race”. Only?
Just recently, I was chatting to a newbie runner who was complaining about her slow pace and I said, “You can’t possibly run slower than I do!” When she said she ran 1 km in just over 7 minutes, I said, “well, it take me over 8 minutes.” It was a lie.
Yes, so my pace is often 8 minutes but that’s over 21.1 kms. In shorter distances I can manage to keep up a faster pace. So why do I do that? Why do I constantly run myself down? Lately, I keep thinking that other runners I’ve met avoid me. That they dread running with me. I’m even too scared to ask to run with them.
So when my colleague goes on and on, I tell him I don’t want to hear his negative talk. I tell him he’s talking nonsense and try make him see just how great he is and to stop comparing himself to others and think he’s not good enough. Because he is. So what’s wrong with me?
*Images: Google
Filed under: My Feelings, My Thoughts, My Work Tagged: confidence, insecure runner, negative talk, negative thoughts, running insecurities, slow runner
