How Do You Caption Your Life?

/ Jess

The other night I posted something on my Instagram feed that seemed to strike a chord with everyone, so I wanted to share it here. It was about how we have a tendency to put ourselves down, even if we don’t realize it.

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You see, too often I see these great pictures from amazingly inspirational folks, but the captions say things like “I’m so slow, but I did it!” or “it wasn’t as fast as I wanted but…” And it got me thinking: What purpose does that negativity serve?

None!

I even caught myself as I captioned the pic up there. I had run 4 hard miles after coming back from a stretch of not running and struggling through Sunday’s 10-miler, and my per-mile pace was a minute slower than I had hoped. And I started out my caption with “Well it sucked and was slow as hell, but…” and I thought, I’ve captioned almost every running picture with something negative like that for almost a month! Wtf?!

Now, aiming for a goal pace is one thing, but constantly putting yourself down and judging every run harshly because you’re not “fast”? That’s wrong. Take my 12:44/mile pace for example. To some folks 12:44/mile is slow as molasses. But to others it might be the ultimate in speed! And regardless of the number, I was hauling ass! I put in a hell of an effort and left it all on the mill. So I changed my perspective and patted myself on the back for a job well done. And wouldn’t you know it: I felt stronger! Instead of dreading my next run and praying that I’m not going to be “slow” again, I’m just going for it.

Now it’s your turn. I challenge you to rethink the way you caption things, whether it’s your runs, or your body, or even your life in general. Because in the end, the only thing that matters is not your opinion, but your effort!

15 thoughts on “How Do You Caption Your Life?”

  1. Beautiful insight! Yes, we always tend to inject the negative comment even into our hard-fought accomplishments. It would be an interesting challenge to go an entire day without uttering one single negative thought or comment about ourselves. Let’s all try that. The day is still young. It’s a good day to start!

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  6. Amen, amen! There are days when running even a MILE feels like forever to me but I get out there (or well, on the treadmill, as the case may be) and I do it. And that means A LOT. For me, it means everything because there was once a time when I wouldn’t do that at all. So let’s be kind to ourselves and embrace the fact that we’re DOING IT. And that counts for a whole heck of a lot. (BTW, our paces are very similar which further proves the point that we need to run together!)

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    • Exactly! You’ve got the perfect perspective – look at how far you’ve come and appreciate that every step takes you further and makes you better, no matter how “slow” you may think!
      And I would *love* to run together! I need a pace twin – I love running with my local friends but they’re all normally a bit faster than me and I don’t like to slow them down! 😛

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  7. I love this post so much! You are right. And I just beat myself up over something similar. I ran my mile splits slower than I’d like but….NO. I freaking RAN fast mile splits. Especially compared to when I started running. Thank you for this motivational post. Your encouragement is rockin’! Keep running happy Jess!

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