Gratitude Power for Runners and Walkers: Racing Veteran, #1

By Kirk Mahoney

Updated July 13, 2014, to Edition 2

"What is your biggest frustration as a runner or walker?" Ask other runners and walkers this question, and you will get answers such as speedwork, injury recovery, and hydrating properly. Gratitude Power for Runners and Walkers shows that gratitude is the fastest path to preventing or eliminating these and any other frustrations that you may face as a runner or walker. And author Kirk Mahoney teaches many lessons about gratitude in this powerful book, including:

* How to tell whether you run or walk with meaning

* How to know whether you underrate gratitude

* The many benefits of gratitude to your running or walking

* Ten techniques for building gratitude daily

Beyond these lessons, Gratitude Power for Runners and Walkers is filled with more than 100 chapters of gratitude statements that are neatly subdivided into five categories. When combined with the book's gratitude-building techniques, these 1,000-some gratitude statements will help you to use the power of gratitude to put more happiness into your running or walking!

• Language: English
• Publisher: SpryFeet.com
• Release date: Jul 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781386528319

Kirk Mahoney

I believe that we have a moral duty to be happy around others and that our happiness positively affects our running and walking. So, I write books under the SpryFeet.com imprint to help readers to become happier runners and walkers. Join the SpryFeet.com Readers Club to get ... * A free ebook * Sneak peeks at his future books * Entry into his birthday-month drawings * Opportunities to beta-read his future books * Weekly "Single Biggest Question" newsletter * Get More Clarity, Get More Happiness guide Join Today! http://www.spryfeet.com/free

Book preview

Chapter 1: You Are Not Alone

Have you ever known someone who said that he or she accomplished or achieved something all by himself or herself? A person like that feels and constantly tells people, when asked, Oh, yeah. I did all of this by myself. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. When you look closely, though, at the life of a person like this, you find that he or she had a helping hand along the way ... or many helping hands along the way.

And, sometimes you may have met someone like this and you may have believed what the person claimed, especially when you were younger and it made sense, as in, Yeah, that’s what they talk about in movies or in books. So, yeah, I believe that you did it all by yourself. Here in the United States, there’s a strong social pressure for each of us to say, Yeah, I did it by myself. It’s self-reliance.

And, while there may a lot of truth to these claims for some of us, in terms of that pioneer spirit, I suspect that you may have also met people whom you got to know over days, weeks, and months, and you actually saw behind the curtains. And, what you saw was that these supposedly self-reliant folks were getting a lot of help from a lot of people. Or, if you talk to their long-term acquaintances – I won’t say necessarily friends but instead their long-term acquaintances – those acquaintances will tell you, Oh, yeah. I helped him for months ... or for years, or, "She lived with me rent-free for six months while she was quote-unquote pulling herself up by her bootstraps." You discover that these supposedly self-reliant folks have no sense of gratitude. They truly believe that they did it all by themselves.

Sometimes we are not grateful, or don’t show gratitude, because we believe that our success is something that we alone have created. We’ve earned it. We’ve worked for it. And, so we assume that there is nothing for which to be grateful. It’s our success. It’s what we have done. For what is there to be thankful when we have worked hard and achieved something? It’s our success, after all.

But, you have to appreciate that we don’t do it all ourselves.

Lack of gratitude comes from the lack of recognizing how many other factors – besides us alone – were involved in our success. We fail to recognize that our success was not something that we accomplished by ourselves. In reality, much had to be in place for our success to occur. It was not all our own doing. Although we get the success, we alone are not totally, 100% behind that success. We had to be ready for it, and every aspect of our lives led to where we are today.

If you study a lot of successful people and you ask them, How did you get to where you are today?, they will reply with answers such as these:

• I was performing the right activities.

• A lot of other people helped me along the way.

• I was in the right places at the right times.

• A lot of things supported me.

• I supported my body so that it could support me.

When you understand that overnight success is not overnight success, and when you understand that you are not alone, then you appreciate that there is a lot for which to be grateful. And, this applies just as much to our successes with running or walking as it does to any other successes that we enjoy.

Chapter 2: Do You Run or Walk with Meaning?

Dr. Wayne Dyer plays himself in the movie The Shift, in which he talks about how everyone eventually has a shift in his or her life from a focus on achievement to a focus on meaning.

When you started running or walking in earnest, you probably had significant goals – think focus on achievement – such as:

• Complete your first 5K.

• Lose ten pounds.

• Become able to keep up with your children or grandchildren.

• Become stronger.

• Become mentally tougher.

• Relieve stress from a job or home situation.

• Run or walk in two races a year.

• Protect yourself from a familial disease.

You may have achieved all of your initial goals and then set new goals for your running or walking, such as:

• Become able to run or walk for three hours at a time instead of one hour at a time.

• Complete a longer-distance race, such as completing a 10K instead of a 5K, or completing a marathon instead of a half-marathon.

• Lose a hundred pounds.

• Complete one race every season or every month.

• Run or walk in all fifty states across the USA, or run or walk on every continent.

• Run or walk a 10K on a cruise ship.

• Decrease your chip-time in half-marathons by ten minutes.

There truly is an infinite number of possible goals that you could put on this list. What happens for many runners and walkers is that they constantly identify new goals as soon as they achieve their previous goals.

Goals are great. Borrowing a phrase from the TV program The Six-Million-Dollar Man, they can make us better, stronger, faster. Eventually the goal-oriented approach can become like a treadmill, where you can never reach the end because there is no end. This is where Dyer challenges viewers of The Shift to consider the meaning behind the activities in their lives.

If you have found that your running or walking has become stale or has lost some of the joy that it formerly gave you, then it could be that your running or walking is caught on a goals treadmill. This is not to say that you will no longer have running or walking goals, but there is a way to get off this treadmill – by focusing on the meaning behind your running or walking.

Your initial reaction may be that there is no meaning to your runs or walks. But, finding the meaning in them can be as simple as thinking of the reasons why you run or walk. For example:

• You run or walk to set a good example for your children or grandchildren.

• You run or walk to raise money for a charity that matters deeply to you.

• You run or walk to raise awareness for a cause that means a lot to you.

• You run or walk to connect yourself with more people in your neighborhood and around the world.

• You run or walk to increase your joy, which you know is contagiously good for everyone you meet.

• You run or walk to stay healthy.

Do any of these reasons resonate with you? Or, do any of these reasons stimulate other ideas about why you run or walk? Then you do run or walk with meaning, and you know your way off the goals treadmill.

On the other hand, if none of these reasons resonate with you, then you may be underrating gratitude.

Chapter 3: Do You Underrate Gratitude?

Regular feelings of gratitude activate the Law of Attraction in your favor. Are you a runner or walker who underrates gratitude? Take this test to find out.

Question 1. Do you thank your running or walking coaches, trainers, and teachers often?

If you are in a group training program, do you ever tell the head coach how much you appreciate a particular training route? If you have a trainer, do you thank him or her for showing up on time? If you are learning how to do core exercises, stretching, or yoga from someone, do you thank this teacher for what you have learned?

Question 2. Do you ever tell others about how helpful a magazine article, book, or blog post was to your running?

Do you post a thank-you comment under a helpful blog post? Do you share helpful magazine articles with other runners? Do you lend a favorite book about running to others?

Question 3. Do you wave at, smile at, and say Hello to other runners or walkers as they pass you or you pass them?

Doing this is essentially telling them that you are grateful to be able to share the road or trail with them.

Question 4. Do you acknowledge non-runners and non-walkers as you pass them?

Doing this lets them know that you appreciate that you are somewhat like a guest in their neighborhoods.

Question 5. Do you look motorists in the eye when you are about to cross paths?

Doing this effectively says to them Thank you for letting you share the road with them.

Question 6. Do you thank retailers of gear for runners and walkers?

Doing this lets retailers know that you are grateful that they are in business to serve you. Some people believe that the payment of money for goods is sufficient thanks. There is the wonderful notion that money is an expression of appreciation, but a retailer always has a choice about where to locate, what to carry, and whether to remain in business.

Question 7. Do you thank healthcare practitioners for what they do for your running or walking?

Doing this lets healthcare practitioners know that you appreciate how much they help you. Remember: A healthcare practitioner has a choice about where to locate, whether to become an expert at serving runners or walkers, and whether to keep his or her practice open.

Question 8. Do you get sufficient sleep?

Doing this reinforces the belief that sleep is important to your running or walking.

Question 9. Do you avoid injuries?

Doing this requires that you listen to and respect your body, which requires gratitude for your body.

Question 10. Do you enjoy races?

Joy indicates gratitude.

Scoring:

• Yes to 8-10 questions: You are good at the practice of gratitude, and your running or walking life is surely the beneficiary. Keep expressing gratitude!

• Yes to 4-7 questions: You have some understanding of the value of gratitude. Look at each question to which you answered No to see what you can change for the better.

• Yes to 0-3 questions: You need lots of practice with gratitude. Begin now to use each of the above questions as a guide to making your running or walking life better.

Chapter 4: The Benefits of Gratitude

There are many activities, people, places, things, and parts of your body for which to feel gratitude as a runner or walker, but this chapter is not about those targets of gratitude. Instead, the purpose of this chapter is to give you the benefits of repeatedly feeling gratitude for everything that supports you as a runner or walker.

Awareness

Increasing your gratitude as a runner or walker increases your awareness. You start to notice more things for which you should be grateful, of course, but also you start to notice more things that can make your life better.

• You may notice that drinking a sports drink and consuming a goo, gel, or block while you are out on the road or trail is too much, and so you switch to water plus the goo, gel, or block.

• You may notice that your shoe is tied a little bit too tightly and that you are going to develop a pain at the top of your foot because of that, and so you take a moment to loosen that shoe.

• You may notice that you’re coming home at the end of a Saturday-morning run or walk and your eyes are tired. You initially consider this to be odd, given that you started in the dark. But, then you recall that your run or walk ended in full sunlight and that you were not wearing sunglasses. So, you think, I wonder whether I should wear sunglasses. You try wearing them the next week, and you discover, yes, good sunglasses will prevent that kind of problem.

Because you have become more grateful, your overall awareness increases.

Engagement

As you exercise your gratitude power as a runner or walker, you will see over time that you feel stronger engagement with this