Day 300 - the habit's ingrained

My 300th consecutive day of running at least a mile completed.

It feels fantastic. Although the days are drawing in and the temperature has been dropping, it's great to still be out there.

It's my daily dose of physicality and movement, which I have realised over the years are so important for me to be the best I can be.

I read an article earlier this week saying that it takes an average of 66 days of repeating a desired practice to turn it into a habit. I do seem to have created that habit.

Anyway, the question I asked myself on my run this morning was "What will make today a great day?" The answer I came up with was to honour my values of fun, adventure, connection, movement and expression.

I'm off to have a great day now.

How to transform a day

Not for the first time, my morning run completely and utterly transformed my day today.

I woke up with an unusually negative frame of mind this morning and found it really hard to drag myself out of bed.

As a result I got up late, drank my tea and did a couple of small jobs on my laptop before pulling on my running things, thinking that not even my run would be able to shake me out of my downer.

How wrong could I have been!

I set out on my 3-miler with the question in my head, "What was it that has had such a negative effect on me since this time yesterday?" I just left the question "out there" while I tuned in to my breathing, the process of running, and the scenery that I encountered.

Now, I've done a lot of work on values, particularly my own, over the last 8 or 9 years of being involved with coaching. However, somewhere along my route this morning, it hit me that one of my core values is adventure.

I have uncovered the value of adventure for many clients over the past few years, but it had never occurred to me that it is a key value of mine.

But when it hit me, and hit me it did, this morning, it all made sense. My value of adventure has recently been suppressed. I also realised that knowing this, I have an opportunity to find out what I could do to increase my experience of adventure in my life.

And my day was turned on its head. Yet again, I returned energised, excited and my day totally transformed.