As you all know I have been preparing for the Great Manchester Run in a couple of weeks. This morning was a scheduled run (I try to get out for a run at minimum twice a week. This morning I really did not fancy it, I woke up about 6am and felt shattered, my muscles felt fatigued and I just felt completely unmotivated to get out up. I lay in bed for another hour, hoping I would drop off to sleep for a bit longer. No chance, I find it impossible to lay in nowadays. Eventually I got up, I put my running gear on, even though I was not convinced I would actually leave the house today. I came downstairs, and had my usual pre-run banana and glass of water. I still did not feel up for it. I told myself I would go through my warm up and see what happens. I spent longer than I normally would warming up. I just had no energy. Lisa got up and I went through into the kitchen to talk to her, another distraction technique. I said to her I was deliberately taking my time to warm up to delay starting my run. She simply said “you will feel better for it, if you go…”
That was enough to get me out of the door. I put my earphones in set, my playlist, started Strava and set off on my usual route. As usual the first mile felt like a struggle and took forever. Normally I forget about the next mile as it just goes by without noticing. Not today, it seemed to take for ever. It was not hurting anymore than usual, it just seemed endless. The split was slower than normal and that is why it felt like a struggle without being painful, as my effort was not as high as it would normally be. The third mile as normal started to burn my muscles and there was a point halfway through that mile when I could have easily stopped. I asked myself why I was out running at 8am on a Sunday morning. I started thinking about the last half mile of the Great Manchester Run and the emotions I feel as I run up to Deansgate, running for Mum. I looked to the sky told Mum I loved her and the pain and fatigue fell away. I started to smile, as I thought about Mum cheering me on. Then I got thinking about Ben and Jack, after spending Friday evening with Jack at the Championship play-off semi-final and having such a lovely time with him and looking forward to Ben coming home in a couple of weeks and hopefully the 3 of us going to Wembley to see Hull City in the play-off final. Now I was full of joy and new why I was running. To honour the love that Mum gave me and how that shows up in the love I have for my boys and cherishing every special moment I have with them. Running the GMR is all about love for me, and after missing it last year, is something I am determined to run whilst I am able.
I re-looked at my core values at the end of the year, as I was feeling a little lost. In fact I wrote a blog about it. The reason I bring it up is that one of my core values is love, and it is love that is motivating me. It is love that moved me into action this morning, when I would have happily stayed in and watched Match of The Day on TV. It was love that kept me running when I was out and I really fancied walking the last half mile. It is so important to understand what your core values are at different times in your life. It helps you understand why you think and feel the way you do about the events in your life and can help you make decisions that are right for you.
I am still feeling a little lost and uncertain about my life at the moment, that being a culmination of work and my age I think. Connecting with my values and what is important to me are helping me make sense of the emotions I am feeling. Love at home is the major driving for my feelings at the moment. The love I feel from my sons is so important to me, and that is because of the grief I feel for the lack of a loving relationship I had with my Dad. Myself and Lisa both view parenthood in the same way and it is so important to us that our boys feel loved will always have both of us cheering them on no matter what. We are and always will be their biggest fans, just like my Mum was mine.
My other 3 core values at the moment are compassion, inner strength and connection. They drive me forward everyday, and sometimes they have not always been present, and that is sometimes when I witness a lack of compassion and connection at work. The NHS as ever is a challenging place to work, at present our organisation is going through a lot of change and compassion and connection for a number of our senior leaders and others around the hospitals is not always showing up. This can make work for me very challenging. I have started looking at where I able to show up with these values to balance out what I am witnessing. Meeting with my team either in a group or one to one is so important for my mental health to ensure we are connecting and showing up in a compassionate way towards each other and the teams we are working with. Over the past couple of weeks I have been coaching a few people and that has certainly helped me live up to connection, and compassion. I think inner strength is something I have to remind myself that I am showing. I definitely notice when I have not shown inner strength recently and avoided situations or my feelings, and that has been a reason why I have been so lost I think. Digging deep and responding to the difficult emotions I have been feeling are starting to make a difference. I will admit though that it is not always easy and sometimes I will shy away as the thoughts and feelings I am having are too painful. However I have been revisiting those feelings when I have the energy, which is new.
I have been writing about living a values led life for a few years now. What I have noticed is that our values are not fixed and will shift as our life shifts. I have also noticed that leading a values led life takes work and it is not something you pay attention to once. It is vital to pay attention and re look at your values and make sure you are not drifting away from them too far.
Connected Coaching 