On Your Why - Creating A Running Purpose Statement (Part II)

RoP 12 - On Your Why: Creating a Running Purpose (Part II)

Quick Review from last Week:

• Why Your Why is Important
• Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Reasons for Running & Why Intrinsic is the only one that will stick.
• How to get started:
  • Brainstorming with Mind Mapping, clustering or other brainstorming techniques that work for you.
  • Take your time
  • Write a Letter to Running (LtR) that discusses
    • Relationship
    • Challenges
    • Gifts
    • Emotions/Feelings
  • Take the LtR & pull out the most resonant threads.
  • Take the Mind Map Brainstorm & pull out the most resonant threads.
  • Pull on these threads, see how resilient & long they are.
  • Take the threads & run with them for a few weeks. Do they braid into other aspects of your running. Are they compatible with goals, with failure, with success, with pain, with training partners, with Strava, with your geekometer? Do they fit with the rest of your life? With work, with family, with your other hobbies?
  • If they can’t take the pressure, they are not real. You want to subject the threads to pressure.

Create a Purpose Statement

• SoP 1.0
• Take the tested threads & weave them into a statement.
  • Take all the threads & copy & paste them into a document.
  • Go over them & add, subtract, expand, deepen.
  • The get them into a list or series of paragraphs.
  • Look for redundancies, duplicates, the same concept written in different words & find the best version of that concept or feeling & lock it down.
  • Tidy it up & walk away for a week or two. Be sure you tidy it up so when you come back to it is manageable & not a total mess. This Statement needs time to breathe & speak & grow. Give it that time.
  • This is SoP 1.0.
• SoP 2.0
  • Take the SoP 1.0 & read it. Look for more redundancies. Excise anything you feel didn’t stand up in the last week or two. Add anything that came up in the last week that feels important & called out to be included.
  • Now take the list or paragraphs edit them mercilessly. Get them down to 1-2 paragraphs, 3 at the absolute limit.
  • Read it out loud.
  • What does it feel like? Is it alive?
  • Listen for the commonality, the poetry, the practicality. This is what makes an idea universal & powerful. It is both magical & mundane. It is deeply moving & inspiring but grounded in the mess & muck of life.
  • It needs to have been created in a space of vulnerability where you might be afraid to share it with others for fear of rejection but as the statement grows in power & utility you want to eventually shout it from the rooftop that you know your WHY!
• SoP 3.0
  • Now take SoP 2.0 & try to take the long version & turn it into 1-2 sentences. The Greatest Hits, or the clearest, cleanest drink from the stream of your words. The Essential. Or a reformulation into different words that get to a different angle or description of Why you run. What you would actually shout from the rooftops (because a few paragraphs won’t do.
• Then you plant the seed of your SoP in the fertile ground of your being. You see how it grows, how it impacts the rest of your life, how it is a very positive, useful way to experience life.

Live your Purpose

• You’ve created your Statement, now you have to live it.
• You’ll want to do daily, weekly, monthly check ins on your Purpose.
  • Daily: Set a timer on your phone or watch to look back at your SoP daily. Do this consistently & you’ll eventually have it memorized. Then it will evolve, morph & change as you reflect on it. It will become a living document, one that informs, sustains & inspires you to be your best self, to recognize your inherent value.
  • Weekly: You should be doing a weekly reflection on your training. This allows you to check in not only on the physical training you did in the week but to also reflect on the emotional, psychological & bioenergetic experience of your training. If you are doing this then starting off your weekly reflection by detailing how your Running Purpose served you that week can really deepen the value & experience of your SoP. It’s like a mission statement for your running & the consistency of your being aligned with your purpose will significantly improve your training at all levels.
  • Monthly: I highly recommend a deeper dive into your SoP each month. Carve out 30 min to an hour to take your SoP, your four weekly reflections & read them. Then start again with the mind mapping brainstorming process that started this whole journey all over again. Don’t worry about anything: redundancy, ridiculousness, vulnerability, etc. Just take a deep breath & start the process over again. When you finish, look over the mind map & consider it in relation to your SoP. How has your purpose evolved or changed? Are there greater depths to your purpose that need to be folded into your statement? Any new languaging or images that can deepen the experience of living your running purpose, day to day.

Some Additional Thoughts

• Poetry & magic are inherent to all activities in our lives. It is the poetry & magic, we argue, that provides real, sustainable meaning in our lives.
• Do not be afraid of the Imaginal Realm where logic & order are less the operating system. A little beauty & chaos are critical, necessary components of life that frequently get overlooked or diminished in our society. By continuing to allow your purpose to flex & flow, it deepens & grows to the point where it infuses everything in your life. You begin to live through purpose, instead of through expectations, requirements & deadlines. You express your deepest, most authentic self. Now isn’t that magic?

If you are interested in being guided through this process of finding your running purpose, Steve can help. He is also completing a certification in Purpose Guiding, which expands the search for purpose into all of life. If you are interested in that, you can check out our website (www.telosrunning.com/purpose-guide) or reach me directly at sisson@telosrunning.com. I look forward to hearing from you.