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Hi Reader,

Last Saturday, I joined the brand new Beban Parkrun here in Nanaimo for the first time.

I'm not new to Parkrun. We used to go regularly when we lived in South Africa, and I still have some lovely memories from those mornings 🏃‍♀️
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This is me 👇🏼, 10 years ago with Wis (the then pup of very close friends of mine), you can tell from my red face this picture was taken after the Parkrun 😆

But this time was a little different.

I'm slowly getting back to jogging after twisting my ankle last year. (And yes... let's just say it took me quite a while to get back on my feet 😉 In hindsight, maybe visiting a doctor wouldn't have been such a bad idea. But here we are.)

So I picked up the Start to Run program again. Walking and jogging twice a week. The goal? Back to 5K at a comfortable pace.

My pace.

But last week, somewhere in the middle of one of those walk/jog sessions, huffing and puffing my way through it…

I caught myself thinking, will I ever get back to that 5K again?

I mean… I was struggling to jog for 5 minutes straight.

Let alone 40.

And then I had to laugh.

Because somewhere in that huffing and puffing, a little voice piped up:

Peggy. Practice what you preach.

Step by step. That's how it goes.

That's literally what I tell every client. Every reader. Every coaching client I work with.

But there I was, on that road, doubting it for myself. But that’s the funny thing about physical challenges. They often shine a light on what is happening elsewhere in our lives.

And honestly? It's not just the jogging.

I find myself in those moments in other parts of life, too. Wondering if I'm even in the right spot. Whether I really know what I'm doing. Whether I should be the one carrying all of these responsibilities.

You know the feeling, right?

This same doubt shows up so often in coaching conversations.

Once, I worked with someone who had recently become an instructor for pilot training. After years of flying his own plane, he was now sitting next to the trainee, watching, guiding, no longer behind the controls himself.

And he said to me, "It feels like I'm in the wrong seat of the plane."

Because sometimes life puts us in a new seat. One we haven’t quite grown comfortable in yet. And it takes time to figure out whether the doubt is warning us about something real, or whether it’s simply resistance to the unfamiliar.

For me, with the jogging? It's resistance. And a healthy dose of impatience (hey, no judgement here 🤪).

So I'm going to keep at it.

Step by step.

My pace.

Oh, and just to make the comeback story more interesting? I had so much fun at Parkrun on Saturday that I signed up to volunteer. New people, new environment, new energy 😊

Sometimes the best way to handle the doubt is to keep showing up anyway.

Chat next week,

Peggy 🌿

P.S. Has this ever happened to you? Where you thought "this is not for me," doubted yourself, and felt like stepping away? What did you do with it?

Backyard Gossip | Stories about life, business & the spaces in between