45. Self Validation: The Skill That Makes You Unstoppable
If I could give you one skill to carry into every race, every long run, every moment of doubt for the rest of your running life, do you know what would it be? In this episode, I’m giving you the one thing that has made 25 years of ultra running not just possible for me, but sustainable and deeply rewarding: self validation. Not confidence from race results. Not approval from other runners. Real self validation.
I share why looking outside yourself for reassurance quietly erodes your belief, how it shows up in ultra runners who need race results or other people to prove they belong, and what changes when you take back that responsibility. I tell the stories that shaped this lesson for me, from quitting running after a coach’s comment, to decades of making my own decisions even when others disagreed. Self validation changed how I see myself, and that changed how I race.
In this episode, I walk you through three practical ways to start building self validation right now, including how to make your own decisions, how to validate your effort instead of just your results, and how to clean up your self talk so you become your own most reliable source of belief. This is the skill that lets you take bigger risks, race with more freedom, and stay in this sport for decades. It’s the skill that makes you unstoppable.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why seeking validation from race results or other people weakens your confidence over time.
How outsourcing your worth creates hesitation, doubt, and smaller goals.
The long term impact of self validation on sustainability in ultra running.
How to make decisions without needing reassurance from others.
Why validating your effort matters more than validating your results.
A simple way to transform harsh self talk into supportive, powerful thinking.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
If you and I sat down together and I could only give you one thing, one thing to take into every race, every hard training run, every moment of doubt for years to come, I know exactly what it would be. In this episode, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Hello and welcome to episode 45. This episode is going to be released during my birthday week. I'll be celebrating another year of life, really appreciating being here on the planet, being alive, and having this podcast to share what I've learned with you. And this year, I'm also going to be celebrating that I've spent a good part of my life running ultras. This year, I'll be hitting a special milestone. I'll have been running ultras for a nice, round, satisfying 25 years. I was 38 when I started and I'm going to be 63 next week.
So I've experienced at least part of four life decades as an ultra runner. My 30s, 40s, 50s and now my 60s in this sport, which is pretty phenomenal, and it's mind blowing to me. I did not imagine being here when I signed up for that first 40 miler. I couldn't have. And I'm so grateful for it. It's just amazing to me.
And it really gives me a unique perspective. I've gone from old school to today. So I wanted to do something special on this episode to celebrate, and I decided to give you a gift. And I've been thinking about it for weeks. If I could give you a gift, one gift on this podcast, what would it be? What one gift would make the most extraordinary impact on your running and your life? And it's this. It's the gift of self validation. I often get asked how I've been so successful in this sport for so long, how I've made ultra running so sustainable.
And it's something I've given a lot of thought to over the years because like you, I love running and I especially love the adventure of ultra running. I think of it as my running home, and I want to run and enjoy it forever. And one thing that has made that possible for me over the years is self-validation.
Now, I know that might not be what you expected to hear because self-validation isn't a term that's typically used with ultra running. So to make sure we're all on the same page in this episode, I'm going to start with a definition. And the best dictionary definition I could find was this, the feeling of having recognized, confirmed, or established one's own worthiness or legitimacy.
Now, here's why I chose self-validation for you as a gift. I coach a lot on issues that stem from clients not validating themselves, of needing to get that from somewhere else and looking outside themselves for that validation. And it typically shows up in two very common ways. The first is needing other people to validate and reassure you and approve of you. And the second is needing race results to prove or validate your worth as an ultra runner, that you're good enough and deserving and that you belong.
Both of these things are absolutely awesome when we get them, but what happens when we don't? When you aren't getting the validation you need from the people in your life or when you have a bad race, what happens? You lose belief in yourself. You don't believe you can do it. You don't see yourself as capable. You're not sure of yourself and you don't want to make decisions on your own. You doubt yourself so much that doubting feels normal. What if I can't do it? What if I fail? What if I'm no good at it? What if I make a stupid mistake over and over in your head? And when you really start to need validation from other people, you need them to tell you what you should do.
You need the race to go your way, and even if you do finish the race, you don't deserve it in your head. It's an accident of sheer luck that you don't deserve and you could never repeat. So you end up holding back, choosing a less ambitious goal and taking only safe risks in safe races. And you end up passing up the chance to see what you can really do all the while wishing that you could.
So what's really going on in the background here is that when you go looking for validation from somebody else or something else, you're essentially handing your worth over to them, hoping that person would give you their stamp of approval or the race will prove your worth. And there are a couple of problems with this approach.
First, you're obviously not going to always get the validation you need from them. That person's opinions of you and your running might be colored by their own doubts and their own needs and their beliefs that have zero to do with you. And the race might not go well for a million different reasons. It's like being incredibly thirsty, dying of thirst and not knowing if the water is going to flow from the faucet. You never know if you're going to get the validation you need. So you're constantly off balance and unsure of yourself, always doubting yourself and always needing reassurance from somebody.
Second thing that's wrong with getting your validation from outside yourself is that other people aren't always around to bolster your confidence. In a race, even if you have a pacer or crew, you still ultimately have to believe in yourself and there are long stretches of the race where you're going to be on your own. They're not always around to reaffirm your worth.
The third problem with this approach is that the more you look to others for validation, the more you become dependent on that for everything. You get scared to make your own decisions in a race and make your own choices. And you start second guessing yourself automatically when you do make your own decisions and choices. You need others to tell you what to do and you run more and more decisions by them and get less and less confident in your own ability. And when you ask others what you should do, a lot of times you get conflicting answers. Or you get so many different answers that you just end up more confused and overwhelmed than ever.
So, bottom line, seeking validation outside yourself is undependable and unreliable and not because you're not worthy, because other people and race results can't validate your worth or legitimacy. It's like asking a GPS for relationship advice. It's just not designed to answer that question or measure that.
So that's where self-validation comes in. When you're outsourcing your worth to somebody else's approval of you or to a race, you're essentially adding an unnecessary step to the validation process. You're adding a middleman. You're making it less efficient. So, what would happen if you just took the middleman out of it? If you validated your own worth and left all the people and the race results out of it? What would change if you practiced validating your own worth?
Now, I know you might not be able to imagine that right now because we get so used to depending on others' approval that it's hard to imagine not doing that. So what I'm going to do here is share some stories about what it can change. And the first one is from high school. I ran track and cross country in high school. I was mid pack at best. I was not chosen for the state meet team. I was definitely not top level, but I adored it and I loved being part of a team, belonging to a team.
And one day in the gym hallway, when nobody else was around, coach stopped me by the water fountain and told me not to bother trying out for the college team. I was speechless. I think I stammered out, okay. I didn't know what to say because I hadn't even thought about it yet. And I hadn't asked his opinion. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I deluded myself into thinking I was a decent runner all of a sudden because he's telling me this. Then I started imagining that all my teammates must have been laughing at me all season. I was young and hadn't lived on my own, and here was this authority figure in my life, respected and loved by everybody else, teammates and adults, telling me this.
So I didn't apply for the college team. As angry as it made me, I thought he's right. So I quit running altogether. Now understand, this was the early 1980s and very few people besides the college team were out running on campus. It just wasn't a thing people did back then. And so there was no reason for me to run. I wasn't on a team, and since I wasn't good at it, I just didn't run. Until my last year in college when things were really super stressful and I was deeply unhappy, and I asked myself what was different about my life the last time I was happy? And the first answer that came jumping into my head was, I was running.
So I went out and I ran a mile. And it about killed me. But I decided when I got done that coach wasn't all powerful. And that this was my life and I was the expert in it and what I could do. And so I went out and ran the next day and I'm still going. I didn't let a respected authority figure decide what I was capable of. I was the ultimate authority on what I was allowed to do and what was possible for me. He didn't know. I did. He wasn't the expert on me. I was. And I promised myself that I would never again let an authority figure decide that for me.
The second story, years later, I met a group of ultra runners and finally started running ultras with them. Now, we were the only ultra runners in the state of Tennessee. And we did our long run together every Saturday. We all lived in the same town, so we did our long run together every Saturday, 30 miles at the quarry, and we went to races together. And those were such good times. It was so fun. And I was kind of a newbie in the group, soaking up lessons from two of the more experienced runners. So I deferred to their expertise and was in awe of their daring and experience at races. I kind of saw myself as a little sister.
And one year we all went out to Leadville, Colorado for the 100 miler and rented a house together. And we all DNFed together and went home humbled. The second year we went out again for redemption and we all DNFed again and went home the same way. The third year we went out again, and this time I came into it with a new plan. In the years since the second DNF, I'd been devouring anything that would tell me how to keep my mind from stopping me this year because that had been the problem the second time around. And I had some rudimentary mindset knowledge at that point, the seed1` of what I would use to finish so many races and what would grow into the coaching I do today.
So this third year, we all started the race, but as my friends started dropping back in a repeat of the previous two years, I faced the difficult choice that I hadn't anticipated. Was I willing to be the only person in the house to finish? Was I willing to stand out from them and potentially hurt their feelings? I mean, I was the little sister, the less experienced one. Who was I to be the one to finish of the whole group? And more difficult was I willing to own this or was I going to excuse it as a fluke and fit back into my place as that newbie? Was I going to continue to explore what I was capable of beyond the friends that I saw as leaders and experts and to maybe outgrow them? That was extremely painful to consider during the race.
But one thing for sure, I was serious about it, and I had a shot at finishing it. I wasn't willing to throw that and all the hard work I had done to be there away just to maybe keep my friends from being offended and to keep their approval. And to be extremely clear, they hadn't asked me to throw my race for them. This was all going on in my head. So in those next several miles, I decided I would never DNF or even quote, let the race decide, in order to fit in and keep anybody's approval. I got super honest with myself that this wasn't a hobby where I didn't really care if I finished. I cared a lot. I came here to give it my all and to finish this thing. And that's exactly what I was going to do.
So when the time came to dig deep or give up, when I had that choice and there was a fork in the trail, I dug deep, really deep. And as I was coming back into town and the finish line with my friend Hans, we ended up running about the same pace together near the finish. There was this lone spectator along the road, nobody else out there, this lone spectator along the course and I thought, a spectator, I'm getting close to the end. I thought we were going to get cheered for. And that spectator calling me said with an air of confidence, you're not going to make it. And with my newfound self-validation that I had discovered just miles earlier, I thought, the hell I'm not.
I fought for that finish and I made it and that race changed the way I saw myself. I took the sport seriously, which meant that I took myself seriously. I was ambitious in my own way, and that was okay. I didn't need to justify it. I didn't need to back down from what I was capable of, and that felt great. That race where I validated my own ambition and desire changed the way I saw myself. I knew I could stand on my own.
And here's a third story. This third one isn't a single event, it's really a lot of little events added together. It's what changes when you regularly validate yourself day in and day out over time, over years, one day at a time. Throughout my running life, people I love and care about, other runners, and other authority figures have told me I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. That I'm racing too often, that I'm too old for this now, that it's a childish hobby I should have outgrown years ago, all kinds of things. And some have even made fun of my running.
Some have tried to convince me or push me to do what they wanted me to do, what they thought I should do. Some have even gotten angry about it. And each time I've registered what they said, considered it, and still made my own decision, no matter how incredibly hard that was. Because the only person responsible for validating that I'm worthy and I'm a legitimate ultra runner is me. It's not anybody else's job. It's mine. And that lets them off the hook and me out of trying to get them to approve of me, putting them into that middleman status. So everybody wins.
And then somewhere along the way, in all these years, I had another important aha. If I needed to validate myself the way I wanted others to validate me, then I actually needed to talk to myself that way too. So I started doing it. I started talking to myself like I had compassion for and confidence in myself, the way I would have wanted to be talked to, the way I would talk to a runner I believed in. And that directly carried over into races.
So now, when I'm in the tough part of a 100 miler, the part I actually love the most, like the filling in the Oreo for me, I know for certain I'm going to be there for myself. I have zero doubt. The voice in my head isn't wondering if I'm going to be good enough or waiting for proof. It's the voice of somebody who believes in me completely, and that feels great.
This gift of self-validation comes with one catch. You have to use it. I know validating yourself might feel impossible right now if you're deep in self-doubt. So start here with these three practices.
Number one, practice making decisions for yourself. Notice the urge and let go of the urge to get anyone else to validate your decisions so that you can trust them. Trust your own experience and your own judgment and your own perspectives instead of relying on others to tell you what to think or feel or do. You're the expert on your body and your needs and your desires and goals. And no going back later to second guess yourself and seek reassurance that you made the right choice.
All right. Practice number two, validate your effort, not just your results. Acknowledge all the hard work you put into training and your progress regardless of the final outcome. You know what you put into it. Don't dismiss it because the result wasn't what you wanted in the end. That just means all that effort just means you've learned more and you're one step closer to what works.
And this third practice, this is a huge one, cut out the middleman and talk to yourself the way you want others to talk to you. Yes, self-talk, clean it up. Listen to the way you talk to yourself in your head. When you notice a harsh, critical, or judgmental thought about yourself, pause, catch it, and rephrase it in an honest, supportive way like you would with a friend. You can acknowledge the difficulty of a situation while affirming your capability. Like this is harder than I thought it would be, and I can do it.
All right, self-validation is a skill that takes practice, especially that last one, self-talk. It'll feel awkward at first and you might forget. So start small, know that you're going to forget. It'll take practice to get consistent with it, but get consistent with it. Because with practice, it will become second nature to validate yourself and you'll notice one day that you're talking to yourself nicely in your head and you're the most supportive person you know.
And here's one thing to know. Self-validation doesn't mean you'll never doubt yourself again. I doubt myself all the time. And people still tell me what they think I should and shouldn't do. The difference is I make my own decision and doubt doesn't get to make my decision for me anymore. And as you get better at validating yourself, you'll seek less external validation and be more even keeled, more confident, and more resilient. You'll be more sure of yourself when facing the unknown in a race, you'll be willing to take risks with bigger races without worrying about failing. You'll be unstoppable.
To wrap it up, validation from others is great when you get it. But don't wait around for it. Your own validation is enough. Self-validation is what's made 25 years of strong, successful ultra running possible for me and still so rewarding after all these years. And it's what will make your running sustainable too, not just for seasons or for years, but for decades. I'm still here. Because when you validate yourself, you don't need to wait on approval or reassurance or encouragement from anyone. You're free to run what and how you choose for your own reasons.
So that's my gift to you. Permission to stop waiting for somebody else to tell you're worthy or capable or that you're the real deal. You already are. So start believing it and putting it into practice today.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Hello and welcome to episode 45. This episode is going to be released during my birthday week. I'll be celebrating another year of life, really appreciating being here on the planet, being alive, and having this podcast to share what I've learned with you. And this year, I'm also going to be celebrating that I've spent a good part of my life running ultras. This year, I'll be hitting a special milestone. I'll have been running ultras for a nice, round, satisfying 25 years. I was 38 when I started and I'm going to be 63 next week.
So I've experienced at least part of four life decades as an ultra runner. My 30s, 40s, 50s and now my 60s in this sport, which is pretty phenomenal, and it's mind blowing to me. I did not imagine being here when I signed up for that first 40 miler. I couldn't have. And I'm so grateful for it. It's just amazing to me.
And it really gives me a unique perspective. I've gone from old school to today. So I wanted to do something special on this episode to celebrate, and I decided to give you a gift. And I've been thinking about it for weeks. If I could give you a gift, one gift on this podcast, what would it be? What one gift would make the most extraordinary impact on your running and your life? And it's this. It's the gift of self validation. I often get asked how I've been so successful in this sport for so long, how I've made ultra running so sustainable.
And it's something I've given a lot of thought to over the years because like you, I love running and I especially love the adventure of ultra running. I think of it as my running home, and I want to run and enjoy it forever. And one thing that has made that possible for me over the years is self-validation.
Now, I know that might not be what you expected to hear because self-validation isn't a term that's typically used with ultra running. So to make sure we're all on the same page in this episode, I'm going to start with a definition. And the best dictionary definition I could find was this, the feeling of having recognized, confirmed, or established one's own worthiness or legitimacy.
Now, here's why I chose self-validation for you as a gift. I coach a lot on issues that stem from clients not validating themselves, of needing to get that from somewhere else and looking outside themselves for that validation. And it typically shows up in two very common ways. The first is needing other people to validate and reassure you and approve of you. And the second is needing race results to prove or validate your worth as an ultra runner, that you're good enough and deserving and that you belong.
Both of these things are absolutely awesome when we get them, but what happens when we don't? When you aren't getting the validation you need from the people in your life or when you have a bad race, what happens? You lose belief in yourself. You don't believe you can do it. You don't see yourself as capable. You're not sure of yourself and you don't want to make decisions on your own. You doubt yourself so much that doubting feels normal. What if I can't do it? What if I fail? What if I'm no good at it? What if I make a stupid mistake over and over in your head? And when you really start to need validation from other people, you need them to tell you what you should do.
You need the race to go your way, and even if you do finish the race, you don't deserve it in your head. It's an accident of sheer luck that you don't deserve and you could never repeat. So you end up holding back, choosing a less ambitious goal and taking only safe risks in safe races. And you end up passing up the chance to see what you can really do all the while wishing that you could.
So what's really going on in the background here is that when you go looking for validation from somebody else or something else, you're essentially handing your worth over to them, hoping that person would give you their stamp of approval or the race will prove your worth. And there are a couple of problems with this approach.
First, you're obviously not going to always get the validation you need from them. That person's opinions of you and your running might be colored by their own doubts and their own needs and their beliefs that have zero to do with you. And the race might not go well for a million different reasons. It's like being incredibly thirsty, dying of thirst and not knowing if the water is going to flow from the faucet. You never know if you're going to get the validation you need. So you're constantly off balance and unsure of yourself, always doubting yourself and always needing reassurance from somebody.
Second thing that's wrong with getting your validation from outside yourself is that other people aren't always around to bolster your confidence. In a race, even if you have a pacer or crew, you still ultimately have to believe in yourself and there are long stretches of the race where you're going to be on your own. They're not always around to reaffirm your worth.
The third problem with this approach is that the more you look to others for validation, the more you become dependent on that for everything. You get scared to make your own decisions in a race and make your own choices. And you start second guessing yourself automatically when you do make your own decisions and choices. You need others to tell you what to do and you run more and more decisions by them and get less and less confident in your own ability. And when you ask others what you should do, a lot of times you get conflicting answers. Or you get so many different answers that you just end up more confused and overwhelmed than ever.
So, bottom line, seeking validation outside yourself is undependable and unreliable and not because you're not worthy, because other people and race results can't validate your worth or legitimacy. It's like asking a GPS for relationship advice. It's just not designed to answer that question or measure that.
So that's where self-validation comes in. When you're outsourcing your worth to somebody else's approval of you or to a race, you're essentially adding an unnecessary step to the validation process. You're adding a middleman. You're making it less efficient. So, what would happen if you just took the middleman out of it? If you validated your own worth and left all the people and the race results out of it? What would change if you practiced validating your own worth?
Now, I know you might not be able to imagine that right now because we get so used to depending on others' approval that it's hard to imagine not doing that. So what I'm going to do here is share some stories about what it can change. And the first one is from high school. I ran track and cross country in high school. I was mid pack at best. I was not chosen for the state meet team. I was definitely not top level, but I adored it and I loved being part of a team, belonging to a team.
And one day in the gym hallway, when nobody else was around, coach stopped me by the water fountain and told me not to bother trying out for the college team. I was speechless. I think I stammered out, okay. I didn't know what to say because I hadn't even thought about it yet. And I hadn't asked his opinion. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I deluded myself into thinking I was a decent runner all of a sudden because he's telling me this. Then I started imagining that all my teammates must have been laughing at me all season. I was young and hadn't lived on my own, and here was this authority figure in my life, respected and loved by everybody else, teammates and adults, telling me this.
So I didn't apply for the college team. As angry as it made me, I thought he's right. So I quit running altogether. Now understand, this was the early 1980s and very few people besides the college team were out running on campus. It just wasn't a thing people did back then. And so there was no reason for me to run. I wasn't on a team, and since I wasn't good at it, I just didn't run. Until my last year in college when things were really super stressful and I was deeply unhappy, and I asked myself what was different about my life the last time I was happy? And the first answer that came jumping into my head was, I was running.
So I went out and I ran a mile. And it about killed me. But I decided when I got done that coach wasn't all powerful. And that this was my life and I was the expert in it and what I could do. And so I went out and ran the next day and I'm still going. I didn't let a respected authority figure decide what I was capable of. I was the ultimate authority on what I was allowed to do and what was possible for me. He didn't know. I did. He wasn't the expert on me. I was. And I promised myself that I would never again let an authority figure decide that for me.
The second story, years later, I met a group of ultra runners and finally started running ultras with them. Now, we were the only ultra runners in the state of Tennessee. And we did our long run together every Saturday. We all lived in the same town, so we did our long run together every Saturday, 30 miles at the quarry, and we went to races together. And those were such good times. It was so fun. And I was kind of a newbie in the group, soaking up lessons from two of the more experienced runners. So I deferred to their expertise and was in awe of their daring and experience at races. I kind of saw myself as a little sister.
And one year we all went out to Leadville, Colorado for the 100 miler and rented a house together. And we all DNFed together and went home humbled. The second year we went out again for redemption and we all DNFed again and went home the same way. The third year we went out again, and this time I came into it with a new plan. In the years since the second DNF, I'd been devouring anything that would tell me how to keep my mind from stopping me this year because that had been the problem the second time around. And I had some rudimentary mindset knowledge at that point, the seed1` of what I would use to finish so many races and what would grow into the coaching I do today.
So this third year, we all started the race, but as my friends started dropping back in a repeat of the previous two years, I faced the difficult choice that I hadn't anticipated. Was I willing to be the only person in the house to finish? Was I willing to stand out from them and potentially hurt their feelings? I mean, I was the little sister, the less experienced one. Who was I to be the one to finish of the whole group? And more difficult was I willing to own this or was I going to excuse it as a fluke and fit back into my place as that newbie? Was I going to continue to explore what I was capable of beyond the friends that I saw as leaders and experts and to maybe outgrow them? That was extremely painful to consider during the race.
But one thing for sure, I was serious about it, and I had a shot at finishing it. I wasn't willing to throw that and all the hard work I had done to be there away just to maybe keep my friends from being offended and to keep their approval. And to be extremely clear, they hadn't asked me to throw my race for them. This was all going on in my head. So in those next several miles, I decided I would never DNF or even quote, let the race decide, in order to fit in and keep anybody's approval. I got super honest with myself that this wasn't a hobby where I didn't really care if I finished. I cared a lot. I came here to give it my all and to finish this thing. And that's exactly what I was going to do.
So when the time came to dig deep or give up, when I had that choice and there was a fork in the trail, I dug deep, really deep. And as I was coming back into town and the finish line with my friend Hans, we ended up running about the same pace together near the finish. There was this lone spectator along the road, nobody else out there, this lone spectator along the course and I thought, a spectator, I'm getting close to the end. I thought we were going to get cheered for. And that spectator calling me said with an air of confidence, you're not going to make it. And with my newfound self-validation that I had discovered just miles earlier, I thought, the hell I'm not.
I fought for that finish and I made it and that race changed the way I saw myself. I took the sport seriously, which meant that I took myself seriously. I was ambitious in my own way, and that was okay. I didn't need to justify it. I didn't need to back down from what I was capable of, and that felt great. That race where I validated my own ambition and desire changed the way I saw myself. I knew I could stand on my own.
And here's a third story. This third one isn't a single event, it's really a lot of little events added together. It's what changes when you regularly validate yourself day in and day out over time, over years, one day at a time. Throughout my running life, people I love and care about, other runners, and other authority figures have told me I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. That I'm racing too often, that I'm too old for this now, that it's a childish hobby I should have outgrown years ago, all kinds of things. And some have even made fun of my running.
Some have tried to convince me or push me to do what they wanted me to do, what they thought I should do. Some have even gotten angry about it. And each time I've registered what they said, considered it, and still made my own decision, no matter how incredibly hard that was. Because the only person responsible for validating that I'm worthy and I'm a legitimate ultra runner is me. It's not anybody else's job. It's mine. And that lets them off the hook and me out of trying to get them to approve of me, putting them into that middleman status. So everybody wins.
And then somewhere along the way, in all these years, I had another important aha. If I needed to validate myself the way I wanted others to validate me, then I actually needed to talk to myself that way too. So I started doing it. I started talking to myself like I had compassion for and confidence in myself, the way I would have wanted to be talked to, the way I would talk to a runner I believed in. And that directly carried over into races.
So now, when I'm in the tough part of a 100 miler, the part I actually love the most, like the filling in the Oreo for me, I know for certain I'm going to be there for myself. I have zero doubt. The voice in my head isn't wondering if I'm going to be good enough or waiting for proof. It's the voice of somebody who believes in me completely, and that feels great.
This gift of self-validation comes with one catch. You have to use it. I know validating yourself might feel impossible right now if you're deep in self-doubt. So start here with these three practices.
Number one, practice making decisions for yourself. Notice the urge and let go of the urge to get anyone else to validate your decisions so that you can trust them. Trust your own experience and your own judgment and your own perspectives instead of relying on others to tell you what to think or feel or do. You're the expert on your body and your needs and your desires and goals. And no going back later to second guess yourself and seek reassurance that you made the right choice.
All right. Practice number two, validate your effort, not just your results. Acknowledge all the hard work you put into training and your progress regardless of the final outcome. You know what you put into it. Don't dismiss it because the result wasn't what you wanted in the end. That just means all that effort just means you've learned more and you're one step closer to what works.
And this third practice, this is a huge one, cut out the middleman and talk to yourself the way you want others to talk to you. Yes, self-talk, clean it up. Listen to the way you talk to yourself in your head. When you notice a harsh, critical, or judgmental thought about yourself, pause, catch it, and rephrase it in an honest, supportive way like you would with a friend. You can acknowledge the difficulty of a situation while affirming your capability. Like this is harder than I thought it would be, and I can do it.
All right, self-validation is a skill that takes practice, especially that last one, self-talk. It'll feel awkward at first and you might forget. So start small, know that you're going to forget. It'll take practice to get consistent with it, but get consistent with it. Because with practice, it will become second nature to validate yourself and you'll notice one day that you're talking to yourself nicely in your head and you're the most supportive person you know.
And here's one thing to know. Self-validation doesn't mean you'll never doubt yourself again. I doubt myself all the time. And people still tell me what they think I should and shouldn't do. The difference is I make my own decision and doubt doesn't get to make my decision for me anymore. And as you get better at validating yourself, you'll seek less external validation and be more even keeled, more confident, and more resilient. You'll be more sure of yourself when facing the unknown in a race, you'll be willing to take risks with bigger races without worrying about failing. You'll be unstoppable.
To wrap it up, validation from others is great when you get it. But don't wait around for it. Your own validation is enough. Self-validation is what's made 25 years of strong, successful ultra running possible for me and still so rewarding after all these years. And it's what will make your running sustainable too, not just for seasons or for years, but for decades. I'm still here. Because when you validate yourself, you don't need to wait on approval or reassurance or encouragement from anyone. You're free to run what and how you choose for your own reasons.
So that's my gift to you. Permission to stop waiting for somebody else to tell you're worthy or capable or that you're the real deal. You already are. So start believing it and putting it into practice today.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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