Introduction and Podcast Purpose
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Welcome to the Eliana Nita podcast, the podcast created to inform, challenge and empower you. Now let's get down to business.
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Hey guys, welcome to the Alien Anita podcast. I'm your host, Alien, and I am so excited to have you join me for this week's show.
Eliana's 5K Journey
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I am currently in training to run my first 5K. Okay guys, let me be honest.
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I have never ran for anything in life. I am not an athlete. I have never trained as an athlete. I didn't play any sports or any of that. So I'm like a fish out of water as it pertains to running. And as you know, you can't just wake up one morning and decide, hey, I want to go run. I want to run a 5K. I want to run a marathon.
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you have to train yourself and be prepared for the long call and really pace yourself to run a marathon.
Marathon vs. Sprint: Life Lessons
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And so I've learned in life courtesy of Nipsey Hussle, the great Nipsey Hussle, rest in peace, but not only just from him, but just in living life period that life is a marathon. It is not a sprint.
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And you need endurance to be able to endure everything that you're going to encounter as you go through life. And this training, training to run this 5K, I'm five weeks in and I am learning about myself. I'm learning about my body. I'm learning about how to preserve my energy and all of these things. And so I jotted down five things that you need to know in life's marathon.
Research and Preparation for Challenges
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The first thing is you need to do research. I found myself, now I want to talk about how I am training for this 5K, but you can take my training for 5K and make it applicable to your life. I believe you could just use these principles, but I'm just going to use it to paint a picture as I train for the 5K.
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First of all, you need to do research. I got on the treadmill and I would download an app and I was like, okay, I'm just going to follow this app and go with it. But one thing that the app did not do was it created a plan for me for each week on how to advance, but it didn't teach me about
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the hiccups that I might find or have. It didn't teach me about stretching. It didn't teach me about breathing. It didn't teach me about runners posture. It didn't teach me about the kind of shoes I needed to wear. And so I walked into it kind of blindly. Um, but I soon realized that, okay, although I have this goal and I have this great tool via this app, I need to do more research to find out how I need to run. How can I maximize my energy? How can I not?
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grow tired very quickly what about breathing and all of those things and so I took my time as I started to run to do the proper research to find out what is required of me to be able to make it through this 5k this particular thing that I'm trying to accomplish so
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I'm saying all this to say that whatever it is that you set yourself out to do, whether it's to start a business, go back to school, lose some weight, whatever it is, you have to do research and you have to be well equipped and knowledge to know what to expect and how to handle it.
Goal Setting and Intentional Living
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The second thing you need to do is be intentional. I had to set a set time and schedule of when I was going to run so that I know that on this day at this time I'm going to be running. So if you leave your life up to chance like
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Let's say you wake up in the morning, you say, okay, do I feel like going to the gym today? You're going to always put yourself in limbo based off what you feel. So you need to be intentional to say, no matter what happens today, I don't care if my balls get on my nerves. I don't care if my spouse walk out the door. I don't care if my kids are acting crazy, whatever the situation is, you are going to do this at that time.
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So I know Arthur, who I love, who's like a mom to me, she actually sets time in her schedule to write. And she just books it in her calendar and she takes the time out to say, hey, this is my writing time and I'm going to spend this amount of time writing towards my next publication.
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So you have to be extremely intentional, especially when you're getting into the habit of doing something you've never done before. So if this is a new trait, a new habit, you're going to have to be intentional and make sure that you are focused enough to do it and get it done.
Avoiding Goal Underestimation
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The third thing is you never want to underestimate the goal. I have in life, man, I cannot tell you how many times I have underestimated
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a situation or underestimated a goal that I had set and later regretted it. Underestimation will leave you so upset and so behind because you didn't expect the unexpected.
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And not necessarily that it was unexpected, but you just didn't expect for it to be as hard. So I realized that as I'm running this marathon, or training to run, I'm telling myself I'm running the marathon, but as I'm training to run this 5K,
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that this is gonna be much harder than what I think. And even though I got it this week or I got it this day, I learned that you could go to the gym and lift 10 pounds and it feel like it's one, but there are some days where you go to lift that same 10 pounds and it feels like 100. So you need to never not underestimate what it's gonna cost you to make this goal happen.
Adaptability in Goal Achievement
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The fourth thing you need to do is be willing, be willing to make changes, be willing to endure, be willing to push through whatever that change looks like or whatever it is, you need to be willing. One thing that I've learned in life is that I may start off with a goal or plan or an idea of something and I might have it all mapped out.
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But as we all know, life changes and things happen. So you have to be willing to be flexible with life in order to become what you need to become so that you can make the change happen. I have heard this time and time again, but every delay really truly works in your favor. So you might have a strenuous timeline or you might have a deadline that you want to make.
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that and you pushing towards that deadline, but don't circumvent the process just to get to the end because if you imagine building the house right, you have to dig so deep into the ground and you have to make sure that that ground is settled.
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and you have to pour the concrete and then you can build upward, right? But if you don't dig deep enough and you don't pour the concrete right, it doesn't matter how beautiful you built that house is going to have issues. It's going to fall. It's going to have cracks in the foundation, which later cause flooding and bacteria and mold and all of that stuff. You'll have a bigger problem on your hand.
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if you would have just taken the time to do it right. And sometimes being willing means to start over. I hit a point in my process of running for this 5K where I went from running three minutes straight to running five minutes, right? And so you train an interval. So you do, you know, three minutes, five minutes, three minutes, five minutes of running. And so it's a lot.
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And I was able to accomplish three minutes, but what I realized is the speed that I was running my three minutes at was not the speed that I could run my five minutes at. I was finding myself tired. I was exhausted. I couldn't make it through the five minutes. And I had to start over. I had to redo a week because I was not able to successfully complete the week that I was on. And it just required for me to get more information and know and learn that
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How you run at this rate doesn't mean you're going to run at that rate. Sometimes it means making a small adjustment of just slowing down. You're going to reach the goal. Eventually you're going to be running. For me, eventually I'm going to be running 3 miles, 3.1 miles.
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But I may not have the win capacity to run three point miles at the rate that I was running three minutes at. So I had to make tweaks and adjustments. So because of my willingness to make the changes and even start over, I was able to successfully complete that week and move forward. So in life, you're going to learn as I learn and as you may have learned,
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that you're going to have to be willing to make the changes and sometimes those changes may start over. Sometimes it means go a different route. Sometimes it means dropping a person or adding a person, whatever that looks like for you, you have to be willing.
Pacing and Personal Progress
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And the fifth and final thing is pace yourself.
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you are not in a race with anybody else but yourself. And you may think that because you're older or because your friends are doing this or whatever the case may be, you may feel like you need to hurry up and get through this and hurry up and make it happen or you're not moving fast enough or you're not motivated enough or whatever.
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Here's the truth, you just need to pace yourself. Life, as I said earlier, is a marathon. You are not gonna jet through this thing and if you do, you're gonna have a short life. So enjoy yourself. Take the time to smell the roses. Thank the people that helped you. Journal and write down memories and make sure you internalize the lessons that you learn. You can never grasp anything if you're rushing through everything, right?
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So you may have learned a very valuable lesson in life, but if you're rushing through it, if you're rushing just trying to get to the next place, you'll never retain the information that you need to retain. So I want to encourage you to just take your time and pace yourself. Don't race against your friends. Don't race against what you, your own timeline or what you want it to be done in, but just take your time and let it flow.
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Don't get stuck and stale. Don't be like, oh, I just got time. Don't think that. But just give yourself time to make your mistakes so that when it's your time, you'll be ready. So guys, I'm running this marathon. I'm doing it. And I hope that you are running this marathon too. And as the great Nipsey's hustle said, the marathon continues.
Motivational Playlist Creation
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I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. If you did,
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share it with your friends and family, as well as your followers, and make sure to leave a review of the podcast. I do not have a recommended resource. I take it back. You know what, I'm gonna recommend, if you have Apple Music, I don't know how I'm gonna do this.
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I'm gonna I'm gonna put together a little marathon playlist of nipsey hustle that I love nipsey hustle I enjoyed his music um yeah I'm gonna do that I was or maybe I'll make a song suggestion I don't know I'm gonna get I'm gonna somehow create a playlist for y'all
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as a recommended resource that you can enjoy some of his music and some of his inspirational tracks as he talks about running a marathon and taking your time and making it through not being afraid to fail and getting back up and dust yourself off again. Nipsey was great for that. So yeah, that's gonna be my recommended resource. Listen to Nipsey hustle. But anyway, guys, I love you. Thank you for tuning in. And as always, be blessed and safe.