With lockdown life presenting so many challenges – both professionally and personally – it is important to highlight them for others to benefit from, which is why I decided to write this blog.

So, the unlikely positive came in the shape of a 10km run along Wolverhampton’s weathered old pavements beneath swollen grey clouds which I’d been putting off for days.

It was teeming with rain from the moment I woke up, but rather than getting outside and braving the elements, a mental conflict drove me to the kettle and a seat on the sofa instead. But the worse the weather got, the louder the voices become in my mind until I swapped my shoes for a pair of trainers to finally shut them up!

Drinking a cup of tea when I should be running!

There were two different mindsets at odds with one-another when I decided to do this; one was telling me my time would be better spent doing something else (like email checking, for example), while the other was screaming at me to just get stuck in. I opted for the latter and I’m glad I did, for the following reasons:

  • It just felt like the right thing to do! It’s important to keep this thought close to you, and as a general maxim for life, it’s one that will seldom let you down.
  • It kept me connected, daft as that sounds. Not just to streets I shuffled along, but my own mind generally
  • It gave me a chance to clear my head of the relentless ideas and thoughts assaulting my mind.
  • It was patently better for me than eating biscuits on the sofa!

But more than all of this, that jog taught me an even greater lesson than all of the above, which I will continue to bear in mind:

I.E. When a task looks so huge and daunting, it can paralyse you from actually making a start to begin with. It then becomes bigger and bigger until you’ve barely got enough mental energy to contemplate it.

But what I learnt when tying my laces and stepping into the drizzle was that no matter how overawing something might appear, it is never so bad in reality.

By making small contributions and attacking the task in hand bit-by-bit, you can complete it.

So don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today. It is never so bad in reality and do you know what? You might surprise yourself!