{"id":18044,"date":"2013-09-07T09:01:57","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T13:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/?p=18044"},"modified":"2016-07-14T16:06:12","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T20:06:12","slug":"my-life-impossible-is-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/health\/my-life-impossible-is-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"My Life: Impossible Is Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This guest column is written by Kendra Mittermeyer, administrative assistant at DailyBurn. Follow along on her journey towards health, wellness, self-improvement and the perfect push-up. (If you missed the start of the series, catch <\/i>the beginning here<\/i><\/a>, and\u00a0<\/i>how far she\u2019s come from here<\/i><\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Impossible
Photo: Pond5<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had a funny conversation with a dear friend about last week\u2019s article<\/a>. We were talking about this brazen 10K gauntlet I\u2019ve thrown down. Kate said she would never run something that long, even though she is truly the most fabulously insane athlete I have ever known.<\/p>\n

So I laughed explaining that, yes I\u2019m scared, but I also don\u2019t really care \u2014 I want to see how far I can push myself.\u00a0 She responded with one of her favorite quotes: \u201cImpossible is nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That phrase has been buzzing in my head all week. I really like the power and the infinite nature of such a simple statement. This is how I\u2019m feeling lately. I signed up for some races and I am going to run them. I have legs; they will move. Is it crazy to start believing that\u2019s all I need to know?<\/p>\n

When I started working at DailyBurn I was so overwhelmed by the Tough Mudders and the marathon runners and the Inferno workout<\/a> clubbers. Everyone here is a beast. Good people, kind people. But they\u2019re athletic beasts, make no mistake.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of a lot to take. And being a child of hippies, I tend to dig my heels in when presented with anything uniform. There was a part of me that didn\u2019t want to totally give myself over to the culture here, drink the Kool-Aid, or Fuel protein shake as it were (but curses if that isn\u2019t a tasty, stupid simple breakfast for a girl who hates breakfast).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure I wanted to fully believe the hype. After years of feeling stuck and inhibited, my new job was going to solve everything? OK, not everything<\/i>. But the idea was if I wanted to, I could board this wacky DailyBurn train and actually get where I\u2019ve always wanted to go?<\/p>\n

Frankly, I wasn\u2019t immediately ready to hop on. I\u2019m used to feeling inhibited. It\u2019s my normal. And when something is a part of your identity like that, even something that makes you sad, it can feel like a lot to give up.<\/p>\n

But like any other half-assed rebellion, it lost its sparkle after a while. Once reveling in rebellion becomes all there is to the rebellion you have to raise the white flag. Plus, I made all these grand declarations to you<\/i>! So now I\u2019ve gotta do something!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if I\u2019ve reached a true Zen-like plane of existence \u2014 I no longer care how much a workout is going to destroy me. Maybe I\u2019m fed up with years of \u201cI can\u2019ts\u201d bouncing around my head, or maybe I\u2019m riding a dangerous hybrid of arrogance and idiocy. I guess we\u2019ll see!<\/p>\n

The truth is, I can no longer find it in me to be scared by a park and some pavement.<\/p>\n

\"Runners
Photo: Pond5<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On a whim I signed up for a 5K<\/a>, taking place in less than two weeks. I\u2019m thinking of it as brusque warm-up (or brutal wake-up) for that devilish 10K coming up in November. And yesterday, out of nowhere, I flippantly joked about agreeing to run some other 10K before that <\/i>10K. This is not normal behavior!<\/p>\n

But it feels rather wonderful, intoxicating really, to see possibility before me, and nothing but. I will not be first to cross those finish lines, I may in fact be dead last. But I\u2019ll show up and do it. It\u2019s all becoming that fantastically simple to me.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s that other part too, the part that I\u2019ve never experienced before and cannot wait to taste. The part where I complete the dare. I\u2019ve never done that when it comes to athletics. When horseback riding, I backed off on every jump. When playing soccer I only ever wanted defense or goalie positions so there was less pressure to run fast or far. I always shied away from the dance classes I wanted, feeling too awkward to join. And I was the all-time best person to go rock climbing with \u2014 I\u2019d belay every one of my friends without ever wanting to try the wall myself.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s somehow different now I have no time for useless shame and fear. I have other things to do. I\u2019m really excited to know what the finish line feels like.<\/p>\n

So back<\/a> to my pal Kate, the lady so tough she could ice a man with her pinky toe. I never gave much thought to her athleticism, her innate consistency and commitment. Working out has always just been a part of who she is. She\u2019d sooner leave the house without shoes than go weeks without sweating.<\/p>\n

Me, on the other hand \u2014 I live in New York. If I don\u2019t put on shoes before I leave the house I will die. I will die a pitiful beer bottle, cigarette butt, pigeon poop, tuberculosis-ridden death. Wearing shoes is therefore just a part of who I am.\u00a0Adding running shoes into the rotation is totally doable, right?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m understanding more and more how much what I think<\/i> affects what I do<\/i>. My wildly cavalier attitude towards all these races is a product of the incredible high I get from starting to believe that impossible is only what I make it. So why not make it nothing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is a 10K too daunting? What about a 5K? Nothing’s impossible, according to this writer, with the right support, smart goals and a healthy dose of “I can.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":18047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,18],"tags":[108,341,357,285],"class_list":["post-18044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-weight-loss","tag-running","tag-tax1living-well","tag-tax2running","tag-weight-loss"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}