Often I am my own worst enemy.

And you are my best cheerleaders.  My friends, my co-workers, my family — the significant people in my life.  You are the ones who tell me I’m “amazing” or “awesome” or “wonderful” or “fantastic.”

Truth is, I’m not.  I’m “stubborn” and “willful” and “determined” and “tenacious.”

And I am human.

I will be the first one to tell myself any of the following:

• “I’m too tired.”
• “I don’t feel like it.”
• “It’s too (hot/cold/rainy/sunny/cloudy) today.”
• “It won’t make a difference.”

And then I get up and I do it anyway . . . most of the time.  Because I don’t want to let you guys down.  You’ve given me top billing in the arena of life, and that’s a big reputation to try and maintain.  And if I let you down, then you will know that I am just average.

I try to tell you . . . I’ve said it time and again, “I’m just karen.”  Or not.  I believe I allow my tenacity and stubbornness and your extrinsic motivation to push me to achieve more than I think possible.  If it were all up to me, I’d be stuck where I’ve been told I belong – – nowhere, because I am nobody.  So when the surgeon says I can’t run after a total knee replacement, it’s not just my intrinsic desire to run that pushes me forward because honestly there are days I HATE running.  It’s the belief that you have in me to succeed, to push the limits and to meet my goals, as impossible as they may seem.

Today I was listening to motivational You-Tube videos while I was on the treadmill.  (If you can’t have scenery, you can at least have brain food, right?)

Until 1954, the idea of running a mile in less than 4 minutes was considered physiologically impossible.  And then Roger Bannister happened.  On May 6, 1954, he ran a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds and the impossible was now possible.

“Everything is impossible . . . until someone does it.”