I ask myself a question when I feel like stopping.
When I go for a morning jog,
there are moments when I suddenly want to stop—
for no clear reason.
So I ask myself.
Do my legs hurt?
Do my feet hurt?
Are my knees in pain?
Am I out of breath?
Do my shoulders or arms hurt?
And strangely,
the answer is always the same.
No.
I still have breath left.
My body feels fine.
That’s when I realize—
It’s not my body.
It’s my brain trying to make me stop.
It’s imagining a future discomfort
that hasn’t even arrived yet,
and trying to protect me from it.
It’s not exactly about willpower.
It’s something else.
Of course, I still lose sometimes.
I stop and walk.
But sometimes,
these questions help me go a little further.
And I think this isn’t just about running.
It’s not the pain I’m feeling now,
but the pain that might come later.
Something that doesn’t even exist yet—
but my brain creates it anyway,
and uses it as a reason to stop.
So I try not to stop
before that pain even arrives.