Measure your running happiness

I was running with Sarah's Runners yesterday when one of my running colleagues used the phrase "my running happiness".

I love this phrase and think that it's such a useful idea for measuring how well running is working for you right now.

If you imagine an internal gauge that goes from 1 to 10, where 1 represents not being at all happy with your running and 10 represents feeling that you couldn't be any happier whatever you did.

You could then use this guage when deciding whether or not to enter a race or to increase your distance. What do you imagine the score would be if you decide yes, and what would it be if you decide no?

You could also use it when you're actually running. Check in with yourself what score your running happiness is right now and then think if there's anything you could do to increase that score.

Perhaps your intuition might tell you to slow down or speed up a little, shorten the distance or even increase it, or just let go of what you should or shouldn't be doing and just become really present to how you're feeling internally and to your environment right now.

There's a great principle that I was taught in my coach training, that of "dancing in the moment".

Dancing in the moment is about letting go of what you should or shouldn't be doing, and letting your intuition guide you in what you do next.

In my experience when I'm dancing in the moment, my happiness always increases.

I think I could also adapt the running happiness to my own writing happiness and my coaching happiness.

Where in your life or your work could you benefit from designing a happiness gauge?