Runners, here’s an idea for spreading mental health awareness during a race
- Create and wear a small sign on your pack or clothing that will stir up thought and conversation about mental health.
- Use a popular hashtag and your social media handle.
- You could also incorporate a statistic.
- If you are raising funds, include that.
Here are example topics (keep it light!)
▪︎ What are you doing to support your mental health, besides running?
▪︎ Anxiety and worry
▪︎ Addiction recovery
▪︎ If you’ve had a loved one diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
▪︎ Ending the stigma
▪︎ Hope
▪︎ Sleep importance
▪︎ What’s your “get pumped up” song?
▪︎ Even before COVID-19, the prevalence of mental illness among adults was increasing. In 2017-2018, 19% of adults experienced a mental illness, an increase of 1.5 million people over last year’s dataset. – Mental Health America, 2021
Laminate the sign or be like me and use packing tape (if using tape, trim off the excess, it will look nice). Make sure it’s pinned on securely to not litter the trail.
Let’s have short, caring conversations.
Let others know that they’re not alone.
We need to keep working towards normalizing mental health issues because we all have our struggles at some point.
Keep up the good efforts of increasing awareness.
What are your creative sign ideas?
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Are you ready to work on your mindset and mental health?
If you are interested in working together on stepping up your mindset and mental wellness around racing and life, reach out to me.
I’d love to hear about your goals.
We will look at problem areas or where you’d like to see improvement, set a realistic goal, and then put those steps in place.
– I work with ultrarunners all over the United States who want to dial in their race mentality, mental strategies, and overall improve their mental wellness.
— My coaching services are fully on the mental side
(I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Counseling, coaching is a non-clinical service).
Here’s what we can work on:
- Improve day-to-day mental wellbeing.
- Build better habits.
- Incorporate mindfulness
- Learn emotion regulation strategies.
- Set challenging, yet attainable goals.
- Discuss motivation
- Address body image thoughts or concerns.
- Talk about you! Who are you, besides a runner or athlete? – parent, sibling,
- entrepreneur, community member… What else do you do, and how does it impact training for races or vice versa?
- Coping with injury and setbacks.
- Juggling priorities and time management.
- Are you actively trying to find a mental health professional? I can assist!
- Are you searching for a running coach? I can provide pointers on how to go about finding someone who’s a good fit and what questions to ask the coach when interviewing them for fit.
- Mental strategies and mindset for racing.
- Training and race day visualization.
- General worries and race day stressors.
- What might you do if you encounter a problem during a race.
- Building trust with yourself.
- Improving self-care, self-esteem, and self-compassion.
- Knowing when to push yourself and when to be kinder to yourself.
- Why’s and meaning behind what you do. Passion. Using that as support and drive.
- On top of talking, I do provide resources and homework.
Where’s the chair, I need to sit down?! … I hope that this give you an idea of the good stuff that we can cover.
Contact me if you have questions or want to schedule.
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