My running coach, Holly, published a book last month called How to Make Feeling Good a Priority [amazon affiliate link]. The book is part advice and part memoir (as she learns and applies her advice to herself and clients). I am lucky to be a client and have heard much of this from her, but having it all in one place helped me see how it wasn’t just for running.

Holly is a serial marathoner (27 so far) and I have done two under her coaching (and training for a third). We often talk about how to make adjustments during training and during a race to prioritize feeling good. This book is about doing that outside of running—a connection I didn’t make.

There are many lessons, but the one that stuck with me is turning “I can’t” into “How can I?”. I have written about habit triggers before—how you can control your own behavior, in part, by controlling the triggers that prompt that behavior. Anchoring a problem-solving mindset to “I can’t” comes up surprisingly often.

So much of the book is about shrinking the impact of bad feelings and increasing the effect of good ones. There are a lot of actionable tips and strategies.

I can’t say that I related to everything, but a lot of it resonated with me. Her chapter on the Law of Attraction (which always seemed like mysticism to me) resonated with my beliefs about tapping into randomness. I have come to see “attraction” as “focussing”/”awareness”—I don’t think you attracted the thing you wanted, but I do think you were more likely to notice it. And mentioning it to others helps them notice it for you too.

Knowing Holly, I see her personality on the page. She’s a positive person, always trying to find ways to solve the issues I bring up with her. Under her training, I have very rarely missed a workout and I haven’t had an injury—the rest takes care of itself. After reading her book, I do think that her concept of the “runner’s mindset” can be applied to the rest of my life too.