As part of my New Year's Resolutions (remember those?), I decided to scroll less on my phone at night to relax and read on my Kindle instead. Mentally, it was an easy swap, one black gadget for another. I like to read, and my list of books I wanted to dive into was piling up, so I began reading. I joined Libby to borrow books from the library and have Spotify Premium, where you get a fixed number of audiobook listening hours each month.

It's April first. Do you know how many books I have read so far this year? 24! How many did I read last year? I think five. That was a lot of wasted time on social media, which I replaced with a more productive activity. Yay, me.

To be fair, eight of these were audiobooks (you can send all the angry emails that audiobooks aren't reading to lea@leagendersfitness.com. Just kidding, don't do that). I listen to books when running, walking, or in the sauna. I read the Kindle in the evenings before bed.

When I read, I always highlight ideas that stand out to me, but I rarely go back and look at what I highlighted. I recently discovered that Kindle has kept track of all my highlights in a clippings file. When I read back through my highlights, it reminded me of some quotes I liked from these books, and because I love to blog, I thought it would be fun to share those thoughts and ideas with you!

Here are my favorite quotes from ten non-fiction books for better running, goal achievement, and mindset.

Brain Training For Runners (Fitzgerald, Matt)

“Low motivation for running is often your brain's way of telling your mind that something is wrong—perhaps you are overtrained, or you just need a mental break from formal training.”
"Resistance training improves communication between brain and muscles in ways that enable you to run more efficiently and with less chance of injury."
"Recent science has shown that the brain allows the body to exercise as long and as hard as it "believes" the body can go without harming itself."
"As few as four nights of partial sleep deprivation result in skyrocketing levels of circulating cortisol."

The Art of Impossible (Kotler, Steven)

"Which is why learning to treat fear as a challenge to rise toward rather than a threat to be avoided can make such a profound difference in our lives."
"The goal is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable."
"We don't rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training."

Run Elite (Snow, Andrew)

"You cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way you see yourself."
"Never rely on other people for your positive emotions."
"The only reason you want the time on the clock is because of the way you'll think it will make you feel. The result you want is the feeling, or the emotional state."

Broken Open: Mountains, Demons, Treadmills And a Search for Nirvana (Clark, David)

"It's odd to think that when we let go of the stress of the future, we always seem to perform at a level high enough to make that future amazing. But when we press hard for a specific outcome, we tend to get run over by fate."
"The only way to be strong is to choose to be strong—right now. So I did that. I stopped letting my emotions run me and started directing them."

Bravey (Pappas, Alexi)

"I would later learn that it's actually quite hard to tell yourself to change your feelings...You have to change your actions, then your thoughts and feelings will follow."
"Along the way to being good enough to win at something, you will inevitably lose."
"It isn't helpful to fixate on the end result. The only thing that's in your control is the progress you're making today. You trust that if you keep trying, you will come to the finish line eventually, whatever the finish line looks like for you. The end result will not always be in your hands. What is in your hands is the try."
"Trying your best doesn't mean being the best, it just means trying your best."
"A great coach once told me that when the pain sets in during a workout, it takes less mental energy to push harder than it does to think about slowing down or stopping."

Choosing to Run (Linden, Des)

"Challenge to myself: Will this help me become a champion? Act as if you are the thing you are trying to become."
"You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate."

The Obstacle is The Way (Holiday, Ryan)

"Persist and resist. Persist in your efforts, resist giving into distractions, discouragement, or disorder."
"We don't get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. And why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good? We can choose to render a good account of ourselves."

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (Tracy, BrIAn)

" If there is no solution, there is no problem."
"Paranoid is someone who believes people are conspiring against him or her. An inverse paranoid, in contrast, is a person who is convinced the world is conspiring to make him or her successful.
"No matter how comfortable you might feel saying it, others don't make you mad. You make you mad. You make you scared, annoyed, or insulted. You and only you create your emotions."

The Greatness Mindset (Howes, Lewis)

"You'll never rise any higher than the way you see yourself."
"Success is in the process, not the outcome. When you don't depend on a specific outcome to define your worth, you are free to become great by failing, learning, and moving forward."

The Untethered Soul (Singer, Michael)

"Just stop. Take a moment to remember that you're spinning on a planet in the middle of empty space. Then remind yourself you're not going to get involved in your own melodrama. In other words, let go of what is going on right then, and remind yourself you don't want to play the mind game."

I thought it was telling that I highlighted a lot about taking control of your thoughts and emotions and focusing on the process rather than the outcomes. Was there anything helpful for you here?

Have you read any of these books? Do you have any book recommendations for me? After all, I have plowed through 24 books so far this year, so I must keep adding to my reading list!

Reading is great (and better than mindlessly scrolling), but the important part is your action based on the new knowledge. What will you do differently now, with this new information?

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