I woke up feeling scared. I hadn’t slept well the night before and needed to be at my friend’s house hours before the sun rose. I had somehow agreed to run the Philadelphia marathon. Two years earlier, a simple question had put me on the road to my first marathon. A friend and his wife asked my wife and me: “Would you like our old treadmill?”

The last time I had run more than a mile was back in high school.

I didn’t believe I was a runner. I didn’t know how to run long distances. And because I didn’t know anything about running, I didn’t believe that I could do it. I lacked the power to be positive and to envision my goal.

My journey from couch to marathon did take about two years, but let me share with you a secret: When you choose to become a long-distance runner, you need to learn how to overcome negativity while running.

When I ran my first 5K on New Year’s day more than a decade ago, in my head, I thought I was running a marathon. A 5K seemed impossible to me at the time. I had never run that far in my life. I didn’t believe it possible.

But I had trained, and I slogged through the race and completed it. I remember coming home from the race and collapsing on the sofa as though I had run ten times as much. I was physically and mentally spent.

I kept up with running and then decided to run a 10-miler, then a half-marathon (13.1 miles), and finally a full marathon (26.1 miles).

I can tell you that positive thinking is the secret to my success in having completed all of those races. I’m not a fast runner, but I can say that I’ve completed two official marathons (and one homegrown one that I ran in my neighborhood) and more than ten half-marathons. How did I go from the couch to a marathon?

Positivity.

I believed that I could. Well, initially, I didn’t believe I could do any of those races. But when I started training, I realized that I needed to do something while running. Running mile after mile can be monotonous, and you have a few options: You can listen to loud music and get lost in that, or you can deal with your thoughts while running.

The first time I ran 20 miles (a training run for my first marathon), I needed to find a way to keep going. It was cold out, my legs hurt, and I was tired. A simple mantra helped me to succeed. While running, I said the following in cadence with stride: “I know I can. I know I can. I know I can.”

I made an effort to believe in myself. I never thought I could run a marathon, but I eventually did.

Putting in the hard work of training my body was important, but so was the training of my mind.

I found my mental ability to be as important as the physical.

The same is true in what we do every day.

If we don’t believe in ourselves, then we will fail. And when we do fail and make mistakes, we need to take the opportunity to learn what didn’t go right, take that lesson, and apply it to our lives.

Is that easy to do? No.

How do we do it?

Sometimes it literally is taking the first step and thinking: “Yes, I can do this.”

As people, we can accomplish amazing things—if only we believed in ourselves.

I have completed 26.1 miles in a day. Recently, I learned about people who have run 1,000 miles in under 12 days. I thought this impossible. But then I read about the amazing athletes who have completed such an amazing goal. We have the power to complete the impossible. We can do it.

What in your life have you been afraid to start?

Maybe it’s time to try—and succeed.

Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.