If you've been reading these monthly dispatches for the past year, Reader, you might detect an attitude shift.

For years, when people have talked about how busy they are, discussed their self-generated overwhelm, shared their discomfort with stillness, or even effused on their love of running, my reflexive response has been:

"Running's for fugitives."

This was something that only spoke in my inside voice… until one day a client asked "WHAT THE HECK is that?" My internal dialogue had, in that moment, apparently become my outside voice ... and a phrase was born.

"Running's for fugitives" had originally been a snarky throwaway comment that I pinched from a friend on a bike ride. It's evolved into a kind of coaching mantra — a nudge to take a beat, assess your situation, and shift your physics.

By physics, to answer the question I know my friend Poppie is bound to ask, I mean the direction you're pointed and the energy you're putting to it. (Speaking of, she's got a very good monthly newsletter about the craft of writing that's worth checking out here.)

So, if you feel like you've been running like a fugitive who's forgotten to exhale, welcome.

When You're Forced To Stop

Three months after skidding onto my own rock bottom, I found myself in a room with others who'd had similar experiences.

I described to them the unfamiliar and unnerving sensations I was feeling. At the time, I recall saying my skin felt like it was turned inside out. Like being a full-body exposed nerve in a world of constant irritation.

An older person in the group, someone who'd been in this spot decades before, patiently waited for me to exhaust myself, then gently said, "Oh honey. Those things you're feeling are called emotions. It's what you've been trying to outrun since you were a child. If you want things to be different, dear, you're gonna have to learn how to sit still and feel it."

I'd like to say this landed as intended. It did not.

Being a raw nerve at the time, that was not the guidance I wanted. I wanted a quick fix that changed the circumstances without me having to change my patterns.

"I know how to handle emotions," I said to myself. "What's wrong with these people that they can't see how together I actually am?"

With more time and excavation, I admitted my friend was, of course, right. They'd seen the exact patterns hundreds of times before. At some point, I'd started — and never stopped — running like a fugitive, always trying to stay ahead of things I found intolerable or unpresentable about myself… in every part of my life.

When you're abruptly forced to stop, all those versions smash into each other like a highway pile-up that ultimately need piecing back together. Until that moment, many of us see our lives in a linear way — dots on a timeline of good, bad, and ugly moments. We've worked hard to show the good and hide away the uncomfortable. All of it in service of creating an identity we can market to ourselves and others.

We even have an irritating industry for it now. It's called personal branding.

Maintaining that marketability is exhausting, because we're constantly resisting what we don't like. When I told myself "I know how to handle emotions," I was confused — convinced that rationalizing and ignoring equaled understanding and processing.

What did it look like?

I didn’t know I’d been running like that. I thought I’d been building opportunities … a life, a career, a future. Those closest to me, however, saw it as burning the candle at both ends, and the middle, whilst pouring petrol on the flames.

Leaving a prestige role, jumping into an ill-suited business partnership, jumping out of the business partnership, jumping into another ill-fitting business partnership, chasing the next big ideas, attempting to make my competitive cycling hobby a career, fueling it all alcoholically.

This was all unsettledness, confusion, and emptiness masquerading as ambition, which made it justifiable. And, all of it came from a gnawing sense of lack — of being behind in a race I even hadn’t registered for.

I see similar patterns in others often.

Recently, Iain — a freelance writer friend — told me about a project he was pitching to a potential client in another country. He’d never met the client. But, Iain had concocted an elaborate scheme to woo them. His scheme included bringing in another writer who had more recognizable titles to burnish Iain’s (self) perceived lack of credibility. At a deeper level, Iain worried about where his next project was coming from, so he needed to rush the sale and land the client (whom he’d still not met) quickly. [Read the full story →]​

The whole thing sounded like chaos... like desperation giving a Ted Talk... like self-inflicted suffering.

Running like a fugitive has chasing, forcing, grasping energy. It makes us compete where we don't actually have the chops, trying to perform as someone we're not. That fuels anxious overwhelm rather than building anything worth being proud of.

This is a self-trust problem.

The Turn

What I've found is that the things I least wanted to look at — my failures, my nuttiness, my mess — turned out to be my richest material. The cracks in the vase are my strongest places. They're also my most direct pathways into other people's challenges. They're how I recognize the ways others are running like fugitives in their own lives.

Most of us want the antithesis of all that running. We want momentum that feels right in our bodies. We want to build something we can actually be proud of.

The antithesis of running like a fugitive isn't stillness. It’s clarifying our direction to create something intentionally, purposefully, and that's unambiguously our own. That’s how we shift physics.

I recently had lunch with a winemaker friend — a proper star in their craft, but one who'd spent years making wine for other people's labels. Through some past conversations we'd had, they decided to build their own production facility and tasting room. On their own terms.

I asked my friend if the space had lived up to their vision.

"What this has become has far exceeded that vision," they said.

That's the direction most of us are actually looking for.

Running's for fugitives, my friends. Remember to exhale.

Bryan

My friend Cari Kaufman of Storyteller Wordsmith tells me "I make sure insanely capable professionals never doubt themselves again." So, if you're secretly stalled or running like a fugitive who's forgotten to exhale, what physics need shifting? Inquiring minds want to know.

Just hit reply. I respond to them all, Reader.