Michael Okunloro | Elevate Your Style

 African Men don’t do yoga and only the wicked run when no one is pursuing them. – Xclusivemic’23. 

I completed a 31-day personal challenge of running 5km a day and Yoga practice January 31st and to say I’m proud of myself is the least accolade I can give myself. No season goes without lessons learned, and I thought it necessary to document and share what I have learned in my short time of self-discipline activities.

To get better at anything you need to start small and continue to give yourself to it, my first run in 2014 was a joke, I could barely finish a 1km run and I thought I was going to die that day with how my breath kept running away from me with each attempt to catch it. Over the years, my run has gotten better, and I can now attempt to run for 31 days, and run long kilometers without stopping, just because I’ve spent the last 9 years building my capacity and resilience at my own pace. 

I’m not going to act like quitting didn’t try to catch up with me during this period, but I found a way to keep the pace going and pick up my slacks anytime I had any. My body got so accustomed to running that I started to have some withdrawal symptoms whenever I went a while without running, it almost felt like I was sinning against my own body and the guilt didn’t lift until I had gone for a run. And this has helped me in other aspects of my life, helping me to learn that constant practice is the way to imbibe good habits.

There was a time in my Christian life that I could go on for months without praying, in retrospect now I realize that those periods record my moments of highest vulnerability and weakness and contributed to many of the L’s that I experienced. The guilt that came with being inconsistent with my prayer life and my whole Christian journey was extreme, but it didn’t have

The progress I have experienced in my running habit is the same as I now apply to my Christian life. No matter how bad my day goes or how extremely busy I may get, I make sure to get in a time of prayer and bible study. The imperfections in your life will be done away with slowly with every new day you decide to show up and do what you need to do. This little practice is what makes the big difference, every time you show up is an opportunity to get closer to what you want to achieve. 

If you’re ever trying to get better at something, I will advise starting small, this might be as little as making a move to buying a running shoe, or joining a community of people who are already doing what you are trying to get better at. 

See your goals as a large water tank, every drop of water added to it is an attempt to fill it, and the water remains at the same level as the last effort you made.