The first time you bent down to tie your shoes before heading out for a run. That first off-beat breath, the first uncertain step. The first time you pinned a race bib to your shirt. The first time you thought: What am I even doing?
There’s something about first times that—when we look back—feels meaningful, full of sensation. I remember my first time perfectly. And no, it wasn’t great.
I felt awkward and clumsy. Every step was a struggle, every breath felt wrong.
Since then, a lot has changed. I’ve run farther, run better, chosen the mountains over other types of runs, and made running a cornerstone of my life.
You feel awkward because you’re learning something new
Starting something new makes us uncomfortable because we feel clumsy, inadequate, frustrated. No one likes being a beginner, but at the start, it’s unavoidable—we feel out of place and often unsure of what to do. We live in a world that expects us to be good right away, competent right away, high-performing right away, as if the only way to earn our place is by producing results.
How many times have you judged an athlete, a coworker—or yourself—based on a single performance? We’re surrounded by a culture of constant performance, where messing up once is seen as failure.
But what if it were the opposite? What if we could feel at ease—or even enjoy—the chaos, the awkwardness, the discomfort that comes with first times? What if we saw them for what they truly are: a sign that we’re learning something new? Maybe then, it would be easier to find the courage to change, to put ourselves out there, or to start over. Because it’s in those very beginnings that we can still experience true freedom. That’s where we can mess up without losing anything, where we can learn, grow, and start to figure out who we really want to become.
In a world that demands perfection, having the courage to be clumsy is a revolutionary act. To feel comfortable in the discomfort—and turn that initial awkwardness into momentum—we need to revisit our first times. Not out of nostalgia, but to see them with fresh eyes and recognize how far we’ve come, how those uncertainties were really the first signs of transformation.
Reframing our first times means seeing them for what they truly are: the starting line of the journey that shaped who we are.
Your motivation is in that first time
Revisiting your “first time” holds immense value. Psychologically, all first times have a particular power—they’re emotionally charged experiences, and that’s why they stick in our memory more vividly than most others.
Our minds register these early experiences as deeply meaningful: moments when we pushed ourselves, when something shifted, when we crossed a threshold.
Remembering them reconnects us with the authenticity of our motivation. Before goals, before numbers, before performance—there was simply the need to do something for ourselves: to move, to react, to breathe better, to carve out space. It helps us reconnect with our deeper purpose—what psychology calls intrinsic value: the reason we do something, regardless of outcomes.
Motivation comes and goes. It fluctuates with mood, energy levels, and circumstances. Sometimes we lose that spark, because motivation—though powerful—is unstable. It’s driven by emotion. But purpose is what remains even when everything else wavers. It runs deeper, it’s more rooted, and it doesn’t depend on a stopwatch or a score. Purpose is what sustains us in the long run—it’s our compass, the steady point we orient ourselves toward, even when we feel lost. It helps us push through hard times, to see that the struggle has meaning, and that there’s a deeper reason behind every effort, every training session, every new beginning.
That’s why returning to our first time is so important—it’s where our purpose took shape. Maybe we didn’t even realize it then, but in that awkward, uncertain first step was already all the power of our “why.”
Going back to where you started helps you go farther
Every time we start something, we do it for a deep reason. Remembering that reason is the only way to keep going, especially when the spark seems to fade. It reconnects us with the most honest part of our journey.
And you? Do you remember your first time? Hold onto it—it will be your fuel in moments when you feel like stopping. It will help you face each new beginning with a little less fear and let you run farther than you ever thought possible.
Laura Burzi
(I talked about first times because this is my first time on RunLovers. Like with every first step, I feel a little awkward—but I’m savoring the excitement of a new beginning, the feeling of a lap about to unfold. I’m imprinting in my mind the reasons why I write, and this is where I begin.)