At 39, I Took Up Running and Became a Top Influencer Through Morning Runs

At 41, Guan Zeping was a grassroots civil servant struggling with severe depression. As a child, he was raised by his uncle while his parents went to South Korea for work. He worked hard to pass the civil service exam, but the pressures of his job and a betrayal in love sent him plummeting to the lowest point of his life.

At 39, he met Dr. Chen, a psychologist, and began using morning runs to fight depression. Starting with one kilometer and eventually completing a marathon, he found a new lease on life. He also turned his running journal into videos, which unexpectedly went viral. With the support of Xu Mengyan, a sunny young woman, Guan Zeping found the courage to resign from government work and devote himself full-time to building a social media business.

Through sincerity and perseverance, he went from earning a few thousand yuan a month to tens of thousands, and from obscurity to a following of tens of millions. He founded a charity to help people with depression, returned to his hometown to boost its e-commerce industry, and used livestreaming to transform the fate of the entire county. His father’s death, online abuse, sabotage by competitors... After every setback, his optimism and hard work brought him to an even brighter peak.

This is a story of awakening, running, and being reborn, as well as a glimpse of countless people born in the 1980s breaking through midlife hardships and turning their lives around. As long as you keep your heart turned toward the sun, it’s never too late!