Take time to celebrate your successes. Take a minute to celebrate your life every day. You are still in the game. Celebrate.
Tag Archive for 'mindset'
Find a role model to speak with and learn how they ‘do what do they well’.
How can we flow with the river? If we need to swim against the flow, where is the current slowest?
I am free to choose the action I take and I am responsible for the outcomes
According to the first noble truth of Buddhism, “life involves suffering.” Living in a consumer-driven society, many remedies are offered up: Cars, drugs, holidays, food, and entertainment are just some of the many ways we try to reduce the ’suffering’.
Many lessons lie in experiencing pain and suffering - so perhaps it is worth exploring how we can work through these tough times rather than escape from them.
When it comes to endurance racing, like triathlons, at some point in time, you are going to be in a race and you are going to want to quit. My advice is don’t. You can harden your mental strength and learn a lot along the way.
I never understood how a professional elite athlete can quit a race without good reason (like a crash on the bike or medical condition). But in 2008 when I competed in the China Ironman 70.3 race, it was a blistering hot day of over 35C. Many people did not finish, amateurs and professionals alike. I wonder how much they could have learned about themselves if they had sat down for five minutes, gathered their thoughts and moved on to finish at a slower pace.
That race was the hottest I have ever felt in my life, so the joy of actually finishing was amazing. And importantly, the fact that I got through that race means that other races seems ‘easier’ to complete.
In a recent race, one team-mate dropped out after just 200 meters of the swim race (that in the first minute or two of the race). Given he had been feeling bad with food poisoning leading up to the race, but to get to the start line and drop out so early does not improve his mind game.
How can you better prepare yourself for the challenges ahead? When it comes to getting through a tough spot, you need to set very short-term, small targets. Instead of looking at your annual targets, ask yourself what do I need to do to get through today, tomorrow, this week? In my twenties, I was a partner in a business suffering very tight cash flow, and the only way we got through it was to focus a day at a time on what needed to happen. Every night, we would take a walk to the park and talk through the day and what small steps we had taken to move things forward.
Be ready to push yourself mentally to strengthen yourself for future challenges. Always put your health first, but see how you can stop, regroup and take the next step forward. Take it a step at a time, a day at a time. Enjoy the journey!
A technique used by endurance athletes before a race is called the taper. Like the funnel picture here, this involves reducing the volume of training in the week or two before a race. So if a triathlete is training 16 hours a week in the build up phase, during the taper she will reduce training volume to 8 or 10 hours.
While this may seem counter-intuitive, there is an important reason behind this. In short, this allows the body to repair and store up energy which increases performance in the race. A lot of athletes find this lowering of training a challenge. As competitive driven individuals who are used to pushing themselves as far as they can, to step back and train within themselves can be hard. As I am training for a race now, I have just entered my taper phase. I realized that this technique is applicable for all goal-setting.
Have you ever found yourself getting into a routine - albeit a high performance routine - and then asking yourself “Why am I doing this?” “What is this all about?” and if this is accompanied by questioning your own ability - you may need to taper.
If you have been pushing your new business development constantly all month and although you feel good progress has been made, you are not sure what comes next - take a step back. Take a day or two away from the activity of generating new business and put yourself in a different frame of mind. Call up an old and trusted client (or friend) and take them out for a coffee or lunch. Instead of trying to sell them, treat it like a fact-finding mission. Use your curiosity to learn more about their lives, ask them questions about their industry in general and perhaps even ask them to give feedback on your sales approach. This will strengthen the quality of your sales technique. Instead of hammering it to make 15 sales calls a day, take your time to make 3 quality calls. During your taper phase, see if you notice anything different or what you have learned that you can add into your toolkit.
High energy and passion are essential for success, but once a month add in a taper phase where you slow down, work within yourself and become more observant and “sponge” up new ideas. Enjoy the breakthroughs. Success in life is like an endurance race not a sprint so taper your way to higher performance!
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