2018, the year that for the first time in my life, I have made a list of things I want to knock off. I have never been a person who has had a bucket list or a list of goals. Weird, I know as most people would describe me as goal oriented and results focused. However, I have always just approached life by experiencing, and wanting to see how far I could push myself. I try to approach my life in a way that is right for me. As such, I rarely share my pursuits with others. I tend to just do and then share if I am asked. Why? My pursuits are simply mine and I do not feel I need approval to follow through on what I want to do. This is likely why two things I read, in the last couple of days, have me pondering. I felt they were worth sharing.
Amelia Boone's Blog https://goo.gl/DLwpax. Boone is an OCR racer but she is also an interesting person to read about. Here are some of what she stated in her recent blog.
“It’s a difficult thing for any athlete to fall off the podium, to no longer be the one that everyone fears, and to feel like your best days are behind you. I won’t lie – it’s an extremely humbling process, and one that I’m still working through. But by racing through these emotions and these fears, I learned something else: there’s great freedom in it as well. Freedom in realizing your expectations are only constructs you create in your own head. Freedom is learning that the world keeps spinning regardless of what that finish time says.”
Boone goes on to say,
“true joy and true gratitude does not come from the victory – it comes from the pursuit of the achievement. The happiness from victory is there, of course, but it’s fleeting.
Because you know what? Winning is never going to be enough. I spent years winning race after race, and wondering why I still wasn’t happy. Why, the more I won, the less fulfilled I felt.
I was missing the point all along – I was failing to embrace the things that truly brought me happiness, that truly brought me joy: the pursuit, and the sharing of that pursuit with others.”
Pete Hitzeman from Breaking Muscle talks about goal setting. What I really enjoyed is how he reworked the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) approach to goal setting from the corporate world to that of the athletic world. Here is what he had to say about SMART goals.
“Scary as hell. There should be elements of your goal that threaten your physical being, your ego or both.
Meaningful to you personally. They should be something that pulls at your heartstrings for one reason or another. That reason doesn’t have to make sense to anybody else, either. More on that later.
Above your current level of ability. This might seem obvious, but more than a few people set goals that they are already capable of accomplishing right now, or with very little work. For a goal to create a process and improve your habits, it needs to be something that will take months or years of work.
Rare. Here’s the tricky part. It doesn’t have to be something that’s rare to everybody, but it should at least be a rare occurrence in your life. Lots of people run marathons, and a few crazies do it regularly. But if it’s something that you may only be able to accomplish once in your life, it’s a rare goal.
Tribe-focused. Your goal should be something that causes you to surround yourself with likeminded people. This can be at a gym, or with a running team, or at a Thursday night dodgeball league. No, online tribes don’t count. You need to be around other actual people.”
My advice to anyone (including myself) is to always reach in pursuits, avoid judgement by others, be eager to constantly learn and explore, and limit time with negative people. I feel that this makes us not only better human beings, but also great athletes.
