Dear Olympic Hopefuls 3/25/20
Today, your dreams were dealt a serious blow…kinda like wiping out on ten-meter. You got to the surface of the water, gasping for breath, wondering what the hell just happened…you feel like someone took a baseball bat to you…you can’t breathe…you hurt down to your bones…you just want to press the rewind button and start the dive over again, this time hoping for a better calculation about which direction is up or down.
But you can’t get the dive back…decisions were made, and you just landed flat. Now you’ve got to pick up the pieces, learn from the miscalculation, heal yourself up, and decide whether you’re going to wing that dive again.
No one could have anticipated what just happened…you learn the dive (“If you do this, it will turn out OK,” your coach says), you practice the progressions (spotting belts, lead ups), and then…you fully invest, take the leap of faith…and then you splat!
You step away for a bit and reflect on what just happened. What do I do now? I did what I thought I was supposed to do, took the risk, and got the crap beaten out of me…why would I want to do that again?
Spoiler alert…I can’t answer that question for you! But after having had 40 years to process this reality, here’s a few things I learned from having had my Olympic dreams annihilated by the 1980 Olympic Boycott:
Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger)
I was infected with the Olympic bug (not Zika) when I was 6 years old. I sat in front of the television, enthralled with the gymnastics competition that was unfolding at the Olympic Games. From that point forward, I was on a mission to become an Olympic athlete.
You Say You Want an Evolution...Three Tips for Creating Successful Change 1/27/16
In the immortal words of John Lennon, “You say you want a revolution” because it is a way we can create change in our lives. But “revolt” is at the root of the word revolution, and that’s usually what we do within a couple of weeks of making a new year’s resolution. We start working out, our muscles get sore, we eat only “good” foods (which usually means depriving ourselves of eating or drinking some of our favorite things) and voila, the revolt is on in no time flat. Those great intentions, and you, are out the door in two weeks or less.
If 2016 is going to be a year when you become more of the you whom you’d like to be, then that means taking an evolutionary approach to change. Once you have an outcome in mind, the next step is to have a good process in place for getting there. The difference between dreamers and achievers is that the achievers have a process in place that is both proactive and reactive.
Constructing Your New Year’s EVOLUTION 1/20/16
"All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players” - Shakespeare
It’s that time of year when people make new year’s resolutions. They come in droves to the gym in early January. I call them “Resolutionists". Resolutionists show up with the best of intentions to better themselves by losing weight and getting fitter. And then two weeks later, they’re gone again. While I enjoy having the gym space back, it makes me sad that it takes less than two weeks for people to let go of the new way they wanted to be. And the main reason for that is because they came up with a great concept, but didn’t follow it up with a solid plan that helped them follow through the days when their motivation was outweighed by their old habits.