I deliberately avoided the ‘New Year/New You’ hype around the beginning of the year, and by now – a month or two in – most people’s New Year Resolutions will have fallen by the wayside anyway. Who decided they were going to get to the rink earlier and do a proper warm up? Are you managing it still? Who said they would set proper goals and monitor their progress? How are you getting on with it? (Of course those of you with the 2016 Skater Planner will find it much easier as it’s all built in for you!). And how many of you decided they’d start working on their fitness and flexibility? (Gym memberships increase by huge numbers in January and by week 8 they’re way back down again!).
Nevertheless, GOALS are a really important part of anything you do which involves trying to make progress.
A goal without a deadline is just a dream. Heard that one? So whether you’re geared up to your goals with your shiny new planner, or going it alone, JUST DO IT! Get down on paper what you’d like to be able to do by this time next year and plan your way there!
Goals need to stretch you just that little bit further so that you really can progress. If you stretch yourself too far though, you can end up in your ‘Panic Zone’ – so you need to know just how far to push yourself with your small goals to get you to the Big One.
What’s all this stuff about zones? Well I’ll be going into more detail on this in one of my coaching programmes but for now, you can assume that most of the time we just plod along doing what we are comfortable with. Then once in a while we might have to stretch ourselves a little bit to do something we aren’t quite comfortable with, but we know that if we can just manage to do that thing, the feeling of achievement afterwards will be pretty awesome.
Our brains are fairly good at making sure we don’t go too far and wander into our ‘panic’ zone where we can end up overwhelmed, scared and stressed (and possibly frozen to the spot!), but it’s happy to let us stretch ourselves a little to help us develop and progress. And in fact the more you wander into your stretch zone, the bigger your comfort zone becomes – because you start to feel more comfortable doing those things which were a bit of a stretch not too long ago. Does that make sense?
Here’s an exercise (click here) to get you started with tracking your progress – which will help you to think about what goals to set to take you from your ‘comfort’ zone into your ‘stretch’ zone.
Later in the year I’ll be bringing out another self-study programme to really get clear with your goals and get you making strides towards them. Why not now I hear you ask? Because I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about goals and targets and resolutions this month – and the great thing about goals is…. You can set, work on, and achieve them ANYTIME!
