Smashby's Training Blog

As the year 2010 comes to a close, that means one thing:
Many people are already thinking of their “New Year’s Resolutions” that they’ll usually say out loud at night on December 31st. Most of the time, our motivation and desire to reach these goals will be honest and heartfelt. Many people will start out the new year right on schedule, too. Yet after a few days… weeks… months… these resolutions become just words we spoke in the past.

We realize that these goals we set:

• are too time-consuming
• require too much time and effort
• won’t always be fun
• are simply too challenging
• may not come true the way we had planned

Some of us won’t even make “resolutions” because we’ve experience the above pattern too many times before. So why would this year be any different, right? So are we not reaching these goals because we’re not willing to put in the work to reach them? Or are we afraid of not reaching them?

Are you afraid of failure? Not are you worried about failing… do you literally fear failure? We’ve addressed this theme a few times, and I wanted to discuss it again.

If you watched the video on my Brain Power post from 12/12/10, and if you read the comments from Derek Sivers, himself (along with some great feedback from a friend of mine, Yen), you can see that “talking” about goals is simply not enough. The whole point of sharing goals or resolutions should be to motivate us, but often the satisfaction we get from people “congratulating” us from just SETTING the goals, de-motivates us from actually working towards the goals themselves. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. We already feel some pay-off for saying that we want to do something, and seeing how proud it makes other people.

I want to share a few things that I hope will serve as inspiration to us all as we make these new promises to ourselves.

– The quote below comes from Kelly Brown, of CrossFit Agoge. The day I read it, I retyped it and posted it on the wall of my office at work, and on my white board at home:
“We will succeed because we are not so paralyzed by fear of failure that we fail to try.”

– This video is a scene from the movie Coach Carter, stating the same message:

That’s just the touchy-feely stuff, right? Now how about the truth. Many of us have “Hopes and Dreams”. Instead of calling them by that name, let’s call them “attainable goals”. They already sound more realistic, right? It’s critical that we realize that these goals will require work, and we need to be excited to put in that time!

This last video is a segment from Kevin Spacey talking about that work.

The best part of my job, as a trainer, is seeing and hearing about how my athletes and friends reach (and often times surpass) the “attainable goals” that they set for themselves. But it took planning and hard work to get there.

Holiday Project:
IF you are someone who likes sharing your goals, share one of them with me. You can do it in the comments section of this post or you can email it to me at tomashbytraining@gmail.com.

What I will then do is will reply to you and together we will devise a PLAN for reaching that goal. You can say “I want to lose 10 pounds” a million times, but without a plan to get there, and without putting in the time, they’re just words. I will help you with the plan, and you need to put in the work. I don’t care if your goal is fitness related or not.

There’s no reason to wait until January 1st, 2011 to do make these commitments to ourselves. We can get one step closer today. We can start right now. Ready, go.