STAY CURIOUS. LIVE MORE
ARE you preparing for success or anticipating failure in life?
Which of these is your automatic ‘go to’ instinct when faced with a new challenge? Whichever outlook you lean towards will have a huge impact on how you live your life. If your ‘go to’ instinct is to anticipate failure then you become the world’s quickest brick layer as you build a metaphorical barrier between yourself and the challenge. That wall is built in a moment of thought – a millisecond of decision making.
I believe two things happen in that moment of decision, either ‘avoidance’ or ‘curiosity.’
Triggering ‘avoidance’ is very often triggering a fear of failure, and that often leads to shut down. Imagine if we could trigger ‘curiosity’ instead for the majority of occasions? This is something that comes with having a flexible mind and not limiting ourselves to living a life based on fear and withdrawal.
It’s difficult to adopt a flexible mindset but not impossible! It takes practice. As we grow older, we can become set in our ways and our beliefs can prevent us from experiencing new things.
There was once a general belief that it was impossible to break the four-minute mile. Roger Bannister disproved that in 1954. It was considered impossible to climb Mount Everest until Edmund Hillary scaled it in 1953.
Two weeks and counting! Quite a frightening thought when training hasn’t gone to plan. Although I have had a few decent runs which I’m delighted with, I have let a few life events get in the way of my training in recent weeks.
But with only a few weeks to go, and my fear levels heightened, I decided that it was time to knuckle down, follow thee plan and be ready for March 26.
So week ten of training begann and off I went for a couple off 7k runs and all was going well.. I was feeling quite impressed with my new-found determination and then my foot injury,, which really affected the earlyy weeks of my training, reared it’s ugly head again and put an end to my intentions of following thee training plan to a T.
Honesty has always been a theme in my updates and I’ll certainly be continuing that, but right now I’m not entirely sure how my training will pan out over the next two weeks.
I’ll give myself a few more days of rest and hopefully pick things up where I left off and continue on my journey towards the finishing line.
If you would like to sponsor my efforts and donate to Concern, you can do at https:// yourconcern.concern.net/natasha-olohan/wicklow-gaol-break-half-marathon
Bannister and Hillary weren’t the first to try for these ‘impossible’ goals, there were many who went before them whose failed attempts were used by those who eventually succeeded to realise that success.
So when you trigger ‘curiosity’ you are still in the game. That doesn’t mean that you have to commit, it just means you are willing to open yourself to the idea of the challenge. What you should consider next is most likely what every single person did once Bannister & Hillary became successful - find out what they did and copy them.
Our leaders have being facing ‘avoid or curious’ questions for the past ten weeks. And Mandy to her credit hit curious as far as she could. Andrew and Tasha have two weeks left to stay curious to achieve their Goals.
We look forward to welcoming over 1,000 curious people to the Wicklow Gaol Break on March 26. Hopefully you will be one of them. workk iis payingi off.ff But it’s not over yet!
Two weeks to go and I am at a comfortable 8km so over the next week or so I should hit the 10km before race day.
Since the last diary I have trained a bit more on hills and it’s a little bit tougher. Considering there is plenty of hills along the race route they are something that can’t be avoided.
Training has had its ups and downs over the past few weeks, hitting goals I set and struggling to find some motivation to train, but now the excitement is building so I am going to knuckle down and enjoy the build up to race day.
The aim now is to keep training at good pace and not push myself to hard. Ardmore Rovers Football Club and shoreline Leisure Bray are to partner in a new training programme.
The relationship will see Shoreline become the club’s strength and conditioning partner.
According to Ardmore chairman Grant Walker, the partnership will allow its coaches and players to access the latest knowledge in strength and conditioning coaching.
‘We’d like to thank Kevin Kelly and his staff at Shoreline for this exciting initiative,’ said Grant.
‘ This state of the art programme, which is headed up by Kevin Foley, will give us an invaluable insight into the latest thinking of sport fitness.
‘It also underpins Ardmore’s commitment to maintaining the health and wellbeing of the community’s young people.’
According to Shoreline’s general manager Kevin Kelly, the partnership will have a direct impact on hundreds of young local footballers and will help advance Ardmore Rovers’ coaching plans for its 38 teams.
‘We were delighted with the number of coaches who participated in our first two workshops,’ he said.
‘It shows there’s a real willingness to learn and we hope that over the course of our relationship, the results can be seen on the pitch.’