I wanted to make a VIDEO about how to have New Years Resolution Resilience…
So this is a video all about how to actually have resilience in the goals that you set in life. I want to share with you a goal that I kind of committed to, where I wanted to swim a 10 kilometre ocean swim.
What have I done?
I was sitting with some friends who are long kind of amazing swimmers, they swim all the time, and they swam from when they were young, and all that stuff. And we were having a few glasses of wine, and they were like, “Yeah, you should come and do this.” And, I’m like, “Yeah, that sounds awesome, let’s totally sign up.” And, I signed up, paid everything, booked myself in, and then the next day I was like, “What have I done? I just committed to this 10 kilometre swim.” And I’d never swam more than 100 metres without gasping for breath.
Every victory was hard won
So I’d throw my hat over the proverbial wall of that challenge, and now I had to figure out how to go and get the hat. And, what I did was, started getting really committed and got a coach. So that was the first thing I did, I got myself a coach, and I worked with this coach to figure out how move from 100 metres where you can’t breathe, to swimming 10 kilometres in a challenge.
And started the training, and every single kind of training session, every victory was hard won. It was hard to get to a kilometre without stopping. It was hard to swim to two, hard to swim to three, hard to swim to four, and so on and so forth. So every victory that I achieved, it was a battle to kind of get there, and I had to put in a lot of work and training to achieve that.
I had a big setback
And it was painful, but somewhere along the journey, just when I was kind of really getting … kind of cruising at 4.5, five kilometre swims, and feeling kind of good about myself, I had a big setback, and I tore a tendon in my rotator cuff.
And at that point I went to go and see the surgeon, and the doctor, and everyone, and they were like, “You need to pull out. This is irresponsible, you need to stop.” And my parents told me to pull out, and everybody was like, “You need to pull out.”
Because, whenever you set a big goal in life, what tends to happen is people will around you will pull you back, and back down into mediocrity. And they will want your life to be easier, and they don’t want you to get hurt and to have any bad challenges in your life.
So I decided to ignore all that, and I found myself a kind of interesting physiotherapist in London, and I worked with him, and he taught me a really weird swim technique that protects my shoulder. And I started training with him, and working on these new techniques to achieve my goal.
And he did say to me, “Look, you should probably not do the 10 kilometre, you should do the 6, because your rotator cuff is torn. You’ll actually do permanent damage. So it’s better if you drop to the 6k, but 6k’s is still a long swim. You can totally do that with this weird swim technique.” And I practised that, and I achieved my goal.
90% of us by the 22nd of February are going to quit!
So what can we actually learn from that kind of process and lesson? Because there’s a lot to kind of be gotten when you’re setting New Years resolutions, as some of us do, 90% of us by the 22nd of February are going to quit on that New Years resolution.
So how do you get a New Years resolution, or a commitment that you make to stick?
First things first, is you’ve got to remember that … I’m a coach, I coach people, but the most important coach in your life is yourself. And you are being a terrible coach to yourself if you give yourself a hard time when you hit a setback.
So any big goal that you set, you’re going to have setbacks along the way, and you need to be able be chilled and relaxed about those setbacks that you hit, and find creative different solutions to still achieve your goal.
You are being a terrible coach to yourself if you give yourself a hard time when you hit a setback
Next thing is, when you set a big goal like that, you must not be attached to how it will get achieved. They journey, what is the journey that you’re going to go on? I had this beautiful mapped out training plan, and this journey, and it was going to be beautiful, and awesome, and yeah, it totally didn’t work out that way.
I had to change my training
I had to change the nature of it, I had to change my training, I had to figure out how to be resilient and find a different way to still achieve my goal. So you’ve got to be flexible in how you achieve your commitment.
You’ve got to be a good coach to yourself, so that when you get a setback, you are relaxed about it.
So if for example your New Years resolution is to have… to lose some pounds, or to have healthier eating, maybe week one and two you’re absolutely perfect, you’re spot on. You’re achieving your plan.
You will quit on your goal
Week three hits and suddenly you have a blowout on pizza, or on cake. If you are too hard on yourself over what’s just happened, you will quit on your goal. You will be a bad coach to yourself if you have a blowout. You won’t forgive yourself so that you can find a different way to handle your setback.
The next thing is to kind of get, is that whenever you have a setback, every victory that you achieve is your stepping … you’re walking uphill one step at a time, it’s hard won. But when you come down and have a setback, you come down in an elevator.
It can be really fast and hard. So a blowout can happen in one hour. You can trash whatever diet you had for two weeks in one hour. If you then take that too seriously, you will then never get back to achieving your goal.
So in summary…
The tips that I want you to kind of think of, is any commitment that you make that you’re going to achieve something that’s awesome and big, it’s not going to be easy to achieve that.
You need to understand that every step is going to be hard won, and you need to celebrate those successes along the way.
Be a good coach to yourself
The next thing to think about, is be a good coach to yourself, so that if you do have a comedown in the elevator really, really fast and hard, you’ve got to be chilled about it, so that you can get back on track.
And the same applies for all kinds of goal setting in our lives!
It’s heartbreaking, it’s sore, it’s sad, it’s hard for that person. But day after day… winning those victories one step at a time
One of the programmes that I run, I help people kind of leave an affair. So how to kind of get themselves out of an affair addiction that they have.
And every single day that they’re not in contact with their affair partner, is hard won.
It’s heartbreaking, it’s sore, it’s sad, it’s hard for that person. But day after day, they are clutching and winning those victories one step at a time. If they then go and contact their affair partner and have another blowout, they come down hard in that elevator.
You can’t then quit because that has happened, you’ve just got to be kind to yourself and say, “Okay, we had a blowout, or we fell off the waggon, or we didn’t kind of stay on course, we had a setback, let’s just get back on track.” So you’ve got to be kind to yourself to just get back on track, so that you can actually achieve that ultimate goal.
And then remembering to be flexible about the journey, how it is that you’re going to achieve it.
Okay. So in summary, what I want you to think about is firstly if you’re going to commit to a big goal, you’ve got to be flexible about how you’re going to get there. And sometimes when you have a setback, remember, every single achievement that you have, you’re going slowly one step at a time towards that achievement.
But when you have a setback you come down fast and hard, like an elevator. So you’ve got to be a good coach to yourself when you have a setback, so that you don’t fall off the waggon completely and you can get back on track quicker.
So I hope those tips help you in kind of having more New Years resolution resilience, and kind of focusing on how to achieve your goals in life.
Do you have tips, or a technique that you’ve used to achieve goals, and aspirations, have you failed to hit your target, have you given up on your commitment because of a set-back? Get-in-contact, we’d love to learn more about your story.
Lot’s of Love!
Adele
