The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not smashing it.
Arnold H Glasgow
I’d say zero percent of my clients have patience. Don’t get me wrong, they all know they’re not going to suddenly change into Superman overnight, but they hate that fact of life. I have to continuously remind them how long it took them to get into whatever pickle it is they’re in, or how long it is they’ve been living with these counter-productive habits they have taking them away from success and therefore the time it’s going to take to unpick that knot is going to be pretty extensive…otherwise you wouldn’t have called me right?!
But patience is a virtue many of us – myself included! – struggle to attain.
We’ve made some big changes to how I’m training and racing recently. One of the biggest things is dropping the caffeine I’ve been plying myself with pre-race. I realised this was giving my an out of control buzz on the start line, meaning I was racing everyone from the first step, instead of calculating when the best time was to make my move. Far from improving my focus and cognitive function, it was simply driving me into the bin every race, without much room for mature and competent decisions – which can win or lose races!
At my latest race, a 5k/20k/5k run/bike/run, it all came together. I started at a really measured effort – which wasn’t easy. The whole pack around me took off at a pretty quick pace. People behind me came flying past early on and a few mates went past on the middle of the first run lap. But come the bike and my transition was rapid, well planned, well executed and I started reeling people in. Cut to the second run and I was back to my original starting position and ran my second 5km faster than my first – no mean feat at the end of a race like that! Having the maturity and patience not to race people from the off, but to play the long game and have faith in my abilities and all the training I’d put in, paying off, was what grabbed me the win in my category that day.
But so many people didn’t have patience, went off like a rocket and burnt out early on – and believe me, I know how that feels! At the same race last year, I was a good 2 minutes slower on my second run compared to the first…and legs that tired are an extremely unpleasant place to be let me tell you…
But we all need to think about how this model of patience and long term thinking and planning could help us in our day to day lives, whatever our goals are; work, family, health. All aspects of our lives are going to require time and patience to change for the better. They require an ability to look at the bigger picture and ask ourselves “Will this matter in x amount of time?” Depending on what the goal is, the time frame might be 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, maybe 2 years – in racing it could be 2 minutes or less! But having the ability to focus down and ask yourself what impact the decision you’re making will have on you in a designated time frame is KEY to success.
That’s why planning and reflection are so important. Having a firm grasp on what time really means to you, will help you to really hone in on what success means for you and the importance of the decisions you’re making.
I’m going to keep working on my patience. I’m going to keep training it. I’m going to keep making little changes in my life to help me utilise it more and more. Because I know it’s something I’ve struggled with, but I also know how important it is to my own success – just like I tell my clients it’s key to theirs. And hopefully, it’ll all pay off when we get back to those big races again!
If you want to know more about how I can help you achieve your own performance goals through enhancing your health and lifestyle, then head over to my booking page and grab a free intro call with me!