Happy New Year's everyone. This is the fifth of five posts on positive thinking as we conclude the contemplative goal-setting week between Christmas and New Year's. This is the first day of the New Year; the day on which we start actively working towards our new 2018 goals. That's why the past week has been directing towards adjusting our attitudes and mindset to the positive. The bigger and loftier the goal, the more important it is to develop the attitudes, self-belief and mindset that will allow you to accomplish those goals.
“The mind is a powerful ally, but it can also be a formidable adversary. . . . Mentally strong athletes understand that the body will follow where the mind leads, and they are careful where they lead their minds.”
Because our mind can be both our ally and our enemy, it is our main responsibility to first set ourselves up for success in our minds and then let our bodies follow our now determined belief that our goals are attainable simply by following our plans.
So then, what do we do when things don't go according to plan; when we get derailed by forces beyond our control? Well, life happens, works happens, family happens, illness and injuries happen. Although positive thinking is a prerequisite for achieving our goals, it is not sufficient and we also need a plan for maintaining equanimity in the face of obstacles and events that derail us.
A lot of emotional dangers lurk in unfulfilled goals. Our mind, looking for an easy outlet for disappointment, turns on us with labels ("failure", "lazy", "slacker"), looks for excuses and goes on the attack, often by using the dagger of comparison, whether to others or to some other version of ourselves. How do we avoid falling into that trap? The easiest and best way, in my experience, is to rely on the best defense we have: we did the best we could with what we knew at the time in the face of the circumstances that we confronted.
In order to accomplish this, it's helpful to remember the earlier aspects of fostering positive thinking: compassion in the face of negative influences, maintaining a constant practice of positive thinking to push back against the entropy of the negative and to use inertia in our favor and build daily on a practice of positive thinking. With those practice points in mind, remember the power of belief in doing your best.
We do the best we can with what we know. When we know better, we do better.
Doing our best doesn't mean doing the objective best that could possibly have been done. It means that, when things don't go as we planned, that we have compassion for ourselves that we did the best that we could at the time with what we knew and with the circumstances that we faced. The purpose of this is not to white-wash the past or gloss over our problems. The goal is to give ourselves the same compassion and understanding that we would give to our children or best friends in their own efforts when those efforts don't go as planned.
Remembering the prior discussion of scarcity and abundance, nowhere is that dichotomy more pronounced then when we confront our biggest plans that went awry. In our minds' efforts to prevent future perceived failures by over-reacting to big plans gone awry, the mind resorts to comparison, all or nothing thinking and other harmful techniques that destroy our positive mindset. If you think a little more objectively, and turn off the self-judging voice, it becomes easier to see that there are always accomplishments to be proud of, even after the darkest of years. Facing the things that have gone wrong with compassion and understanding is the best way to set ourselves up for a big rebound year.
My year in review: accomplishments amongst the disappointments
So this was definitely an anti-climactic year after the monster year of 2016 when, only eight months off the couch, I did six triathlons, culminating in IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina. In retrospect, doing a half ironman in my first full year up off the couch was a huge undertaking and I seriously underestimated the toll the training and the race took on my body and how long it would take to recover. It's like when I asked my body if it could train up for a 70.3 after only eight months up off the couch, it said, "yes, we can do that, but if we do that we cannot do anything else!" There were plenty of things I couldn't do in 2016: rest, recovery, countering the inflammation caused by endurance training, focus on nutrition and weight loss, and learning to get comfortable on my tri bike all had to wait while I focused on the singular goal of finishing my first half ironman.
So it turned out that 2017 was a big "yin" recovery year from the full-on active year of 2016.
Despite the fact that 2017 had no big races -- only one sprint triathlon and a 5k race -- and despite the cycle of minor but debilitating injuries I endured over the first half of the year, I did not stop. Totals for the year were down a lot from 2016 but were significantly higher than in any other year of my life. It is the demonstration of my main accomplishment in 2017 -- I didn't stop.
While 2017 totals were down against 2016, they showed a consistency of base training throughout the year. Slow down if you need to, but don't stop.
New Year's Eve Final Run of 2017
Last year I ended 2016 with a New Year's Eve run on the Greenway on which I log much of my miles and I felt that it was a nice way to cap the year. This year I did the same thing, as Kelly assigned 18 minuters for 2018, along with a customarily encouraging message for the new year.
Kelly always knows how to keep things relentlessly positive -- and a little whimsical.
It was a cold but beautiful night with a glow from the Christmas lights on the back porches of the houses along the Greenway path.
I had a great final run of 2017 and feel very excited and positive for 2018. I have two more weeks of prep training and then on January 15, I start the base training 1 mesocycle for Tremblant half. I am planning for and preparing for a big year in 2018!
I hope for all the best for all of you in 2018. May all your stretch goals be realized in the coming year.
-- Aaron