Act on your dreams now!

I was chatting with a friend yesterday, who is in his late 40's and told me that although he's run several half marathons, he always planned to run a full marathon to celebrate his 50th birthday.

Over the past couple of years he has had several medical problems, the upshot being that he can no longer run at all, so his marathon plan is now out of the window.

He is now telling his son not to put off his dreams and ambitions, but to do them now because you never know what tomorrow will hold.

And that literally does mean tomorrow!

Act on your dreams now!

Behind you (oh no they're not)

Whilst watching a pantomime that my daughter was appearing in yesterday, it struck me what a fantastic example the cast were of a high performing team.

Many of us spend much of our time in our workplaces thinking how we can do better, so that we can personally be rewarded better and gain the recognition we believe we deserve.

We can ignore our work colleagues when we’re going through this thought process.

What the pantomime cast showed me yesterday was that each actor was not only focused on delivering their own best performance, but they were very aware that the experience of the audience would only be maximised if each of them ensured that all their fellow cast members were also able to give their own best performance.

And they went out of their way to ensure that happened.

What can you do to make sure that your work colleagues are also able to give their best?

Listen to your heart

If you’re like me when you’re recovering your fitness after a lay off, whether from injury or through choice, you get frustrated that you aren’t able to run as quickly, or as far, as you used to.

As a result of the frustration, you can push yourself a bit harder to recover your lost fitness quicker, but this rarely works, and dramatically increases the likelihood of injuring yourself again.

The heart rate monitor is one of the best inventions when it comes to the above scenario, because our hearts tell us exactly whether we’re overdoing it, taking it unnecessarily easy or putting in the right amount of effort.

Maintaining consistent effort, which means our hearts working within a set zone of beats per minute, is far better than maintaining consistent speed, which our brains will often favour.

We think that our brains are the ultimate source of our intelligence, but how often do we have a gut feeling or do we know in our heart of hearts or feel something in our bones?

Listening to your heart when you’re trying to improve your fitness is the smart way to do it.

Where else in your life might listening to you heart lead to a more effective way of living?

You can do anything

Lack of responsibility is the main reason the majority of people who try to lose weight, give up smoking or make a dramatic change in their life, fail to achieve their goal.

We all (at least most of us) seem to want someone else to do it for us.

So we read books with the answers, we hire experts with the techniques and proven track record, we pay a cheque (or put it on a credit card) for the course, and yet we still don’t get the “right” result.

But the truth is that there is no shortcut.

Yes, there are guidelines, advice, pointers and other people’s experience, all of which can help us to make the change, but ultimately no matter how much we pay, what we read, who we speak to, we have to do the work ourselves to make the change.

It may sound scary, but come and look at it from this perspective.

We have the power and the ability to alter our lives, take control and get what we really want.

Yes, things will get in our way and it won’t necessarily work exactly as we imagined, but if we take responsibility for the result, nothing can stop us.

Responsibility is awesome.

With it, you can do anything.

Watch your step

Running is such a good metaphor for life.

This morning it was cold, wet and dark and at one point I was running downhill on an unmade road full of potholes with my head-torch.

When it’s daylight, and especially when it’s sunny, you can see a long way ahead of you, and you can also easily see around you too.

You also have to keep your eye open for your next few steps, especially when you’re going downhill on an unmade road.

But when it’s dark, even when you have a head-torch, you can no longer see the bigger picture of where you’re going. You have to concentrate on the next step or two and that’s all.

All of this is so true about life in general.

When life feels sunny, that’s the time to look ahead and see the inspiring vision ahead of you and notice what’s around. Of course you have to keep an eye open for your next few steps too, but the sunny vision creates an overall feeling that spurs you on.

When you’re feeling in a darker place, the vision disappears, and when you look for it, it is just dark and gloomy anyway.

The only thing to do is take the next step and keep your eyes just on that next step or two.

If you keep going long enough the sun will rise again. It always does.