SOLC 10

I am going to actually give myself a pat on the back. This is something I am not used to doing! I am used to quite the opposite usually. I am used to berating myself and letting myself down after setting unrealistic goals. I am also used to setting goals I know right from the beginning were going to be difficult to meet. It is not to say that am new to this. I am used to giving myself goals. I have high expectations. I set goals. I make lists. I write things down. I say I am going to do things. I mean well. I really do. I don't mean for things to happen. Life just happens. Things happen. I lose steam. I lose my way. I let things get in my way. I make excuses. I give up. I…well let's just say I don't always reach the goals I set for myself. I don't always achieve my goals for so many reasons. So this time I decided to change it up a bit. I'm learning to break things into smaller pieces. MUCH, much smaller, attainable and realistic pieces. For the slice of life challenge my goal was not to write every day. My goal was to participate in meaningful ways. I have already met the goal I wanted for myself. Once I met that goal, I wrote new goals. My next goal was to read slices each day that would help me grow as a writer. I'm well on my way each day to gaining something each day as a writer from reading slices. To help keep me on track, I set a timer each night and I read and comment for one half-hour in the evening. I do this so that I don't take away from the other millions of things that need to be done in my evenings. I didn't set a goal that I would write a slice each night. However, an added bonus from my reading a slice each night has been that I am inspired to write each night. I am so excited that so far I have managed to write each night of the challenge! I am quite proud of myself. I did not do that well with this goal last year. This new found strategy of setting smaller goals is working quite well for me in my running life as well. Before hand, I would begin out with a goal in mind getting ready for a race and before I knew it I was behind on my running. I had let life get in my way. I was behind on the miles I needed to be at. I would grow frustrated with the process and by the time the race would roll around I was not confident I was ready for the race. This meant horrible race jitters for me because I felt that I did not prepare correctly for the race. This race season I have not done that to myself. I have set smaller goals. I have not put as much pressure on me to achieve as many miles run in a week. My goal may be less miles run in a week. However, the surprise is on me. I am actually running more miles in a week now that there is less pressure on me. I am feeling in better shape than I have been in months and training has just begun. I even got up this morning at 5am in 22 degree temps on a Saturday to do a 4 mile run in the woods with my team from Team in Training. The old me would have found an excuse to not go. However, I had set realistic goals all week. The goal was to run 3x's this week, not 20 miles. WOW! Big difference. In the end, having less pressure resulted in me logging 8 miles on two runs already in even faster time than if I had run 20 miles. I like this new me and I certainly like being able to pat myself on the back instead of beating myself up! WOO! Eureka!
Hugs,