I completely understand the desire to start a New Thing like working out or eating right or losing weight with a clean slate.  I understand the thought that “this time will be different.” 

A fresh new notebook at the start of school has that same special quality of newness: the book is clean, no bent corners, no scuffed edges, just a sea of possibilities unmarred by reality.

Now think about that same notebook at the end of the school year.  It spent several months smashed into a bag and lofted across the room.  It probably has some chocolate smears on some of the pages (and a few blood smears if you check like I do) and you may just be so sick of the subject you wrote inside that you want to never ever see it again.  Do you even know where it is anymore? 

Knowing that we repeat this excitement and disappointment undulation with most of our goals can cause us to procrastinate making a positive change.

It’s really easy to say “I’ll start next month.  The first of the month.  I can start then and it will just be better that way.“  It sounds a load better than the part that we aren’t saying: “it gives me time to live it up before I have to start.”

I just worry that we make the process seem bigger than it is when we anticipate starting fresh.  As we see it looming, our anxiety levels increase.  We know we have disappointed ourselves in the past and we fear we will do so again.

See, here’s the thing: your body doesn’t know what calendar day it is.  It doesn’t know that you are wearing a new outfit or that your cupboards may have some junk food in them.

Your body only knows what you are doing right this minute to take care of it. 

And right this minute, you can do something different.  You don’t have to wait!  You can break the cycle of anticipation and disappointment, and you can banish feelings of failure, just by changing how you begin the process. 

If you make beginning a New Thing less of a Big Deal and more of a subtle shift in priorities, you may just be able to make some Big Changes without a lot of unnecessary stress.

I met Carrie Cheadle in 1998 while working together at Bearskin Meadow Camp.  Carrie is a Sport and Exercise Mental Skills Coach and has worked with Diabetes Training Camp.  She knows what’s going on inside our brains… and if she doesn’t know, she knows what questions to ask to probe for an answer. She may not have diabetes herself, but she has spent a lot of time working with people who do have diabetes and she knows a heck of a lot more than the average Jane.

In the following blog Carrie discusses how our experiences teach us and how we use that learning to guide us when we need to make split-second decisions.  My favorite part is where she says:
“ When you seize the opportunity, at least you have given yourself a chance for it to be great.”

As Spring comes around this year and the weather (most assuredly will) turns more welcoming, I invite everyone to recognize how much your experiences have taught you and let go of your fears just a little bit.  Go after an opportunity you’ve been considering.

Give yourself a chance to be great.

 -Amy

Carpe The Moment

Carrie Cheadle, M.A., CC-AASP owner, Mental Skills Training

If you’ve read any of my previous posts you may have noticed that I like to observe themes that come up for me or my athletes and then write about how they tie into the psychology of sport and athletic performance.  My most recent experience of this occurred when I was presented with an opportunity that had a fast approaching deadline and I had to decide relatively quickly whether or not I should go for it.  In sport, if you have a gut reaction and you hesitate, the opportunity is gone.  There is a time for calculated decision making and a time to listen to your instincts.  So why do we hesitate?  Why do we sometimes hold ourselves back from seizing an opportunity?

WE’RE AFRAID

Often athletes hold back because they aren’t sure if listening to their gut will lead them to making the right decision.  The thought process goes as follows: what if I go for it and I’m wrong?  The other dynamic I have observed is that athletes might hold back if they have stumbled onto new territory.  They don’t trust their gut because they have never been in that situation before.  If any of you have heard me speak, then you have probably heard me say that our ability to learn is directly related to the feedback that we receive.  There are many ways for us to receive feedback and one of them is through the mistakes that we make.  Mistakes help us refine our skill.  If you never risk making mistakes you’ll never perform to your potential.  You have to push through the walls that hold you in your comfort zone in order to reach the next level. 

WE THINK TOO MUCH

If in the midst of competition you are weighing out the options before you and just aren’t sure if you should listen to your gut, that means you are up in your head analyzing and by the time you get out of your head, the moment is gone or the options have changed.  When you have that feeling in your gut that tells you that an opportunity might be presenting itself, that instinct doesn’t come out of nowhere.  You have read into some external cue and your brain has quickly run through your past memories and experiences and presents you with a feeling in your gut to let you know that something’s up.  During a race or a game, you don’t have time to weigh out the pros and cons of a decision.  If you are a novice in your sport, you might not know the right thing to do in that situation so you pause and question yourself.  Athletes who over-analyze the situation will hesitate and miss the opportunity.  As you gain more experience in your sport, you will start trusting your instincts.  Elite athletes with more competitive experience are more likely to tune out irrelevant distractions and go with their gut.  If we didn’t have the capacity for a gut reaction, we would weigh out the pros and cons forever and never be able to take action.  The fact is you may one day seize an opportunity and watch it fail miserably, but as an athlete, being able to trust and listen to your instincts is something you have to be prepared to do. 

The other aspect to consider is that we are simply out of practice when it comes to listening to and trusting our instincts.  In fact, when we hold ourselves back, we are practicing not listening to our instincts.  Some of the greatest moments I have had working with athletes have come from listening to my gut.  I get a feeling about a question I need to ask or a homework assignment to give.  I might hesitate for a moment and think, “What if I’m wrong about this?” – but then I trust my gut and go for it and it turns out to be the exact question that needed to be asked or the exact assignment that needed to be done in order for that athlete to move forward.  Of course sometimes I go for it and it wasn’t the golden moment I thought it would be and I say to myself, “Well that didn’t work out”, and I just have to move on.

So with my recent situation, I seized the opportunity.  Maybe it pans out and maybe it doesn’t – but it definitely wouldn’t pan out if I didn’t seize it.  When you seize the opportunity, at least you have given yourself a chance for it to be great.  Sometimes you just have to take the leap and see where you land.

I have had the opportunity to meet a relatively large number of people in my years of doing bootcamp classes.  This year has been no exception.

I have learned a few things about people and exercise through the years, and of course think I’ve got everything all tied up.

Not.

All of that said, I really do love it when a camper surprises me.  It is always so much fun to discover that others have these little hidden talents.  Sometimes they are hidden from me, sometimes from themselves.

I am thinking about one camper who started with me in September.  She’s got adult kids and wants to get her flat belly back.  She works hard when she’s with me, and she has been making steady progress with her fitness as a result.  I think she’s fantastic.

But I will always remember the day I made the class sprint up a hill. 

She let loose and beat everyone there. 

She knew she had it someplace inside her, but hadn’t let that part out for some time.  (She never told me she was a sprinter in high school!) 

How fun.

I had a new camper try the class out today; all I knew about her was that she hadn’t worked out in a year and a half and had young kids.

Of course I don’t know what someone’s capable of just from a phone call—she could have weighed 300 pounds or she could have weighed 90 pounds and I wouldn’t have known.  She could have been in the Olympics in 1992 or she could have not walked farther than a block for thirty years. 

She did tell me that she was “fairly fit” before she had kids, and she said she wasn’t afraid to work (love that, too!).  But again, I never know what that really means.

So how great was it when I met her today and it came time for me to instruct everyone on some sprints, say “GO!” and watch her leave the rest of the class in the dust. 

She knew she had it in her, someplace, no matter how long it had been since she reminded herself of that talent.

I love that.

I know a few days ago I put up a quote on Facebook that mentioned how we always have something left despite our own belief we are spent. 

So never be afraid to give something new a try: you never know who you’ll surprise!