This is the time of the year when we often talk about making new year’s resolutions.  January is an ideal time to make a new start and we can feel optimistic and full of hope about what might lie ahead. So we start the year making all sorts of promises and commitments to ourselves feeling motivated to set ourselves lot of goals and resolutions to achieve.

But how often have we heard stories of people starting something new or wanting to give something up and then within a few weeks have fallen back into their old habits?  For example buying a year’s gym membership only to visit 4 or 5 times, starting a diet then lapsing after a couple of weeks, deciding to stop smoking but lighting up again before January is out.

From my own experience and from talking to clients and colleagues, many of us start off the year all fired up and motivated with the best of intentions but then in early January experience a slump in energy and disappointment at our perceived lack of success.  But I don’t believe this is just a case of lack of willpower, vision or motivation, I think it’s about expectation - we are asking a lot of ourselves at this time of year.   January is meant to be a time of reflection, recuperation and clearing the decks for something new.  Save the resolutions till spring!

January can be a challenging time, we may have physical or metaphorical ‘hangovers’ after the Christmas season. We may have debts and sometimes relationships issues to resolve and as all the anticipation and excitement of Christmas diminishes we might look at our lives and see the same old routine and all the problems that we’d forgotten about for a while come back to the forefront of our lives.

Whilst there may not be inches of snow outside, it is in fact still winter.  Our modern life style with constant light, heating and other conveniences can cause us to forget our connection to nature and It is natural for us to be in a process of slowing down – almost like an animal would hibernate. Our energy dips as the weather can be bleak and the days are still short. Our body is working hard to keep ourselves well in this cold time of the year, our health is challenged as we are at our lowest ebb and our resistance to infection is lower. It is not a natural time for us to be taking a lot of physical action.  This is a time to go inward, to look after ourselves, to rebuild our reserves and to gain strength in order to be ready for the harder work as the weather improves.  

If you are feeling fired up and energetic, raring to go and ready to take lots of action now, then great. But if you are struggling with energy, feeling challenged by all the things you ‘ought’ to be doing, then my invitation is to just quieten for a moment. Use this time to take stock, clear out the old and make plans for the new. Take time for relaxation and meditation and being outdoors. Go for gentle walks and connect with people, make time for your friends, share your thoughts and ideas and get inspired.

So yes – make plans, set things up and make simple, manageable, nurturing goals with realistic times to start them.  This is useful time, not wasted time, but the main thing is be kind to yourself and come into the year gently with ease and grace, go with what you feel rather than what you ‘should’ be doing.  For now your action is just to ‘be’ – to  listen,  trust and follow your own advice, what you know deep inside.  As soon as the spring flowers emerge, your energy will lift and you can take more rigorous actions.  If you look after yourself in these early months of the year, you will be the stronger and healthier for it with much more motivation to take the action you need to achieve those resolutions.

Happy New Year J

There’s a very interesting article in September’s ‘Psychologies’ magazine about not setting specific goals. It talks about thinking in terms of broad aspirations and focussing more on the here and now and taking a more spontaneous and haphazard route to life fulfilment. It’s based on the work of Stephen Shapiro “Goal Free Living”. It has given me some food for thought,  quite liberating and I wonder what other people think about this.

It reminds me a bit of the one and only walk I did with a serious walking group many years ago. They seemed to be on a route march, more interested in getting to the end by a particular time. Nothing wrong with that of course but it seemed to be to the exclusion of everything on the way and they were missing all the beauty around us.  When me and a friend stopped off to enjoy a beautiful view or notice a bird or a flower, we looked up to find our party were a good quarter of a mile ahead of us rushing to get to the pub for 1.00. Of course as coaches we know how important it is to have an aim and a goal but maybe its about setting the goal and then letting go, being open to go with the flow sometimes and not giving ourselves a hard time if we feel we go off track a little bit. To continue the walking analogy further, keeping to the main path is a good plan if we  need to be somewhere by a definite time (but) and its also fun to go down a tempting side track and just explore for the sake of what we might discover.   I suppose ultimately its about context and being clear about our general direction and focus but also remembering to give ourselves time to enjoy the journey. 

I relate to this very much myself as I struggle to keep all the balls in the air at times and have a brain overloaded with so much to do, trying to keep focussed on my goals.  So I’ve given myself permission to go off track occasionally and do some exploring and trust that I’m still on track and will reach my goals, just maybe via a more circuitous (and possibly more interesting) route!

Inspired by Wimbledon

Yesterday I observed a wonderful example of determination, self belief, humility and achievement. I was watching the Wimbledon men’s final and it occurred to me how much control of the mind those players needed to have to overcome the fear they surely must have felt. As they walked onto Centre Court and took that first strike of the ball in the heat and electric atmosphere they needed to be both technically brilliant and have the ability to manage their state of mind in order to give the best performance on the day. I found it fascinating to watch as they handled the ups and downs of the match and how their performance was affected by what was going on between their ears.

How many of us would willingly expose ourselves in this way? How many of us give up because something is too difficult or out of embarrassment at not being able to do something to the standard we expect? How many of us tell ourselves we aren’t good enough, gorgeous enough, fit enough, thin enough, rich enough etc, etc or just not damned perfect enough before getting out there and doing our thing? What we can learn from these two tennis greats?

Imagine doing a job where your errors and successes were played out in public. These guys risk doing this publicly all the time but the pay off is that they grow in strength and ability. It is not enough to practice in isolation or solely with their coach, they must put themselves out there and play on the big courts and only then do they really raise their game to a higher level.  

Nadal is ranked 2^nd in the world and objectively he is a magnificent player and has achieved so much but he lost the final so in his eyes/mind yesterday he failed. I would imagine he was pretty disappointed in his performance and may have felt humiliated at his public defeat. I wonder will he go away, never to return and beat himself up for not succeeding or will he take some time out, watch the replays, analyse his performance with his coach and work hard, coming back even better and stronger than before? I would guess the latter.

When we have a go at something and it doesn’t work the way we want, have we failed because it “went wrong” or have we succeeded because we gave it a go and we learnt what worked and what didn’t and got useful information in order to try something different next time. If we wait until we reach perfection before we go out to “perform” we won’t have the luxury of feedback and will never know what tweaks and changes could have improved our performance and made us even better. We need to learn from those players yesterday and take a deep breath, publicly pick up our metaphorical tennis racket and hit that first stroke. 

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