Curiousity

Everybody talks about goal setting for success. Setting SMART goals, DUMB goals, setting targets.  I have always been a focused person and goal setting came naturally to me. I never needed to specifically set or write down goals, I always just wanted to achieve excellence. To be the best I could at whatever I was doing. It turns out this was a mistake for me.

The problem is I was always pushing my limits. There’s nothing wrong with that in principle, but it meant I often left myself exhausted. And what I didn’t realise is that physical exhaustion impacts you emotionally.

Eventually I’d reach a state of emotional burnout and give up. Giving up didn’t happen immediately but if I was trying to reach a target and I wasn’t moving closer to it, I’d start to get discouraged. All the effort I was putting in wasn’t reaping any dividends. To an extent I could rationalise this as I know things take time and need patience. It’s the same reason some people will give MAF training a go for far longer than they should without progress.

I’d never get discouraged immediately as I’m resourceful and would look for ways to change things or put in more effort. When I played sports which had a break between seasons, these would allow me to recharge my batteries. But if the lack of progress went on too long, burnout would ensue.

With runners, quite often their change of direction or resourcefulness is to try a new race distance. If all they’ve done is 5Ks, they might move up to the 10K then the half marathon then the marathon. Each of these changes means they change how they train especially for the longer distances where they might be running for two or three hours for the first time; covering distances of up to twenty miles. While they might be nervous come race day, it’s easy to get inspired about doing something different.

This isn’t to say goal setting is a bad thing – it can be really useful for creating motivation to follow training plans and, if or when training stops working it might give impetus to look for alternative ways to kickstart improvement.

But my attitude has changed. I guess it’s partly down to being old and knowing that however hard I try or train I will never achieve the peaks I might have been able to attain when I was younger. Now my driver is curiousity.

I’m simply interested to know how far I can get at something given the constraints of training time and an ageing body’s slower recovery. For example when I went to the gym over the winter, I was curious to know whether I’d still be able to squat 130kg like I was doing 15+ years ago. In fact, within twelve weeks I’d surpassed that.

What I like about not setting targets is that there is no failure. Yet in being curious about the process and what is happening I learn something, and I see that as a success.