Have you ever been going along smartly….loving the direction your life was taking, thinking your goals were within reach, when all of a sudden, unexpectedly, the wheels come off and you seem to lose your compass?
It happened to me just this week!
I was at the gym on Wednesday and thought I would try for a “little extra” during my run and I stepped up the pace a bit. Unfortunately, my right achilles tendon was not on the same page as me. It thanked me for my effort by seizing up and presenting me with a bad case of tendonitis, which, if you have never had it is, in my opinion, the worst injury an athlete can have.
I speak from experience here. Nine years ago I was stupidly playing a strenuous game of handball only 4 months after enduring total left hip replacement. As you might imagine, that was a recipe for disaster and I suffered the consequences. Just 10 minutes into the game I went down like I had been shot and immediately knew that I was the victim of a 100% rupture of my left achilles tendon. Two days later I was in surgery prompting my Orthopedic surgeon to remark that it was like sewing the ends of two mops together! In other words, it was bad. That foolish stunt laid me up for 9 months! I didn’t listen to the warning signs! I was 53 years old…I hadn’t exercised in 4 months due to the hip surgery and I jumped in a court and put major stress on a tendon that wasn’t ready for it. That was an example of my competitiveness getting me in trouble.
Fast forward to today as I limp around the house with a very painful and tender right achilles that I can’t put any weight on. How long I will be laid up I have no clue but it sure puts a cramp on my running and brings back painful memories of 9 years ago. The lesson to be learned however, is what do we do when these “speed bumps” show up on our life’s journey. We all suffer them from time to time. How we deal with them is the challenge. As far as my aerobic exercise goes, I will switch to swimming or the stationary bike which won’t stress the achilles and will give it time to heal. It’s like boxing. We have to be able to “stick and move!” When a roadblock occurs we need to be flexible enough to head in a different direction. Our yardstick measuring our success should not be the end result, but rather, the things we are doing along the way.
Set performance goals and not results goals!
The problem with results goals is that if something happens that is beyond our control it can keep us from reaching the result we had planned on. Performance goals, on the other hand, are totally dependent on our own efforts which we CAN control. For example, if I were a salesperson that made my living by door to door selling and I had set a certain goal for number of sales made this month, I would find myself failing to reach my goal this month because I can’t walk. That might be very discouraging if I measure my sales success only by my results. On the other hand, if one of my goals each month was to make sure that I never short-changed a customer and gave a complete presentation to every one of them, I would be in complete control of that goal no matter how many customers I talked to. As far as my aerobics goes, my goal is to get my heart pumping 30 minutes, 6 days a week. That is a performance goal that only I can control! Although my injury has taken away the running, I still have other options that are in my control. If my goal, on the other hand, had been to run 20 miles a week I would have failed and possibly gotten discouraged.
Goal setting, like life, is about the journey and not the destination. It’s the choices we make and the things we do. Make sure you are doing the things that you can control….. as well as you can do them….. each and every moment of the day and, believe it or not, everything else will take care of itself.
PS. I need your help!! What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it? I will cherish your comments and/or advice. Let me know. Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me! Rick
