Once Inspired

Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category

As athletes our training schedules, competitions, opponents, coaches and other related events and people form a very significant part of our lives. For this reason dealing with an injury is, on a smaller scale, similar to dealing with a significant loss.

An injury can be a traumatic time for an athlete when returning to full fitness becomes a waiting game. The lack of control and the uncertainty can get the athlete feeling depressed and anxious.

There can be 5 stages involved in the injury process:

• Denial and Isolation – Refusal to recognise the injury
• Anger
• Bargaining – I will do anything (Willing to risk further injury just to compete)
• Depression
• Acceptance

This process can vary in several ways depending on the seriousness of the injury and the personality of the athlete.

Although not competing in the physical aspect of the sport relative to the specific injury, the athlete can use that time to focus on other aspects of the sport.

One of the biggest things in injury recovery is goal setting. These goals need to involve objective measures. Graded sport specific movements can be replicated in several ways which will contribute to rehabilitation. These activities mean that the athlete starts by performing basic sport specific drills with no contact and slowly progresses towards to full fitness.

On the other hand is the mental side of recovery. Visualisation should be employed in ensuring that the athlete is not only physically ready to return to competing, but also mentally. Fear of re-injury can range from mild concern to maladaptive psychological disorders and outcomes. Visualisation involves three processes.

Emotional Visualisation creates internal states of positivity. By using past success and/or ideal future outcomes these states can be achieved. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Become completely relaxed.  Allow your mind to drift back to one of your best sporting performances.  Rather than being in that race, become a spectator witnessing your amazing performance. Pay attention to every visual detail of the experience. Be wowed by your very own performance.

Physical Visualisation allows you to recreate the sport specific movements without moving a muscle. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Become relaxed and notice the physical sensations of your mechanic as if you were competing, paying attention to how each of your technical actions physically feels whilst adding sight, sound and taste elements.

Fast Healing Visualisation allows you to catalyse the healing process. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Become completely relaxed. Drift towards the injured part of your body and shine a bright magical light on that body part. Feel it healing you. Feel that part becoming stronger. Notice how the pain subsides.

Do all of this with a smile on your face!

Our desire to succeed is mutual, although our interpretation of success may differ. Our goals differ but our need for motivation, irrespective of its source, is real. Everyone has different heroes and for different reasons. Who is your hero and why?

There was a blind girl who hated herself because she was blind. She hated everyone, except her loving boyfriend. He was always there for her. She told her boyfriend? “If I could only see the world, I will marry you.”

One day,someone donated a pair of eyes to her. When the bandages came off, she was able to see everything, including her boyfriend.

He asked her: “‘Now that you can see the world, will you marry me?’

The girl looked at her boyfriend and saw that he was blind. The sight of his closed eyelids shocked her. She hadn’t expected that. The thought of looking at them the rest of her life led her to refuse to marry him.

Her boyfriend left in tears and days later wrote a note to her saying: “Take good care of your eyes, my dear, for  before they were yours, they were mine.”

What do you value most? How far are you willing to go for the one’s you love? It is easy to display affection. However undeserved privliages can cloud our vision. Love deeply and receive graciously.

They say that time changes things, but sometimes you have to change them yourself. For a long time I knew that being confined to a chair, a desk and a PC screen would not fulfil me. I admit that I was guilty of falling into the rut of mainstreamers who tend to find it necessary to conform to the demands of society and modern living.

Wake up, get dressed, go to work, ask yourself: “WHY?” Work some more. Go home. Arrive home irritated because the traffic was not to your liking, eat dinner, and relax for a short while. Sleep. And start over. Rinse and repeat.

Not being my idea of fun, I pursued a lifestyle change; one that would allow me to come and go as I please. Doing what I enjoy and being able to experience those beautiful summer days that always seem to occupy every Monday of December, January and February.

As of March 2010 I will be required to work 20 flexible hours per week as a marketing specialist. I love marketing. It’s dynamic and exciting however I cannot spend five sevenths of my life doing it. That may be slightly dramatised but it’s strange how 24%, which represents your 40 hour work week, can feel like five sevenths, or 71%.

So 20 hours would equate to 12% of my week. I will spend 12% of my week as a marketing specialist. But let’s look a little closer at what it means for me to be able to spread those 20 hours per week as I see fit?

Firstly I will not need to sit in traffic. That cuts out up to 1 hour per day. Secondly I can work all 20 hours into 2 or 3 days if necessary, saving the rest of my week for pursing the opportunities that will present themselves as I meet and interact with more people thanks to extra mobility.

Currently I am working 8.5 hours per day which includes my lunch break. So work time is therefore 7.5 hours.  However commuting is around an hour and therefore from home and back to home again I am unable to pursue anything within an 8.5 hour period. My estimated daily duration from March will be around 4.5 hours per day. Now that is slightly higher than half of what I am doing but since I am still confined to lunch within a given window, and include travelling in that I have a 9.5 hour day. Suddenly I’ve gone from 53% to 47%. That’s a 6% difference which means I gain 34 minutes and 12 seconds per day and earn 6% more per hour.

Suddenly I have more time and more money. It’s not a huge difference but the results speak for themselves. And all this happened within the space of a 10min conversation. Not so bad from a progress perspective.

Now most of you might be thinking, “Yes sure you’re working half day now but that means you are earning half of what you used too?” This is indeed true. However now I am able to apply these same principals to my new venture, Triathlon Coaching. I get to be outdoors, do what I love. Priceless? Not quite. My earning potential has increased by 150%.

“After all, mobility and time is the wealth of the new rich. Being mobile presents opportunities. Having time allows one to pursue those opportunities.” – Inspired by Tim Ferris, author of the 4 Hour Work Week

Here’s one last thought for you:

Now that you have identified what you don’t want to do, it’s time to define what it is you would like to do. Rather than broadly summarise your ambitions, define your goals!

This is something to just make you realize that your loved ones need to be cherished and each moment with them savoured. I thankfully have had no experience of this of late but it just strikes a kind of emotion that is humbling. One that makes us take note and say thank you to those who we love and who love us.

If I knew it would be the last time that I’d see you fall asleep,
I would tuck you in more tightly, and pray the Lord your soul to keep.
If I knew it would be the last time that I’d see you walk out the door,
I would give you a hug and kiss, and call you back for just one more.

If I knew it would be the last time I’d hear your voice lifted up in praise,
I would tape each word and action, and play them back throughout my days
If I knew it would be the last time, I would spare an extra minute or two,
To stop and say “I love you,” instead of assuming you know I do.

So, just in case tomorrow never comes, and today is all I get,
I’d like to say how much I love you, and I hope we never will forget.
Tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike,
And today may be the last chance you get to hold your loved one tight.

So, if you’re waiting for tomorrow, why not do it today?
For if tomorrow never comes, you’ll surely regret the day
That you didn’t take that extra time for a smile, a hug, or a kiss,
And you were too busy to grant someone, what turned out to be their one last wish.

So hold your loved ones close today, and whisper in their ear,
That you love them very much, and you’ll always hold them dear.
Take time to say “I’m sorry,” “Please forgive me,” “thank you” or “it’s okay”.
And if tomorrow never comes, you’ll have no regrets about today.

By Norma Marek

Read this, then choose how you start your day tomorrow.

“Jerry is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested. “Yes, it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gun point by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. Jerry continued, “…the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action.”

” What did you do?” I asked. “Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them, “I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

“Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.”

Taken from www.inspireme.net

This is something very special. My girlfriend completed her first triathlon. After a lot of disciplined training and money well spent, she was certainly ready – and definitely pleasantly surprised herself, as I had told her should would for weeks leading into the race. Here’s her experience of her first triathlon.

The day that I had been preparing for had finally arrived. This time there was no stage and music to set the scene but rather the vast ocean and flat road to contend with. A world away from the theatre and examination rooms that I had grew up in. One act, three scenes. Swim, bike, run. First up was the ocean swim.  Sure we all have a splash in the ocean and that one swim where we congratulate ourselves for crashing through a few waves but today would be my first proper ocean swim.  The fear consumed me!  Sure I could swim pretty well in the pool but we all know how different ocean swimming is compared to the pool.  Before I knew it we were off and there wasn’t time to think about anything.

The first “little” wave came towards me and I dove through it with all my courage. Coming up on the other side all of a sudden that bone-shattering Atlantic Ocean cold hit me and together with all the nerves and anxiety I was struggling to breathe. Every sense is hit by the sheer immensity and strength of the ocean.   I panicked! I would not give up no matter what. This was my chance to prove to myself. I could do it. “Just get on with it” I said to myself. At last the first buoy was near. At this point I had flipped over and started doing backstroke. The panic had disappeared but now I started to get tired. The second buoy was in my peripheral vision and I was on my way back to shore.  Thank goodness I thought! Doing backstroke allowed me to see when the dreaded waves were on their way. I managed to catch a wave and get a short lift towards the shore.  The swim was over! I was tiered. Already! Thinking about the next task I told myself to take the top half of my wetsuit off. This is something I was particularly worried about. My mind at that moment was something like this; “Run Lauren run, get you arms out. Pull, pull! Oh don’t forget your goggles. Oh no it’s the first transition. Hurry, hurry. Where my bike? I’m tired. More panic. ” This carried on for what seemed like a lifetime in the first transition. I didn’t have the proper triathlon kit so getting another top on over a wet body is something I will never do again.

Right. Now it was time for the bike leg. I had never ridden with many people before let alone ever participated in any cycling event. As we hit the West coast road I found myself holding back thinking I needed to pace myself. However the pace was just too slow and off I went. I found myself passing a good few people and having a great first bike leg. My spirits were lifted. On the way back to Big Bay the South Easterly wind was alive and well. It was tough. I was going solo for most of the way and losing my water bottle in the process didn’t help. No water until the run.  Otherwise, so far so good. I was having a blast. It was great cycling on home territory.  What a view with the ocean on my right and Table Mountain in front of me.  Very thirsty and determined I “flew” through the next transition.

I knew the last leg was going to the toughest. I knew running is my weakest out of the three disciplines.  The sun was blazing.  The next thing I knew I was back in transition area. This time I made sure I got out of there in a flash. Running shoes on and off I went.  The run was short but I was exhausted. All the nerves adrenaline and exertion   had taken its toll and the body was ready to call it quits.  All the hard work on the bike seemed to be wasted on the run. It didn’t matter though because taking part and finishing meant so much more.  I crossed the finish line with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment.

As tough as that swim and run was I loved every second of it and can’t wait to do it again.  I could never have done it without Nic Muhl. <— (that’s me. Coach Nic)

Applause please.

Hey, how amazing was that?  It felt like I was having a go at my first triathlon whilst reading that.

Sweathshop Union – The Thing About it
This is a time of growth for those that know
And it’s a time of hope for those that don’t
But if you’re mind is open you’ll get shown
We’ve had our sights blinded; All of my like-minded
People need to get up and discover the right time; it’s now
Just start opposin’ the powers that are rose
In ancient days; And pave the way to disclothe it
So control it’s sickening; Most just sit and stare
At a television with a distant glare
And I’m ashamed to admit it, I’m a slave to the shit
As much as anybody but I’m not afraid of it
This is where the change comes in, this is where we make some difference
Embrace what’s within us; And escape from this prison
All it takes is a little bit of faith
And a little bit of love to get rid of all the hate

[Chorus]
But the thing about it is we can’t just sing about it
We can’t just sit around and wait until they fit us out
We figure out where we’re goin’ while we live in doubt
If you want my truth, listen now, we’ll just think about it
The thing about it is we can’t even think about it
Can’t afford a minutes time to figure how to bring about a change so
Take a second and shake your head and then
Take a step ahead and think about it

[Dusty Melodica]
Now the ball is in our court while we sit and watch passively
The face of the earth changes drastically after we
Clear space at this rate for strip malls and factories
We risk take a cruel fate at a pace beyond gradually
No more crops for us to harvest and feed
Self-seficiency replaced by clone copy-written seeds
Now ask yourself how can we be free
When the water that we drink is owned by some company

[Metty the Dertmerchant]
I hear the weap of the streets and cry’s of the skies
See weakness disguised as disceiptful lies
But we all lead to survive; And sleep through our lives
Weedin’ for highs, all sheep and no pride
Never speak of a lie; I let the fear fortify
My inside’s'll die tryin’ to fit in the design
I’m reminded daily of world gone crazy
Guns mean safety for orphan babies
Ignore the distortion, you’re forced to perceive and believe
What’s supersede’s as love but who agrees

[Chorus]

[Mos Eisley]
You survive in the wild with a wife and child
Our whole human history’s a line, a type and a file
So live your life in denial, and try to live on your own
Without ya colour t.v., heat, a friend or the phone
While the average guy lives an elaborate life
Waits days a slave wage beneathe a passionate eye
Now we ovulate, copulate and overpopulate
Never stop to think about the things that we were taught to hate
Now the stage is set, watch the players place their bets
Take a sec, shake ya head, feel alive, make em’ sweat
Realize that the system can’t exist with out belief
Appreciate ya true potential, un-twist your mouth and speak
We’re workin’ on buildin’ a world our children can live
Understand I can’t be free while your still in this prison
And I can spend my days preaching as so on and so forth
But it won’t change ’til we don’t wanna go on no more

(Taken from www.great-inspirational-quotes.com)

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an eight-year-old again.

I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four-star restaurant.

I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks.

I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day.

I want to return to a time when life was simple, when all you knew were colors, multiplication tables and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care.

All you knew was to be happy, because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.

I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good.

I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.

I want to live simply again. I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive when there are more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness and loss of loved ones.

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, mankind and making angels in the snow.

I want to play with my pets and my days of imagination to last forever

So here are my checkbook and my car keys, my credit card bills and my 401(k) statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood.

And if you want to discuss this further, you’ll have to catch me first because,“Tag! You’re it!”