Goaldigger

I believe that the single most important thing when attempting to achieve an ambitious goal, is to be gentle and compassionate with yourself on the path towards it. Don’t feel too bad if you stagger along the way, or if you have to take unexpected rest stops in your climb to the top. Now, I’m not at all a good example of this attribute; for me, there’s nothing worse than saying I’m going to achieve something (no matter how ridiculously impossible it is), and then have something not go exactly according to my second by second plan. Thus, if I don’t go to the gym when I’ve said I would, it’s a personal disaster. Not because I feel less healthy or happy. Not even because I think I'm being lazy. If I don’t train on my scheduled day, I will criticise myself for the rest of that week. At the very least. If I don’t go, I’m the biggest failure in the world. So you can imagine the internal wars I’ve had going on this summer; in November, I decided I would go to the gym every single day until uni started (disease not inclusive, of course) in the beginning of March. I should’ve known better, if for no other reason than from my extensive experience in failing not in my goals, but in my time frame of those goals. Have you got any idea how hard it is to get your ass to the gym every single day? I would almost go as far as to say that, unless you’re a professional athlete whose job it is to work out, it’s almost completely impossible. 

This is how it always goes with goals and me: I set them up, and then I fail in the utterly unrealistic time frame, and then, usually, I give up. The interesting difference this summer has been that I haven’t wanted to give up. I love going to the gym. It was quite an intense realisation once I had it some time in December; I knew I wasn’t getting myself to the gym every day as per my goal, but that was no longer the point. The point was the absolute joy I felt spending 60-70% of my weekdays working out. So, I modified my goal. In fact, I kind of removed it. It’s weird, isn’t it? I managed to find something I like so much that I didn’t need the goal anymore; the absolute necessity of completing my now habitual sessions turned into a magic potion of energy and motivation. Now, I’m a bit more realistic; I do a two days on, one day off schedule, and have set up a calendar to monitor my progress. For fun. Can you believe it? I even bought a little sticker book, so like when I was a child and got my piano homework right, I can reward myself with a star, a snail, or even a small sailboat. It’s back to basics with me now; pure pleasure drives me to the gym, and that annoying, criticising, obnoxious goaldigger has vanished in its entirety.