1802, 2015

The journey has begun … (Beach Flags – Part 5)

By |February 18th, 2015|Goal Setting|0 Comments

18 months I set myself a goal – to become World Champion (Masters) in the beach flags. And to achieve that goal I started a process that I have used when trying to achieve any goal I set – be that for the Olympics, rugby, work or something else in my life. I’ve taken you on that journey with me through four previous blog posts:

http://www.jeremyrolleston.com/the-journey-has-begun-beach-flags-part-1/
http://www.jeremyrolleston.com/the-journey-has-begun-beach-flags-part-2/
http://www.jeremyrolleston.com/the-journey-has-begun-beach-flags-part-3/
http://www.jeremyrolleston.com/the-journey-has-begun-beach-flags-part-4/

My hope is that by sharing with you a current and real example of mine that it really helps build on and solidify what I wrote about in my book about goal-setting and following your dreams. It’s not about me and the outcome of this goal in particular. It’s about the process and learnings and example. I want it to inspire you and equip you to go after whatever you want in YOUR life. (And I hope that it answers your original question Jesper).

So here’s the final instalment on chasing my goal of becoming world champion.

Staying focussed in the lead-up – The funny thing is that this all happened in the lead-up to my wedding. World Championships just happened to be 10 days after our wedding. Or perhaps better said – we organised our wedding for September 5th and World Championships were scheduled for the 15th. So half the battle for me was keeping up the training and keeping focussed with so much else going on in the 6 months prior – be they family arriving from overseas, or all the organisation that needed to be done, or wedding cakes that begged to be eaten, or finding the time to fit everything in, or how our honeymoon would fit in with this. Luckily my beautiful wife Satu was happy to let me fly off to France 5 days after our wedding and compete. Meanwhile she stayed home in Sydney and hung out with friends and family and we organised to meet in Thailand for our honeymoon immediately after competition ended. 🙂 You’d also be interested to know (or perhaps not to) that I trained on the morning of my wedding!

World champs - taperingWedding

I’m here and it’s time to perform – there’s nothing like the feeling of arriving at a big competition like the Olympic Games or World Championships. You wonder how things are going to work out in the following few days. You also know internally whether you’ve done the training and preparation or whether you haven’t (this is not a good feeling). I knew I had trained hard, prepared well and was in good shape. So it was just a matter of performing on the day when it counted.
IMG_0872 World champs - here we are World champs - here we are 2

Prepared, motivated and focussed – there wasn’t much more to do now. And this in itself can be a challenge. Your body feels great but you have to force yourself to sit and do very little. To internalise and conserve your energy. To be focussed, but not over focussed too early – unleash that focus when it counts. (For me, the way to deal with this is to be organised and stick to a plan and routine. It takes my mind off things so I feel like I’m doing more than I am, I’m relaxed and I’m not thinking too much of the upcoming competition. And it makes sure I’ve thought of everything so the only thing that matters is performing when it counts). You also want to surround yourself with positive thoughts, belief and motivation. But at the same time to remain relaxed and also to enjoy the journey. Pre-competition is a funny time.
World champs - plan Motivation on the wall

The Beach Sprint and Beach Flags – these photos aren’t of me as I was too busy concentrating on performing. They were taken after my events. But they’ll give you a good sense of everything.
World champs - the sprint World champs - the flags

World Champion – I did it. Mission accomplished. Goal achieved. World Champion in the beach sprint. And World Champion in the beach flags the next day. From retiring from bobsleigh; then discovering Surf-Life Saving as something that I enjoyed and wanted to do to keep me fit and healthy; to starting the sport and then having a dream and a big goal to win the world title in France in 18 months time; to training and all that was involved in that process along the way; to doing it !
World champs - gold 3 World champs - gold World champs - gold 2

The reward – whenever you set yourself goals you should give yourself a reward. Many people say to me “shouldn’t your goal be enough though?”. Well it should, but you always give yourself secondary leverage. Something else to look forward to. Something else to think about during the tough times. I mean, what harm is there in giving yourself more incentive to achieve what you want? For me, as someone with a ‘sweet tooth’ who had really tried hard to eat better and improve my nutrition, that was eating what I wanted for the next few weeks. First stop – Macdonalds at the airport ! Second stop – my honeymoon !
The rewardHoneymoon

The end.

And now onto the next dream / goal – whatever that is and whenever that is. I have no idea what that is right now. It may be back in Surf Life Saving to win that elusive Australian title. It may be outside of sport and be more business focussed. Time will tell. And so will my heart !

In the meantime, here’s to your own dreams. Go after them without regret. Remember you’re better off regardless and you always regret the things you don’t do more than the things you do. You’ve only got one life so go for it !

 

 

 

Read More
402, 2015

The journey has begun … (Beach Flags – Part 4)

By |February 4th, 2015|Dare to Dream, Goal Setting|0 Comments

You will recall that a friend of mine who had read my book, wanted some more information and examples of how I actually goal-set and go about following my dreams and achieving my goals. To do this I used as the example my latest goal – to become World Champion in beach flags as a perfect example of this. Here is the 4th instalment of my journey to become World Champion and links to the three previous posts.

http://www.jeremyrolleston.com/the-journey-has-begun-beach-flags-part-1/
http://www.jeremyrolleston.com/the-journey-has-begun-beach-flags-part-2/
http://www.jeremyrolleston.com/the-journey-has-begun-beach-flags-part-3/

You may recall that I went into my first Australian Championships after three months in the sport with no real expectations – more to perform to the best of my ability and see what happens. Well … I won silver and it gave me a taste for more. So the focus turned to Australian Championships a year later and then the World Championships six months after that. Here’s some of the things around my goal-setting that I did in that 12-18 months.

Continue to make the vision big, exciting and motivating – I already had the dream and was motivated towards it. But redoing my vision board, having it on the wall in my room, and seeing it all the time is always very powerful. Vision boards are a powerful tool to make that dream come alive (Read more about this in my book A Life That Counts). You need to see it, before you can believe it, before you can achieve it. Sounds cliche doesn’t it. But it’s true. 
Vision board Flags Simon Harris

Belief – I’d now had a taste of it and knew I could do it. If I could come second in the Australian titles after 3 months, then with a concerted focus, with a good training base, and with time to learn and improve in flags … I knew I could win if things went right. But to develop a deep unshakeable belief, I developed a visualisation CD with Craig Townsend whom I have worked with before. (If you want to know more on this I also talk about visualisation and hypnosis/visualisation CDs in my book A Life That Counts).

Reset my goals for the upcoming year – basically I needed to be fitter, faster, stronger, and lose some weight (to improve my power to weight). That meant reassessing, critiquing and resetting my goals. (That’s the thing most people don’t realise – goal-setting is not a once off thing – it’s a dynamic process. You’re always looking at them and writing new little milestone goals along the way – even while the big goal remains unchanged).
New goal setting

Improve my nutrition – my training was good and always has been. But now my eating needed to be equally good. And for me this was haaaarrd – I have a sweet tooth like no other! During my bobsleigh and rugby days I could get away with it as I needed to be big and strong. But now I couldn’t hide these bad habits – well not if I wanted to be lean for beach flags!

Concentrate on nutrition

Training – this is pretty obvious isn’t it. But I needed to do two things. Firstly, I had to do more specific flags training as technique is so important in this sport. And second, I needed to learn from the best. So in the last 6 months before World titles I committed to flying up to the Gold Coast and training with Australian flags legend (9 times Australian champion and four-time World Champion – Simon Harris). And of course, there’s no substitute for hard work!
Training Training Training

 

Competitions – practice makes perfect. I went in all the competitions I could. And thank goodness I did as I made many mistakes – from false-starting and being disqualified. To tripping. To missing the flag when I dived for it. To being too tense and that affecting my get-up. To realising I wasn’t fit enough. To not having peripheral vision to see what other people were doing. I had some success and won branch titles and State championships.
East Coast Masters - flags State champs

Preparation and focus – for me the goal was winning that World title. So training was a chance to try some things out and Australian Championships was a dress rehearsal and a good opportunity to try everything out in competition. Then I’d either replicate what I did or take the learnings from it and make improvements. In particular that mean getting organised about the gear I took onto the beach for the various events (as you’re on the beach for a lot of the day and need to have clothes to warm up in, feel relaxed in, be warm in, be protected from the sun in). It also meant getting organised about my food and what I would eat in the morning, as well as throughout the day.
Trailling stuff at training Aust champs - food Aust champs - food 3 Aust champs - bags and organisation Aust champs - food

Australian Titles – I flew over to Perth in April to compete in Australian Championships and unfortunately didn’t get the result I wanted. I was bumped out in the final flag and ended up with silver. What it did do though – was flame that fire inside me for that original goal – to win that world title in six months time in France. There was lots of work to do. I now had a good base to work off, but I was going to be faster, stronger, technically better at flags, really lean and ready !
Aust champs

Stay tuned for the final chapter – World Championships

Read More