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 !

 

 

 

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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

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705, 2013

The journey has begun … (Beach Flags – Part 2)

By |May 7th, 2013|Dare to Dream, Goal Setting|0 Comments

Remember my friend Jesper who has just read my book and asked me to show him more specific and actual steps about how I went after a goal – in my case, my goal to become World Masters Beach Flags champion in 2014. You can read the first post here in which I talk about figuring out this next challenge / goal and then figuring out why I wanted it.

Here’s the second instalment.

Step 3 – Structured Goal Setting
Here’s my actual goal setting for my 2014 Beach Flags goal. See below. You will see that I have:
1. The Big Goal – The big,shiny outcome goal written down for 2014

2. Yearly planning – I have the key dates written down over the next 18 months

3. Monthly planning – I have broken this down into each month for the 18 months leading up to the World Championships so I know generally what I’m doing in my training, what my aims are and where I’m heading

4.  Weekly planning – I have a weekly training schedule. What do I train on which day ? I spend a fair bit of time on this weekly plan to get it right as I want to make sure it fits into the other parts of my life eg I don’t want to train on a Friday night as I want to relax and chill out. I want a life too ! And when I don’t feel like it is all-consuming I never get that feeling of resenting my training. It adds to my life rather than takes away from my life. I plan to train at lunch on weekdays so it gives me a break from work and I then work better in the afternoons. And also because I am not good at training in the morning – I prefer just to get into work. I also make sure that the daily program makes sense by ensuring that I have enough recovery for various sessions, that I am training when I have energy (eg not at the end of the day if I can help it), and that I am doing enough training in each of the important training elements (speed, strength, flexibility, technical flags training) so that I ensure I am working on improving weaknesses, maintaining my strengths, are well-rounded in my training etc.

5. Daily planning – then each day for that particular session I will know what I am doing. What weights I am doing or what running session? This is a plan only though so it may change depending on how I am feeling / injuries etc. But the important thing is that it is still a plan. I don’t just turn up to training and then try and figure out what I am doing.

* Write my goals down
Tick.
(As the saying says “A goal is a dream written down or a dream with a deadline !” And surprisingly most people don’t do this as numerous studies have shown. For example see this blog post which describes a well known study by Harvard on goal-setting which Mark McCormack talks about in his book ‘What They don’t teach you at Harvard Business School’. The point – there’s a power in writing your goals down).

* SMARTR goal setting
Specific – at this stage I don’t have enough of these very specific milestone goals. I need to add these. They will be in terms of technique improvements, speed tests, weights I want to lift, diet etc.
Measurable – I will see how I am tracking at State and Australian titles this year. That will be a good measurement. But the more specific milestone goals will all be able to be measured of course.
Achievable – my big outcome goal of World Champion is absolutely achievable if I can stay in great shape and learn the technique from the best. But getting to this point of absolute belief is the topic of another blog post. Or read my book of course.
Regularly assessed – as I add more milestone goals they will be regularly assessed in accordance with the timing I put on them. Again – more need to get added here. But goal-setting is an ongoing process not a set and forget.
Timed – as above
Reward – the fitness and health I gather along the way is enough for me now as I have no big result expectations this year. But as I enter the next 2013/2014 season, as I have encouraged others, I will come up with a specific reward for winning the Australian title and then another one for winning the World Championships.


Step 4 – Support for my goals
Tick. I still train with my brakeman from the last Olympic season (Duncan Harvey) on Sundays to keep me training at that higher level as he is still in training for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi.
I have a great family and partner who are supportive.
I have a coach on the beach flags side who knows his stuff. He is a multiple Masters World Champion himself and his son just won the open World Championships this year.

Step 5 – Get input on my plan
Tick. I always let other people critique my plan and I welcome their input. Sure, it is not cast in stone and will change over time anyway, but my goal-setting is nonetheless the big roadmap that I will follow. So for this reason I want knowledgeable people to look at it and make suggestions and comments to help me make it better. That is why there are scribbles on this page. The point – you can always learn and improve so input from the right people can be invaluable.

 

…  I hope this is helpful. Stay tuned for the next instalment shortly as the last few months have been busy leading into the Australian Championships which have just finished. So there’s more to share on this journey.

 

 

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2602, 2013

The journey has begun … (Beach Flags – Part 1)

By |February 26th, 2013|Dare to Dream, Goal Setting|1 Comment

I was talking to a friend recently who had just read my book. He said that he would have loved to have seen even more detail on how I actually went after my goals. He liked how my book described the process and journey of chasing after a dream step-by-step. He liked the stories and examples and advice from the 10 incredible, successful and high-achieving contributors. He liked the psychology.

BUT, he wanted even more detail. What did I actually do as I journeyed towards competing in the Olympics. “Show me and tell me exactly” he said.

So Jesper, with that in mind, I thought I’d attempt to show you in a series of blogs over time, the exact and actual things I did and am doing along the journey to achieve my latest goal – to become the World Champion (40-45 years) in Surf Life-Saving Beach Flags in 2014. It may not be the Olympics, but I will hope to approach it with the same focus and strategy – even if the body isn’t what it used to be !!! So enjoy … and I trust this is interesting and helpful.

Step 1 – Find the Dream
I love travelling on planes as I often take my journal and have time to scribble and ponder, write and dream, plan and scheme. It is that precious time when no one can get me and I often find clarity and organisation. And a recent flight back from Switzerland was no exception. I had just retired from bobsleigh and was just finally finding peace around not needing to go on for another Olympics and moving on to other things. So I was writing everything down to get further clarity and also to help me find that next challenge and goal. I’m a goal-oriented person and I didn’t want to just waste away into post-sport boredom, with no new goal to give me purpose, to excite me, to keep me fit and to stretch me. I’ve learnt to love the stretch. So I started writing and scribbling. The result of that was that over time I came up with my new goal. Part of the dream of what life might look like post elite Olympic level sport. Here are my scribbles …

 

 

Step 2 – What is the big, bright and shiny goal ?
Remember, that you always need to have the big outcome goals. The thing you think about all the time that motivates you. The thing you can almost taste. That thing that is big, shiny and bright. Under those you then have your milestone goals – the smaller, systematic, more achievable goals that you will aim for and achieve (with hard work and strategy) along the way to your big outcome goal.
As I mentioned before, my latest goal that motivates and inspires me is to be the World Masters Beach Flags champion. This is a little collage I have in my training diary. It has the goal written on it as well as pictures that represent things to me. It is like a mini-vision Board for Beach Flags. To give me that extra little bit of motivation whenever I need it and keep the dream front and centre and vibrant.

 

Step 3 – What is my ‘Why’ ?
Remember in my book and workbook I talk about how ‘Knowing your Why’ is so important.  It provides your purpose and once we define it, every action takes on a more definite meaning. Simply put, if you don’t know why you want to do something then why would you do it. And if the why isn’t strong enough then why will you keep going when the going gets tough ? If your ‘why’ is not stronger than what it will cost you and the sacrifice and commitment needed to achieve it then you’ll give up. For example, consider these two people. One makes a new year’s eve commitment to get fitter to feel better or another person who has just been told by the doctor that if they don’t lose weight they will dies and leave their family without a father. Which person’s motivation do you think is stronger ? Which person’s ‘why’ do you think is clearer ? A person without a ‘why’ is like a ship without a rudder. No matter how hard you attempt to sail the rudderless ship, it goes nowhere. It churns ineffectively, without direction.

Or put another way, remember that knowing your ‘why’ is a way of tapping into your deep motivation for why you’re doing what you’re doing. Of engaging the Limbic system which is a separate area of the brain that controls our base emotions – things like fear, anger, sex-drive, attraction. That is, it controls things that happen without us even being consciously aware of it. For example, if you’re embarrassed, you blush – without even thinking of it. Which proves that our emotions often drive us, without our ‘conscious’ more rational part of the brain even having an input. So when we tap into our ‘why’ we are engaging these deep, powerful, ‘unconscious’, emotional drivers. And these are way more powerful than just trying to use your conscious will. (After all, if our conscious will was so effective we wouldn’t need to keep making the same New Years resolutions would we !).

So what is my why ? What will it give me ? Why do I want to do beach flags and become World Masters champion ?

 

 

So there’s my first instalment. Stay tuned for more … I look forward to hearing your comments and feedback …

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2604, 2011

Goal Setting – the magic noone gets

By |April 26th, 2011|Goal Setting|0 Comments

How many posts and articles, videos and books, seminars and podcasts exist on goal-setting ? … Far too many when I consider that nearly all miss the 3 ingredients that make all the difference. Here’s a quick recap of what I mean.

Big goals to little goals

People seem to get confused by how small or big goals should be. They should be both. Olympic gold medallist Lydia Lassila explains this well.

‘You’ve got to have the outcome goals. These are big and bright. The ones you think about every day. You can almost taste them. Under that goal, though, I would have all my milestone goals, and then under those, I would have the ways and strategies for achieving those goals. Before the Vancouver Olympics, I went from having pretty scattered goal­setting methods to very systematic ones where every goal was broken down into small achievable steps.’ (Lydia Lassila, Olympic Gold medallist, Women’s aerials, Vancouver, 2010)

You see you should dream big and these dreams (and associated goals) motivate you and give you energy. They are not cumbersome points on a piece of paper. These are the dreams that keep you up at night. you can’t get them out of your head. They are big and bright. It is then from this point that you start to get structured and organised and employ the more mechanical goal setting techniques (eg S.M.A.R.T.R) to write the smaller goals that you will aim for, achieve, tick off and change as you go along. The shorter and medium term goals that you hit along the way to achieving the big outcome goal.

Write them down as you want them

Remember to write down your goals as you want them to be rather than what you don’t want; that is, they should be positively stated. For example, you wouldn’t say, ‘I’m no longer struggling with my weight.’ You’d say, ‘I have excellent and healthy eating habits.’ Rather than say, ‘I won’t get angry any more when . . .’ you’d say, ‘I act with control and calmly when . . .’ Focus on what your positive expectations are – what you want to occur, rather than on things you’re afraid might go wrong. Use confident, successful, goal-oriented statements such as ‘I will . . .’, ‘I can . . .’ and ‘I’m going to . . .’ You can read more about the psychology behind this in Chapter Four of my book A Life That Counts.

Making your dreams come alive

Most people will get inspired and write their goals down on a list. There’s nothing wrong with that. The problem though is that lists are too tame and too boring. You need to turn your goals into a genuine experience that has emotional power. You need to arouse your emotions because it is this that will drive you forward. You need to change them from just words to powerful images that you can immerse yourself in and connect with and that will fire up those powerful emotional circuits in your brain that are going to be critical in your ability to change and continue to be motivated. You need to feel your goals on an emotional level. Otherwise you will just be relying on your conscious motivation which will dissipate all too quickly (how many NYE resolutions have you seen through to fruition after all). You need to make your dreams come alive – to feel all the fulfilment, excitement, joy, freedom and satisfaction – or whatever emotion that desire means to you – as if you’ve already attained your goals. You need to taste them, smell them, touch them. You need to involve all your senses so your goals become alive, vibrant, tangible and motivating. In so doing, you’ll harness the positive power of emotions (the powerful limbic­system drivers) in the process of what you are going after.  This will help make your goals the sort of thing that make you want to get off the couch and achieve them.

One way of doing this is using vision boards and visualising. As athletes we employ these techniques all the time. You can find out more about this in Chapter Five of my book A Life That Counts. And at the same time, you’ll be closing the gap between what you’re dreaming about and what you actually believe you can achieve. (By visualising your dream so powerfully in your mind, you’ll suddenly find it much easier for your mind to believe you’ll achieve the goal.)

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