So our adventure in NYC continues – yesterday we took the subway about half way through Prospect Park in Brooklyn and walked all the way back up to our hotel on 34th St via the Brooklyn Bridge – it was an awesome day with beautiful sunshine coming down. Then we met up with my friend from the Mastermind group, Kate Vidulich from www.fatlossaccelerators.com for a nice pint of ale and a good chit chat. What a great day!
A Dose Of Motivation (even if you don’t need it)
My goal is to read at least 12 books this year, which may not sound like that much, but I am an painfully slow reader and I often have to re-read portions of a book to reinforce the concepts.
When I was in school I hated reading, probably because I was so slow, but now I love books; it is like the entire world is open and available for me to dive in.
I read very little fiction – but I am trying to read the classics – just finished Pride and Prejudice.
Instead I focus on non-fiction. I want to use my reading time to learn. Sometimes I am learning about training techniques or business strategies. One of my favourite ways to learn is from those who have achieved great things. This is how I can ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’ in my own life.
So right now I am reading a book by Olympic champion Marnie McBean called The Power Of More.
For those of you not familiar, Marnie is a 12-time World and Olympic champion in rowing, including three Olympic Gold medals. So when she talks about achieving goals, I listen.
I call her McBean – she was a year or two ahead of me at Western University where we both studied Physical Education (as it was called before the days of Kinesiology) and it was during this time that Marnie was starting to win at the Olympics. It was exciting.
Since then she has been a client of mine at RevCon and she is one of my most trusted resources when it comes to helping athletes get the mindset to win.
Here are the key points I have taken from her book so far:
- Some days your motivation will come from a love of what you are doing, you are having fun. Some days it will come from a fear of being beaten or cut from the team or losing a race. It doesn’t matter where the motivation comes from, as long as it’s there.
- You can choose to be challenged – don’t feel like a challenge is something that has been force on you. This illustrates the difference between choice and sacrifice. At anytime you can choose not to be exceptional.
- When creating a path to excellence you need to be crystal clear about the first step that you need to take today.
- It is okay to be both proud and dissatisfied. You can be proud of what you accomplished but dissatisfied with what you didn’t do – this is the optimal state for development.
The book is a good read, you can also get words of wisdom from McBean’s blog over at www.MarnieMcBean.ca – these are the types of messages that she sends to all Canadian Olympic athletes in the months leading up to the games. They can be a difference maker.
Go forth and conquer,
M
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