The Other Side of the Challenge
I’ve learned something really important recently about the way challenges affect my outlook and results.
Story time…
I had been following a local athlete on Strava (see sidebar below) because he and I had been very close in “local legend” status on a particular segment we were both running. “Local legend” is a measure of how many times you’ve run a segment in the past 90 days. (As of today, we’re matched at 20 times!)
I’m following him and seeing what he’s doing on this segment, and it occurs to me I could set a specific goal in Strava for how fast I’d like to run this segment. It’s an uphill section and I’d been running it relatively slowly at 1 minute 45 seconds. For various reasons, I set a goal to run the segment in 1 minute 15 seconds two months from then.
No pressure.
Sidebar: Strava Segments
Strava is a fitness tracking app with a social media-style aspect for following athletes and friends activities. The “segments” feature allows comparison of specific portions of a run, ride, or swim. You can also set goals for segments to challenge you to get faster.
I ran the segment 1 week later, I pushed hard, and did it in 1:19.
I ran the segment 1 week after that and did it in 1:13.
2 weeks of effort instead of 2 months and I had surpassed my goal.
I reached my goal in one quarter of the time I thought I could!
I clearly vastly underestimated what I was capable of.
And that means I’m almost surely vastly underestimating what I am capable of in the future.
Not just in running, either, but in all areas of my life and work…
Where am I not setting my sights high enough?
Where am I not challenging and stretching myself?
Where am I not pushing through to reach that stretch goal I set for myself?
Here’s the thing I learned a while ago: you can’t know what the world looks like on the other side of an achievement until you get there.
Once I got to 1:13 on that segment, a whole new world of possibilities opened up for me. I started to wonder where else I could get better, faster, stronger in my running. What other challenges were available for me? I couldn’t ask that question before because I didn’t realize how much I had been holding back.
I’m now looking at everything I do from a new perspective. I’ve done the work from my Vision 2022 workshop, the completion and goal creation, three times now. I’ve created my goals for the year, and some are clearly stretch goals.
And now I’m starting to wonder…
Where can I challenge myself even more?
Where am I holding back?
What am I doing on a daily/weekly/monthly basis that is aligned with playing that bigger game?
And what actions aren’t aligned with that commitment to playing a bigger game?
What about you?
Where can you set a big(ger) challenge for yourself today that when it’s achieved will give you a vast new perspective on what else is available to you?
If you feel like you’d like some help getting a new perspective on your goals for 2022 (and beyond), consider joining the Vision 2022 Workshop on 21st February.
