As if it happened yesterday, I remember having just began seriously bodybuilding with a (understatement) stern trainer, a world champ who had no patience for anything less than all-out effort. One day my partner and I were following the workout he’d given us, when our trainer, Gene, walked up without preamble. “This is a man’s gym. If you girls are gonna keep playin’ around, get outa here!” What? Huh?
From that day forward, my workout partner and I never gave less than 100% again, at least if Gene was in the same hemisphere. He was that scary, and we were, well, 16. Gene wouldn’t let us fail. Our goal was to end up competing — which we did about 30 months later. In that time we became the more or less adopted sons of nearly the entire gym population. Our growth musta been fun to watch. What I thought would take a few months though, took over two years to accomplish. The goal was met though, as we both competed, and credibly so.
One might think I’d of learned my lesson about goals through that experience.
Much is made of setting and achieving goals. Dad was a crazy-ass goal setter. The guy had the ability to set a goal, become Stephen King obsessed, yet without anyone knowing about it. Try that sometime. One day after his third Jack on the rocks at the Club, his friends got him to share with them the 10 year goal he’d set for his real estate company over five years earlier. They were dumbfounded, and proceeded to ‘let him down gently’ by explaining how he’d maybe been a mite too optimistic.
It wasn’t ’till almost a year later that he told them he’d already accomplished that 10 year goal a few months before the first conversation. He’d done what they told him was impossible to accomplish in a decade, in just over half the time.
Setting goals and achieving them are entirely different things, an understatement of which I’m sure you’re painfully aware. We’ve all learned that one the hard way, right? I sure did.
I’m putting Read more