Cheers to coaching instead of critiquing.
Believe it or not, we're half-way there.
Today marks 180 days in a row of writing this column. I've seen what focusing on a goal for 365 days can do for you—how much it can change your life. So, when I designed this challenge for myself, I set out to do it for a full year.
When I was in 5th grade, I was self-conscious about my weight and my body image. So, I decided playing football would change that. And it did, after I focused on dropping weight to make the team as a 6th grader.
As a high-schooler, I got hurt playing football and had back-to-back shoulder surgeries. It took a full year to recover, but I did that, too.
In college, a lack of healthy coping skills met a match they couldn’t mask their way out of, and I failed out amidst a mental health crisis. Over the year that followed, I spent 90 days in the backcountry working on leadership development with NOLS, got a job, and was re-accepted into school.
In my twenties I experienced a traumatic brain injury that kept me bed-ridden for months. A year later, I achieved the goal I'd set for myself by trail running an ultramarathon in the Tetons.
Five years ago, I decided it was finally time to get sober. I set a goal for myself like I always did, and focused my sights on staying sober for one year. It was then that I learned willpower doesn't achieve goals and resistance isn't the same as determination. With a lot of help, that's how I started truly taking things day by day, and how I've remained sober since.
I've heard my fair share of half-time speeches, and the ones that made me feel the worst came from Coach O'Leary as a football player in high school. He focused a lot on willpower rather than on capability. He yelled rather than reminded, and critiqued instead of coached.
That shit never works.
I've learned that if you want to accomplish something in a year, all you have to do is show up and do some of it today. You and I both know how to do that because that's what we did yesterday.
We did it all 179 days before that, too.
Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
180/365
Whatever you're working on, cheers to showing up to work on it. Make sure you tell yourself how cool that is.
onward.
For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.
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