If you Push yourself too hard and fail, you might not get back up; that’s why you need to know when you’re reaching your limit so that you can take a break and begin again refreshed the following day.
Let’s put that in context; if your goal is to run five miles in 35 minutes, that’s equivalent to running a mile every 7 minutes. At the moment you can run five miles in 45 minutes, that’s running a mile every 9 minutes. If you were try and reach your 35 minute target tomorrow, it would probably kill you, however, if you were to take 10 seconds off your time every time you ran, (say three times a week,) in 20 weeks you will have reached your target time of 35 minutes. That’s an achievable goal.
I used athletics as an example because the athletics world championships is on at the moment. If any of those athletes were to set a target of 35 minutes for five miles, they’d have to sit down and have a cup of coffee along the way. There will always be different targets depending on the different starting points.
The same theory can be applied to every environment, once you set achievable goals, in time and you will reach every goal you set for yourself. The thing to remember is, you’re not meant to notice the small improvements you make until one day you look back and see how far you’ve come. I’ll leave you with the following;
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and “I become an overnight success after 25 years.” are two quotes that epitomize this approach, however, let’s not forget this one, “if you goals do not challenge you, they will not change you.”
