Succeed at your Running Resolutions

Its the beginning of the year, and like many people across the world I am reflecting on the last year and considering what goals to set for the upcoming year. Many times these goals tend to repeat themselves from year to year, or I skip a year and come back to an old goal that failed or was put on the back burner. If these goals or dreams keep coming back to me, then they must be important. I have extra time to reflect more as opposed to planning right now since my wife and I have a new baby in our lives.

I went for a short hour run the other day and it was a prefect opportunity to listen to one of my favorite podcasts, The Good Life Project. Jonathan Fields mentions that we are at a time with unlimited information. Information is not what we need to be successful. All we have to do is google something and we have an immediate answer. So information does not equal success!

One reason we fail to accomplish our resolutions is because we don't have an appropriate framework put in place to begin with. In his podcast, Jonathan Fields shared his thoughts on how to succeed at anything. His 7 P's are called the "Success Scaffolding" and I found it interested that many of these principals are actually already intertwined within our coaching platform and community at Trail Roots.  Below we reference these principles and how Trail Roots can help you run your best this year. Whether change occurs just by your reading the article or from you coming out to a free week trial of our Austin group runs, we are happy to see you chasing your dreams.

Pledge - Make a pledge or contract with yourself and share it with someone who can help you like a coach or trusted friend. Writing this goal out gives it life and much more power. This helps to make it a reality. This can be a mileage amount for the year, a certain time or distance at a race, or maybe a certain number of runs per week.
People - you need people to help you! This you can find with a running community, others with similar goals, and friends to keep you accountable. Its much easier to get out of the door to go running on those early mornings when you have other people who are counting on you. This is what makes our community special. Everyone in Trail Roots supports other members and their individual goals. While we are all running together, we do not all have the same goal. We find others that have similar goals, however and tend to group up. 

Possibility - You have to have some belief that this goal is possible. Whether small or large, without belief in yourself none of the rest of the scaffolding will matter. No one can make you believe in yourself. You have to be willing to be vulnerable and know that failure is a possibility. Even failure provides opportunity and growth. 
Proof - Look at others who have achieved what you look to accomplish with your goal. You can learn from these people and get tips/feedback on how you can more likely make it to the finish line. Talk to people that you run with. Ask them about their experience. In his blog, Jonathan mentions that some people have blind faith, but that the majority of us need to see some proof. 
Picture - Set objective bench marks and ways to track your progress. We are often more likely to focus on our progress if we set some bench marks along the way. Otherwise we tend to focus on how far we are from the goal and get give up hope. This is why we have B races, or practice races or even time trials. They provide opportunity to see your improvements and make adjustments where needed. 
Practical Process -You need a path that's adaptive and actionable. For runners this is a custom training plan. We help create a realistic plan that will be adaptable and effective for your individual needs. 
Practice- You need to develop a practice that is somewhere between ritual and habit. Brushing your teeth is closer to habit, driving to work is habit, and running or meditating is closer to ritual. So by keeping consistent with your new ritual, and it can become closer to a habit. 

As you can see there is much more that goes into success than just your idea you throw out on New Year's Eve. We hope that you have a chance to listen to this podcast or review the 7 principles so that you might actually accomplish your goals and big dreams this year. At Trail Roots we have many tools for you to be successful, and we look forward to and are committed to helping you along the way.