CONSISTENCY
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| Feb. 2016 top of Haleakala Dreaming of warmer days! |
Winter in the Willamette Valley is incredibly difficult for me.
I am fully aware that other parts of the country have much more extreme
weather than the little valley I live in. But for me personally, the near
constant gray sky, rain and sometimes weeks-on-end of inversion that blankets
the valley in thick fog with unchanging temperatures in the mid-thirties wears
on me. I struggle with seasonal depression on a near daily basis for
about 6 months out of the year.
I am not a huge fan of the posts you see that read something like
"Top Ten Things You Can Do to Combat the Winter Blues." Tried
them, again and again, with no significant relief from the sinking, lonely
feeling of depression. Instead I am going to write about the one thing
that for me that has made the biggest difference for me: CONSISTENCY!
Consistency to get physical activity (almost) every day.
I have never had a word of the year, but I may have just found my
word for 2017.
Maybe it is part my nature to jump from one thing to another (for
example, my habit of getting a different car every two years). However,
if I look at areas of my life where I am not content with the results, the
culprit is often a lack of consistency.
I want to encourage those of you reading this post, which was
written on a 35 degree rainy morning, to think back to warmer days this past
summer. Think about events you
participated in and how you felt about your results. Were you pleased
with the results or were you left a bit disappointed? For athletes who compete in the warmer
months, so much of your success relies on your consistency during the months of
the year when the mercury drops and the skies stay gray for weeks on end.
Easy? No! However passion for your goals grows as your
discipline and consistency improves (see blog post on Discipline and Passion). Setting yourself up for success in the 2017
racing season starts now!