Mission Commitment Part II

-By Jaime Willis

"Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda

As many of you know, I am currently working on a goal to complete fifty 10Ks in 2011.  Today is the last day of January, and I have finished six 10Ks!  I am really happy with my progress and am (not so) secretly hoping to finish this goal much earlier than in December, as I'd originally thought.  But, when people find out I'm running multiple 10Ks a week, they are usually incredulous.  The number one comment I've heard so far from folks is "I couldn't do that." 

WHY NOT?

A 10K is 6.2 miles, and I consider one 'run' if I complete that distance walking, jogging, or running indoors or outdoors on a treadmill, elliptical, crosstrainer, or road all at one time.  To me, the only really challenging part is the "all at one time" rule.  If I got to aggregate my time on cardio machines throughout the week, it would be a lot easier.  But there is no "race" deadline.  I could literally take a three hour stroll and that would count.  So when folks say, "I couldn't do that," I think to myself, "someone needs a lesson on mission commitment." 

Terol Pursell, Sean Feehan, Ryan Darling and Jared Walker lead the pack as they run through pouring rain during a cross country practice Sept. 23, 2010, on north Icon Road, bordering the campus of Northwest Missouri State University. (Darren Whitley/Northwest Missouri State University)

Mission Commitment can be loosely defined as "Relentless pursuit of your goal." I think the real key to mission commitment is being relentless. No matter who or what gets in your way, you will work around or through each challenge to make your goal happen.  If you are not relentless by nature, don't worry.  You can learn it! 

Build your Mission Commitment muscles by:

1) Priming yourself to succeed.  You have to believe achieving your goal is possible to be able to pursue it relentlessly.  Your inner dialogue needs to match what you are trying to do.  As I am going to bed, I talk to myself about what I am going to accomplish the next day.  "I am going to run a 10K tomorrow." When I wake up, I continue priming myself by preparing to run -- getting a gym bag together and taking it with me to work, planning out my schedule so I know when I have to leave work to have enough time to run 10K, etc.  

Pro Tip: You may not actually believe what you are priming yourself to do when you start your goal.  That's ok.  Just keep repeating the 'unbelievable' and eventually, you'll 'fool' yourself into believing!

2) Make it easy to begin.  With my goal, I didn't have to ramp up to the 10K distance because I was already in the gym doing cardio for about that long to begin with.  For me, the 'easy' win was the fact that I wasn't racing.  I am a s-l-o-w runner, and I knew the 10K was going to take me 1 - 1.5 hours each time I did it, more if I was walking.  Since the only rule is that I finish the race, I don't have to worry about how slow I am, any finish is a win! (Of course, now that I am doing this multiple times a week, I'm racing myself, but that just makes it fun for me.) 

Whatever your goal is, you need to make the first few steps stupid-easy to complete so you rack up the wins.  If you are having trouble getting to the gym at all, your first win should literally be to show up to the gym.  No workout requirement, no crazy lifting goals, just show up.  The next time, your goal could be to get at least 10 minutes of exercise in.  Stupid-easy.  Once you start racking up the wins, you WANT to keep winning, and *bam* you have mission commitment.

3) Build in accountability.  There are two easy ways to do this: tell folks what your goal is and partner up with someone who is like-minded.  I posted my goal on this blog and on my personal facebook page. So about 750 of my closest friends know that I am running 10Ks this year.  In itself, that is pretty motivating -- I don't want to be a liar to that many people!  I haven't found anyone who wants to run 10Ks with me a few times a week, but I have found other ways to partner up.  In my first race, I got to 4 miles and felt like quitting.  I knew that I could push through, but needed some motivation.  While I was still running, I texted Matt, and he texted back a couple of cheers that kept me on the elliptical for the entire time.  I also plan on running a few 10K road races with friends, another way to stay accountable.

4) Have a Mantra.  When times are tough, when you feel disheartened and ready to quit, when your accountability partner is nowhere to be found, you have to have something at the ready to keep you limping forward.  In Matt's most recent marathon in Austin, Texas, he hit a wall at mile 17 or so.  He could have quit - plenty of people do.  But he just kept repeating to himself "Don't stop, just keep moving."  Especially in physically challenging circumstances, it is rarely our bodies that will give out first--it's our minds!  Get your mind on 'auto-pilot success' by having a mantra you can repeat over and over again until you get through it.  On a challenging section of one of my runs, I literally repeated "mission commitment" with every step to remind myself of why I was doing this.  On another run, I played Destiny Child's Survivor on repeat for the last 20 minutes of my run.  

"I'm a survivor, I'm not gonna give up, I'm not gon' stop, I'm gonna work harder,

I'm a survivor, I'm gonna make it, I will survive, Keep on survivin'" - Destiny's Child

Whatever your goal, I KNOW you can do it.  Build up your mission commitment muscles and you'll see success in sight! 

Rules for Accountability Partners

-by Matt Leedham

In our goal setting workshops, we stress the importance of having accountability partners or groups. Having someone hold you accountable is a great best practice that many successful people use. But not everyone knows what it means to be an accountability partner – it’s not a skill they teach you in school.

Has someone asked you to be an accountability partner? Looking for tips to give your challenge buddy to be more effective? Keep the following in mind:

Ask a TON of questions. Goals do not exist in a vacuum. Goals are (or at least should be) connected to something deeper. If properly designed, goals should be aligned with both the achiever’s core values and personal vision. So, dig deep. Understand the “why behind” the goal. It will help you keep the real reason in the forefront. For example, losing weight is not just about shedding pounds – it’s usually about health, confidence, love, family, etc.

Ask permission. What type of coach is needed? Do we need the drill sergeant or the therapist? Or do we just need a friendly voice in our corner? The accountability coach should ask permission up front to have the uncomfortable conversation if necessary, and to confront situations that need to be addressed. Having this permission alleviates miscommunication and increases the effectiveness of the relationship.

Set up check-ins. We’re all busy. The worst thing that can happen to accountability partners is infrequent communication. Set up a time to meet regularly (e.g. every week or every other week) to check in on how the achiever is progressing. Set alerts to text or email the achiever with quotes of wisdom and positivity. This is a great indirect way to push them along.

Be generous. Offer up all of your resources and networks. An accountability partner needs to be resourceful and generous. You have agreed to be responsible for the achiever’s success or failure, so pull out all of the stops and help them get it done. Between the two of you, you likely have what it takes to make the goal a reality.

Celebrate the wins. This is the fun part! Celebrating the wins (even the smallest victories) helps create momentum and confidence. And confident momentum will propel anyone forward to keep achieving. Be a part of the celebration and keep cheering your partner on!

Being recruited as an accountability partner is a great honor. Accept it humbly. You are now co-responsible for someone’s personal success, achievement, and happiness. You are a critical piece in helping us build a community of achievers!

Stop Procrastinating and Start Shipping!

- by Jaime Willis

"Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task." -William James

I read a really interesting theory on procrastination this week. The author stated that being in the middle of working towards a goal is LESS painful than than not working on a goal at all. If this is true, then why do we avoid working towards our goals? The author's theory is that the immediate pain associated with beginning to work on a goal is the deterrent. This theory is well-aligned with what we know about the physics of motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest, while an object in motion wants to stay in motion. When we aren't working on the goal the "start up" costs of beginning to work are high, whereas once we are in the middle of the goal, keeping at it is relatively easy. (Illustration by Natalie Dee)

What can we do then, to reduce the "start up" costs of a goal and reduce our procrastination?

Prime.

Just like you prime an engine before starting, we can prime ourselves to be more successful. If I want to go to the gym tomorrow after work, I may say to myself, "Self, let's go to the gym tomorrow." But that is not enough to prime me to succeed. If I really wanted to primed to go to the gym, I'll pack my gym bag the night before. I will make plans to meet someone at the gym. I will "walk through" my day the night before, thinking about what obstacles may prevent me from getting to the gym and troubleshooting them (do I have a way to get to the gym? do I have any late meetings or afterwork obligations?). If I've primed myself to get to the gym, the start-up cost of going is very low. In fact, I may feel worse NOT going then going after all that preparation.

Lower the Bar.

Sometimes the start up cost of a goal is high because the goal itself is a high-difficulty level goal. For example, if you have a goal of writing a novel, you may be reluctant to start on that goal because a novel is a 300 page book that you have to write and that is a lot of work! So, instead of keeping the big, end goal in sight, lower the bar and focus on a tiny portion of work that moves you towards your goal. Some writers choose to assign themselves a number of pages to write in a day or a number of minutes of writing a day. It is much easier to think about having to find the time to sit down and write for 30 minutes a day than it is to think about writing an entire book. When you are getting started, the smaller the goal the better. As we talk about earlier, you should set yourself up for easy "wins" when you are first starting your goal. As your smaller goals become habits, you can gradually increase their difficulty level without significantly increasing your goal's "start up" costs.

Phone a Friend.

Peer pressure is a great motivator. It is great to have a goal that you can work on with someone else. The start up cost of a new goal may be significantly reduced if you know you will be letting a friend down if you don't get working on your goal. When I was in undergrad, I had to write a thesis to graduate from my school. I had a great thesis topic and a great professor to advise me, but I could not get myself to sit down and write the paper. My advisor finally gave me a hard deadline to turn in a draft. I knew that I had to get the paper done, but even the hard deadline wasn't motivating enough. I recruited a friend of mine to come over to my room and keep me on task until my thesis was done. My friend got paid to sit in my room and read while I was on the computer typing. Anytime I was off-task, she literally squirted me with a squirt bottle of water. To this day, she counts that as one of her favorite jobs of all time. As silly as it was, having someone assigned to physically monitor my progress ensured that I got the paper done and turned in on time. There is even a company, StickK, that will facilitate this by allowing you to set a goal and set your own financial penalty for failing to meet the goal.

Manage Your Fears

Seth Godin talks about not succumbing to your fear when starting a new project. Just ship it! Don't worry about all the problems and challenges you may face--you'll gain something even from your failures. If you can lower your 'perceived' risk in completing your goal (fear of failure, fear of losing money, fear of losing face, etc.), you will definitely decrease the start up costs for reaching your goal.

Think about a goal you are struggling with right now and see if you can't reduce your own start-up costs and start shipping today!

What can you ship today?

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Be the Miracle

- by Matt Leedham

I love it when silly little things smack you upside the head and spark an idea, or better yet…action! Last night I turned on the TV after dinner and saw that the 2^nd half of Bruce Almighty was playing. Toward the end of the movie, God tells Bruce:

“You want to see a miracle, son? BE the miracle.”

I thought about this line all night. And then other things started to pop into my head. How about this gem?

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Maybe Gandhi and God are saying the same thing. And yes, I know God was Morgan Freeman in a Hollywood comedy film. But the message was the same, and that’s what’s important.

Then I thought of something else I posted on Facebook a couple of months ago.

“If you see a problem, it’s yours. If you think somebody should do something about it, remember, you’re as much a somebody as anybody.” - Center for Zen Buddhism

I hope that this sparks you to take action in your community. I hope you will take ownership of problems that you see around you.

However, I also hope it sparks you to take action in your personal lives. Don’t hope for the miracle that’s going to get you everything you want in your career, family, health, relationships, etc. BE the miracle. Be the change you want to see in your own life. If you see a problem within you, guess what…you own it. Do something about it.

How will you be the miracle today? This week? This month? Leave a comment below.