Deciding to take on a Challenge
With much indecision and curiousity, I decided to register for my greatest physical challenge yet. While I have been the cheerleader for many people tackling the Ironman, I have had the opportunity to watch up close the training regimen required to accomplish this challenge. I have also swum, cycled, and run enough to know what it feels like to be tired, but I have yet to experience the exhaustion that comes from swimming 4 km, cycling 180 km and then running a marathon all in one day. Someone asked me the other day if I was nervous and I told them my philosophy around nerves versus excitement. If I feel nervous about something I voluntarily signed up for I quickly change my wording to excited. I wouldn`t have signed up for something to make myself nervous, but I am excited by a challenge. Something that is outside of my control….I can get nervous about. Even then, my hypnotherapy training helps me through those times.
Do you ever wonder what to do when people give you negative feedback? A hypnotherapy technique I use is called transmutation. That involves taking negative feedback and instead of merely letting it bounce off of you, you take the energy from the feedback and change it into a way that energizes you instead. When I first announced that I was planning to tackle this challenge a few people who are close to me said “You can`t do that!“ I wondered if it was because I was attempting to take on a role that I ordinarily wouldn`t take on or whether they believed that I had physical limitations, or dare I say it, that I might possibly be too old. They may be right for all I know, but I decided I wouldn`t let them be the ones to make my decision whether or not to attempt the challenge. We`ll know in about 11 months and 3 weeks who was right. Back to transmutation. Whenever I met with unhelpful responses, I listened to the concerns, and made them positive. I agreed, I that I hadn’t done this race before, I don’t know how my body will respond to the training or the race itself, but neither did many other people who managed this feat before they did it. In fact, I have much more training, experience, and awareness of the race than many other people had before they signed up. So, I take the negative comments, educate myself more about what I need to learn, I look for ways to find evidence that contradicts what they have said, and then to myself, I thank them for their concern and the energy they have expended on my challenge and use that energy to fuel myself and make myself a better racer. Now I didn’t get to mention all of the positive responses I have received since signing up for Ironman. There have been plenty and I am thankful that there are so many positive people who support other people tackling challenges.
What sort of challenges have you taken on and have you been discouraged by people in your social network? What do you do to follow through with your dreams?
Belinda Kissack M.A. is a registered clinical counsellor and a clinical hypnotherapist who works with individuals, couples and families. When she is away from the office you can often spot her running (or walking as the distances are getting longer), cycling (or stretching…ditto) or swimming in the local lakes in and around the Cowichan Valley.
