Keep Your Head Down.
Keep your head down.
Yes, this works in emergency scenarios to keep you safe but that is not what this advice is for. This is for those of you chasing your goals. Too often we begin a task and constantly want to see how far we’ve come or how close we are getting to our goals. Keep your head down, and keep going. Taking your gaze from anything except the current task at hand is simply a distraction.
There are a few things that can go wrong when you start to look around instead of staying focused on what is currently happening. First one is that you can can become proud or complacent. If you decide to take a break and look around, specifically backward, you can see how far you’ve come this can naturally leave one feeling a state of satisfaction. I’m not saying that feeling good about what you do is wrong, but it is often the first sign of slowing progress and eventually a plateau in improvement. The other problem is that it can also create discouragement in the opposite direction. Often people look up and see how far they still have yet to go even though they’ve been working tirelessly. This makes people feel as though they have made little to no progress and create doubt that tells them they may never reach their goal.
So then what should you do? Well it is still important to know where you are at and where you are going and even where you’ve come from, these are all ways for us to learn adapt, improve and continue on. But there is a right and a wrong way to do it. In a company there should be specific people who are assigned this task, ones that have a MACRO view of the companies direction and can update the team on the MICRO scale as to how things are going and what should change. Those people who are tasked with the MICRO responsibilities are no less valuable in fact in greater in day to day value as they RUN the company and make it move, but their focus, energy and effort would be wasted if they spent their time worrying about anything other than their specific daily tasks. In this instance team work makes the dream work.
As for our solo journey’s or even our fitness journey it is necessary to have timelines. An example of this is for you to set a goal date for a detailed check up. This may be that for 6 weeks you will eat clean or follow macro’s or go Keto, or focus solely on improving your aerobic capacity in training or maybe putting 20lb. on your back squat max. You can get the idea, any goal will do. But when you set the 6 week timeline, it is your job to not be consumed or concerned with where you are at week 1, because it is not week 6. You should not be concerned with where you are in week 3, because it is also not week 6. When you start a plan of execution, your job is to execute it, with your head down, no distractions, stay the course do the daily tasks, do the work. When it comes to week 6 you evaluate, you celebrate, you rejoice in the change you’ve made OR you learn, adapt, reassess, change the plan of attack and try again.
I see and hear too many people abandoning a goal or changing their plan without actually trusting the process and doing the work. This results in them eventually achieving nothing, doubting everything and never gaining the ability to follow through on much at all.
Keep your head down, do the work. When it's time, look up and assess, or work so hard that you realize you’ve reached your goal when you trip over the trophy. Rise up.
AC