Achieve Great Things By Achieving lots Of Little Things REPEATEDLY

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This morning one of my children (we’ll leave names out to protect the innocent) questioned why they had to make their bed in the morning. Their reasoning was, “I’m just going to mess it up again tonight.” Armed with 5 years of boarding school and another 6 months at the Royal New Zealand Police College I let fly, you’d think I’d have the right response, but what surprised me most was what came out of my mouth.

Nothing I had learned at school or during basic training at the Police College armed me with my spiel. In fact, it was Admiral William H. McRaven’s University of Texas 2014 Commencement Address that instantly sprang to mind and with over 2.5 million views on YouTube, you can safely imagine that his speech has been watched a fair few times. Click on the link above to watch his 20 minute speech.

>h2>My spiel to my child went something like this:

“When you make your bed first thing in the morning you start the day off by achieving a small accomplishment and by repeating small achievements throughout your day, you can achieve some magnificent things. So far today you’ve put the rubbish out, done the dishes, as well as getting yourself dressed, making your own breakfast and packing your own lunch box. All this before you’ve even set foot out the door. Imagine what else you can achieve today when you get to school? And if you have a bad day for whatever reason, how good is it to crawl into a perfectly made bed knowing that you made that bed especially for you, for you to get a great night’s sleep and start all over again tomorrow.”

Like most things in life, doing something once or twice isn’t the key to achieving great things, you have to do them repeatedly and striving towards a health and fitness goal epitomises this perfectly. Eating one crap meal won’t make you fat, but do it often enough and it will. Likewise, eating a really healthy meal won’t make you fit, strong and healthy, but do that repeatedly and you will.

Craig Burns Train repeatedly and you’ll achieve great strides in the gym.

One of the biggest hindrances in achieving athletic performance is sleep, or lack of it. Recently, our kids had their “Fast Track” break up party and the guest of honour was Craig Burns, current member of the Australian Athletic team who competes in the 100m, 200m 400m and 4 x 400 m relay events.

During his talk he touched on an injury he suffered during a weight training session, a week out before departure to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. He attributed his injury to missing out on 1 hour of sleep each night for a 2 week period leading up to the injury due to increased “other” workloads. His training was tapering down but other factors were impacting on his ability to get his required 8 hrs of sleep a night.

Sleep is when you do all of your recovering from the days activities and your growing. Miss one night of solid sleep, not such a problem. Make it a habit and you’re in trouble.

SUMMARY:

Doing something once means you’ve started. Starting is GREAT, it means you’re one step closer to your goal than where you were before you started. However in order to achieve great things you must repeat yourself over and over and over again, achieve lots of little things REPEATEDLY!

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