“If you do not pour water on your plant, what will happen? It will slowly wither and die. Our habits will also slowly wither and die away if we do not give them an opportunity to manifest. You need not fight to stop a habit. Just don’t give it an opportunity to repeat itself. ”
― Sri S. Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras
Today I entered a running race. The Sandringham 10k to be precise, it’s not until September and not a particularly long distance, but that is beside the point. The point was that I have signed up, committed and most importantly achieved a goal and did something that a year ago I never would have done or thought I could.
Goal setting for me has taken time for me to get to grips with. In the past my goals were always too challenging and unobtainable, manic lists with points on it such as 1) Fast 2) Loose a stone by next month 3) Eat no more than 900 calories today etc etc. Not really acknowledging that these were not only completely unachievable, they are also wrapped in shame, guilt and linked to negative self loathing and bad habits. The cycle would repeat itself: fail at the goals, feel rubbish and a failure, set even more ridiculous ‘goals’, fail again…… and nothing is achieved other than rock bottom self -esteem.
These ‘bad habits’ or the cycle of negative thinking is still within me and it takes some days a huge amount of effort to not fall in to the same trap but running is one of the ways in which I have managed to get better at goal setting and which can be applied to other areas of life. Running for me started in lock down which I have written about before. Those that have read my post know that for me (and many others – I am not so self absorbed to think that I was the only one) lock down was very challenging and accelerated the end of my sixteen year relationship. When I was at my lowest and needing to get out of the house after a day of (attempting) to home school three children under ten and work from home, I started to run. I have always hated running and again like with so many things I thought I was rubbish and so wouldn’t push myself. I have written about running before but what astounded me about it, is that anyone really can do it. If you forget about your speed, what you look like then you really can do it. Not only that but if you are consistent you can get better quite steadily and this was what triggered me to re-frame how I was thinking about my goals.
Rather than having negative goals or ones that were totally unachievable, I started thinking about small goals and where I would like to me in certain, realistic amounts of time. Can I run for one more kilometer next week? Could I run ten in a months time? The answer was yes and once these started to become a reality it meant that I felt a sense of achievement rather than the familiar feeling of failure. It was life changing and has manifested itself into other areas, if I can do this what else can I do? I still write lists, but with small daily successes that over time add up to big changes. So entering a race was a long term goal that thanks so small steps has been met – I now have to actually run it!
So ridiculous, negative goal setting is one bad habit that I have managed to quit. One that I am working on at the moment is about looking back rather than looking forward. Running can be a good metaphor for helping with this habit. What I mean by looking back, is returning to old behavior, patterns and thinking that are mentally unhealthy. This can be relationships, how you view yourself, events in the past that you mull over and feel ashamed about. This for me is a work in progress and what I am currently working on at the moment. It is often brought about by maladaptive thinking, behaviors which have been a product of low self-esteem and can be easy to slip in to as its the familiar.
Settling for relationships that you think you deserve, making poor choices, going back to familiar, yet toxic situations that only serve to give proof to yourself that that’s all you deserve. I have done all of these things and am slowly beginning to understand why I have done them and to try and be more compassionate to myself rather than being ashamed. These are my bad habits and I know through small consistent, step by step goal setting – which I used in my running, I can move forward and be where I want to be. Running has helped me take control, rather than be a victim, to look forward rather than back. To look at where I can be and who I want to be. The next bad habit to break is smoking – more of that in another blog….
Please read and share if you think someone needs to help with goal setting – and any goals and achievements you have had – I would love to hear!
Love Ruby xx
theshamehealth 