I have a performance coach friend supporting me through this. A coach is not something I ever thought I would use in life, but I never thought I would need a therapist either and I’ve definitely had one of those! In fact, I think it is mad that the majority of British people think having a therapist is something to be discreet about or that a business or performance coach is unnecessary. In the USA people are content to talk about their experiences with therapists, and business coaching is an industry experiencing exponential growth worldwide. 

 I see a performance coach as part therapist, part personal development advisor. They are there to tap into your strengths and weaknesses and identify how to help you improve. If you wanted to get better at tennis or swimming you would hire a coach, right? Or take lessons. So why don’t we do this more often for our general performance; whether that is in our careers, relationships or life goals? I think that, because it is not mainstream, we don’t know what the results look like and therefore are reticent to spend the money. But I can tell you already that having someone dedicated to supporting you in a professional manner is incredible. It is so rare to have someone focus on you alone. Normally, when we are talking to friends, it is a two-way street and neither of you really dive deeply into your conversation and ask each other why you think a certain way, not like a coach does. Without you even noticing they help you tap into your unconscious and make you realise what it is you truly want, what you are feeling, what you are afraid of, and what success actually means to you. They are there to both track your progress and haul you back onto that track if it looks like you’re about to fall off. It might even be difficult to make a direct correlation between your work with a performance coach and your successes but the link will definitely be there.

 My coach has already helped me a huge amount in relation to this challenge. Before he agreed to help me, I hadn’t properly considered what I would define as success in this endeavour, other than simply completing the tasks and raising some money. That was small minded of me. He has made me question it by tapping into my fears and looking at how I could harness those to build a bigger picture. We realised together that success for me is, absolutely, not breaking my body and raising awareness and funds for a good cause, but it is also about enjoying the journey. It is about maintaining my nerve throughout, and exploiting every opportunity to maximise the impact of this challenge. Heck I’d even thought about blogging about this whole experience, but it wasn’t until he gave me a little extra push and a little extra encouragement and guidance to start writing, that I actually did, and right now I can’t seem to stop! Maybe success for me might also be keeping this up for a whole 14 months.

Success for me is going to be all of the different things I have mentioned; not breaking my body, raising lots of money (hopefully), evolving my identity (more on that later, probably), making new and exciting connections with people, being committed to writing a journal and seeing what that teaches me. The list goes on. What I am getting at is that there are a multitude of ways to make this a success, limiting myself to a narrow goal would create an unnecessary amount of pressure that would more likely break my resolve than encourage me to continue. If I maintain the right mindset throughout and drive at this hard I cannot not fail.