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PR Your Life

It’s not enough to want to do good. Sadly, effort is not accomplishment. This is a great time to reflect and assess. Honestly look at all areas of your life and determine where you came up short this year. Decide what to improve and what to eliminate. Decide who you want to be . . . and how you will become that person. Start now. And PR your life. – CrossFitLisbeth

I came across many tweets on Twitter and probably even posts in Facebook that basically summarizes 2011 – it was the most legendary year of their life! And I couldn’t agree more! 2011 was most probably the BEST year that I’ve ever hard. I came across CrossFit Lisbeth’s quote and I realized that there was a reason why 2011 was sooo awesome – because 2012 is going to be awesome-r and more legendary! Yes that’s right! When you come across the word “PR” in running terms it means “Personal Record” or “Personal Best” (in that case you need to “PB Your Life”). This means that you need to benchmark it against something first right? That’s why they have those Benchmark WODs (yes those workouts that have girl’s names? They’re all killer workouts BUT their JUST for benchmarking haha) so that you know where you’re AT in the coming months and years that you continue your fitness. What if we bring this idea to our WHOLE Life? What if you actually did “PR Your LIFE”? What would that look like? Maybe I should tell a bit of my story.

STRENGTHS

I came across this book called “Strengths Finders 2.0″ by Tom Rath and like lot of my friends 3 years ago – we bought the book, got the code, took the test and found out what our strengths were. I found out that my strengths were that of a Learner, Achiever, Strategic, Ideation and Activator. The descriptions of the strengths were amazing but after a year I didn’t exactly know what to do with it. I went through almost two years having glimpses of what I could do with my strengths but I still didn’t know what to REALLY do with it. And then 2009 happened. I started running and for 2010 I had a goal of running a full marathon which I actually did. I then started to ask the question – did my strengths have anything to do with it? I entered 2011 with that question – What if I approached life and asked questions in the CONTEXT OF MY STRENGTHS instead of my weaknesses? This actually sounded very strange the very first time I posed it to myself because the world around me had habituated me in always framing my life in the CONTEXT OF MY WEAKNESSES. It turned out that my top strength was that I was a LEARNER – as a learner I actually thrived in environments where I was always learning something new – I actually had to mind MORE learning opportunities even thought I was already in one – I was teaching Information Systems at a college. At the back of my mind, there was a certain doubt that kept telling me – you will not be able to do that, it will be too much, you will burn out, how many people have actually tried what you’re going to do.

BENCHMARKS

This brings us to the subject of benchmarks – you’ll only know if you are about to PR if you actually knew what you were able to do beforehand. Obviously – you need a measuring stick so that you know that you are going from strength to strength, victoy to victory, awesome to awesome-r! So I was teaching at one school – what if I taught in another school simulataneously! My brain was telling me that I was going to conk out after this endeavor but my STRENGTHS were telling me that this was something that I could do. And I actually did it – I was able to teach in a new school – teaching new courses I’ve never taught before and I had so much energy and passion in doing it. It never occured to me at any point that I was losing steam or that I was conking out – what happened? I was playing to my strengths! This was something that I was born and built to do. What would have happened if I did the opposite? If I had stuck to the conventional wisdom that I should stick to whatever I knew I was knowledgeable in doing – I would have been in a comfort zone and I would have denied my learning strength and maybe would have underperformed. All I’m saying is that – I never thought I’d be in a place that I would be teaching in two schools and be happy with it but my asking that question through the lens of my strengths – the answer was yes! PERSONAL RECORDS

I might have taken some of the ideas to the extreme but you never really knew the limits of your learning until you press the envelope, right? At one point – I was learning Java in the morning and I was teaching it in the afternoon and evening. After I had finished that class – I was asked to teach MySQL and PHP – something that I’ve never really learned and never taught before. I was certified in IBM db2 for the first time and I conducted reviews and my students got certified. Certification was new for me and so were certification reviews but apparently this was something that I could learn to do. I was breaking personal records week after week after week! And I was helping my students break their own personal records as well! Some of the were the very first certificants from our school! Apparently I could learn how to help other people PR too! I started meeting some of my friends and shared some of these ideas. I had a friend who was hit a wall in her career and I asked her to find out her strengths and start asking questions in terms of where she was good at and not what she was bad at. She went further and even asked her daughter to take the test! When her daughter found out that she was a Learner (like me!) – she started learning on her own. My friend who was on the doldrums for failing to get on an international trip started planning based on her newfound strenghts and before I knew it she was on the second leg of the international trip and when she came back she was promoted! Wow! This thing works!

PR YOUR LIFE

So what am I asking you to do? You can read up on Martin Seligman’s “Authentic Happiness” and find out how Positive Psychology can help your mindset or even Angela Duckworth’s GRIT Scale so you can be encouraged to keep at it. Or you can watch Kelly Starrett’s mobilitywod.com so you can learn how to take care of your body and prevent injury by taking more ice baths or even by taking more rest and more fish oil (or Issho Genki squalene haha) or even do the mainsite WODs at CrossFit.com and embrace a new sport while you’re at it. You can even try conjugated periodization and start strengthening yourself and get into General Physical Preparedness (GPP) – whatever it is – you can do better that what you did last year and you can set new PRs! But you’re not competing against anybody else – you’re competing with yourself. Find out where you’re good at and be the best at it and leverage that to PR YOUR LIFE.

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