We all need a push every now and again if we are going to achieve our best.
As a personal coach, it is my job to push my clients into achieving the best they can in many aspects of their lives, and like them, I too need a good push every now an again.
I’ve been a long time advocate of early morning exercise as a great way to kick-start your day.
In my recent article, Breaking your own glass ceiling I mentioned pushing myself on my morning run last week and achieving my fastest 5km run in over 18 months.
This led me to wonder at why I was able to achieve this and why had I become so slow anyway!
We all know that as we get older, we get slower. So, at 50 years of age, it is easy for me to tell myself that I have reached my limit.
What really happened is that over time I had found a comfortable jogging pace that had become my own glass ceiling. I had convinced myself that when I was running fast, I was going as fast as I could and so I didn’t push past this.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3ZLpCmKCM
I was held back by my own self-limiting beliefs’? something I’m often helping my clients overcome.
So how did I finally push through my glass ceiling? I used the same technique that Roger Bannister used to break the impossible four-minute mile glass ceiling. I ran with friends who were faster than me, they were my pace men.
For many years, the scientific and athletic communities thought that it was impossible to run a four-minute mile. Yet, in 1954 Roger Bannister finally broke this barrier in a time 3:59.4 and he did it by setting up a team of athletes to set the pace for him.
Once the 4-minute mile barrier had been broken, suddenly the world knew that it wasn’t impossible and within weeks athletes around the world began breaking the four-minute mile glass ceiling.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP_NzZP_LK0
Today, the four-minute mile barrier is a distant memory and the best times these great athletes achieved would place them a long way back in the field behind current record holder Hicham El Guerrouj who ran 3:43.13 in 1999.
No matter what field of endeavour you are competing in, you will have a glass ceiling ‘? a barrier that you think you can’t break through.
What do you think your glass ceiling is and how much do you want to break through it?
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