Repeat to Fade

I've pondered doing this post for a few days now.  I'm writing it though as I made a commitment to myself when I started the blog I would post regularly about the stuff that is going on in my life.

It came as a shock when, on the second day back after the Christmas break, my Company announced it was making redundancies.  The shock was excacerbated only two days later when I was told that my role was at risk.

In the days that followed I spent a fair bit of time with the usual potential job-loss emotions; anger, guilt, worry.. through all of them though, a quiet voice sounded the same message.. 'It's ok.. this is going to work out'.  As I researched jobs, redundancy law and subsequently spoke to friends, the quiet voice got louder.

I'm lucky, the people I have been priviledged to work with over the past decade are about as good as you get, each and every one of them are friends who have come with previously successful careers in training, recruitment, pyschology and a whole heap of other things.  As such, I have, at my disposal a huge source of information and resources - not many people have a sizeable number of professional business coaches in their phonebook who'll offer advice or guidance as a friend.  I've also had a fortune spent on me in training that means that I'll emerge, wide eyed and blinking, into a rather turbulant jobs market a hell of a better catch than I was 12 years ago.

The repeat to fade I spoke about is the result of this training.  The positivity and set of behaviours that have, without knowing, become muscle memory from repeated exposure are now surfacing.  An inner control of my emotions, my thinking is now clearer and, although I have a bit of a wobble at the odd time, I have a focus and plan in my head and a positivity of outlook that has surprised even my wife, who, quite unannounced told me how she was amazed with how well I was dealing with the whole shooting match.

Malcolm Gladwell investigated the factors which contributed to good becoming exceptional in his book Outliers.  In it, he makes mention of 10,000 hours (previously researched by Anders Ericsson) - that being the time which is required to become exceptional at something - from the Beatles playing over 1,200 times in Germany between 1960 and '64 and coming back a slicker group and ultimately a global success, to Bill Gates spending 10,000 hours programming computers prior to making his fortune.

I guess this has links to sport, repeat, repeat repeat.  It's the only way of engraining behaviours, reactions, confidence and thought processes for when they are needed.

Boil it down and it turns out the more you do stuff, the better you get.

I made mention a few weeks ago that I'm not a runner.  I'm still not, but each morning repeat is becoming easier and I relish the challenge of wet cold and dark mornings, where it's just me and the pavement.  Last week I posted the highest mileage of my training so far.  Better still, I did it without aches or pains, showing I have the potential to do more.  That's going to be the challenge for next week and I'm looking forward to seeing how I do.

My future awaits..