Double trouble
By Kim Browne
Plan, write it down and commit. Three things that are not difficult as such – but the discipline of actually doing this is never easy.
Somehow, if you write something down, as “intent” it makes it more real. If you don’t – and the goal is never achieved – it doesn’t feel quite as bad, because the real “commitment” wasn’t articulated in black and white.
Often when you do write down a goal, you look at it and think you’ll never achieve it. But once you’ve decided to give something a real “go” – the trick is to break it up into bite – sized achievable chunks and celebrate small success goalposts along the way.
Let’s take the recent 94.7 cycle challenge. To a novice cyclist like myself 94 kilometres on a bike is a long way. Couple that to having done zero training, due mostly to circumstances beyond my control (bike damaged when a bakkie drove into the back of our car on our way back from our first training ride at the Cradle of Humankind) and real fear set in. Add to that the fact that last year’s 94.7 race was my first ever bike race, this year my second …
But I’d set my mind to completing the race. Though many suggested I pull out, this just wasn’t an option for me. I knew if I didn’t do it, I probably never would again. My approach? Super easy, slow and consistent, with little rewards along the way.
I found the race really tough and in spite of dehydrating at 70km – complete with seeing stars and wanting to throw-up – with massive encouragement from my husband David, I finished. In spite of the odds, we achieved our objective. It felt good the next day to know we never gave up!
In a similar way, we set our overall objective at Twisted Toast for our third year to double the previous year’s net income to achieve a break-even budget. On paper, our plans represented a huge mountain to climb. We forced ourselves to break the targets into quarterly goals, which although still super challenging, gave us something a little more achievable to strive for.
And so we set out on our 2013 journey.
We are now at the 70km mark and slightly ahead of target. We have a little extra gas in our tank, for the last leg of the journey – which we know will be hard, with added obstacles such as the Xmas season and a traditionally slow January and February.
We’re closing The Toast offices on Friday the 13th of December, (great date we thought for the office Xmas party) as a little reward and to refuel ourselves before the last stretch of what will be an epic year in our history.
Thank you to each one of our incredible clients who continue to encourage us and challenge us to do what we love. Our success could not be possible without you!
Wishing you all a fabulous summer holiday, blessed Xmas and successful New Year.
Looking forward to January 2014!
