Ready, Aim … Kluck!

The last few days have been tough. Work has been busy, the head cold that has been floating around for days finally materialised and there have been a few ups and downs to deal with. As a result I missed my Gym session and a night out on Thursday which made me a bit annoyed with myself. At the time, I had good reason but the more I thought about, actually I could have ‘manned up’ and gone. Isn’t it weird how we have targets and deadlines in work which we break our backs to meet  but when we set ourselves the same in our personal life, these goal posts shift constantly!

One of things GymGuyMark asked me when I started going to The Western Health and Racquets Club Gym, was did I have a goal I wanted to reach. I actually have two.

• The Party Goal : When I turn 50 next year, I want to have a party and treat myself to the most amazing pair of heels. At the moment because of my weight, my knees hurt if I wear heels for too long, so my goal is to get fitter to be able to dance the night away in fab shoes and an amazing dress.
• The Gin or Gym Balance Goal :  I love my food, and the odd gin or three, so to be able to enjoy that, I need to cure the Gymophobia and get in shape

Definitely SMART goals, and within an achievable time frame but if this was work, they would be documented, broken down into smaller targets and a reviewed every quarter.  Ok, I guess in a way my Blog is a kind of review of how I am doing but when I thought about it, I am actually my own reviewer. How I am doing is directly related to how my body looks and feels, and not just physically, but mentally as well.  As I have said before there some major physical changes happening, the waist is coming out of hibernation, the legs are losing their winter fat, the bingo wings are more aero dynamic  and I am less out of breath, but the other thing I have noticed is a slight touch of determination and focus creeping in. The ‘I am going to do this’ attitude prevails during exercises, the giving in to a tired body is becoming less and less, much more ‘want to do’ than ‘feck this, I am off for gin’.  So when life chucks a hardball at you, not being able to ‘want to do’ gets incredibly frustrating.

I decided last night that I needed to slob out, so on went the PJ’s, out came the fave DVD’s and the bottle of white that has been chilling in my fridge. On first was Disney’s Robin Hood, it just makes me smile and it contains one of my heroes, Lady Kluck. Since she and I are so alike (thanks GymGuyMark), it wasn’t long before this silly little film got me thinking. Life this week has been a series of armour plated, charging Rhinos, but like that mad Scottish hen, perhaps it is time to man up and hold them back. Time to stop life’s hardballs stopping me from doing what I want/need to do and to get things into proportion.

Yes, there will be days when work or life will genuinely stop me for going to the Gym, meeting friends or spending time with family and getting it into proportion is important. There will be other Gym sessions and there will be other Pub Quizzes, there may not always be time to say Goodbye ! So the ‘want to do’ has to measured against the ‘need to do’ and the my determination to achieve that balance should be applied to life and not just the Gin or Gym Balance Goal. The targets we set ourselves, personally and professionally, can be large or small, near or far but sometimes we need to realise that no matter what the size or distance all we need is the right bow and arrow and someone behind us to help us hit those Rhinos.

We just need to get it all into perspective, preferably after a few gins !

Gx