IT’S THAT TIME of year again. Christmas is over, you can relax… or at least you can for just as long as it takes one of your wise elders to utter that dreaded sentence: So, any New Year’s resolutions?
Quick, think of something to give up!
If only you smoked, that’d be a handy answer year after year. Maybe crisps are off the menu? Perhaps you’ll pour yourself in to some new lycra and start pounding the pavements. Or, better yet, get a 12-month membership in a gym that seems like great value until you start counting the six or seven months that pass without you darkening its door.
Nothing too serious, obviously: by the time you get paid after a long, bleak January nobody cares for NYRs (yes, we’re calling it that) anymore. You can be yourself again.
On the other hand though, NYRs don’t have to be a chore. They can be more than just a lip service answer you serve up to the mammy to get that look of disappointment off her face.
This week most of us have a few hours spare to sit down and take stock. In between tins of Roses, why not figure out what you want from your life in 2016 – not just in terms of your career or your waistline.
Framework
Objectives, goals, resolutions; whatever you want to call them, they can be a fickle mistress sometimes. Some wishes are just that, but if you put a framework of a plan towards those wishes then you might not believe the luck you make for yourself.
Identifying the big over-arching mission is as difficult a task as achieving it. It’s easier for professional sportspeople: the trophies are (usually) cast before the season starts and the efforts of a previous season can be instructive of where the realistic goal now lies.
Paul O’Connell has set many goals over the course of his career. And he will set many more in the 18-odd months that remain on his contract in Toulon. That’s the key for the Limerick man, lots and lots of little day-to-day goals: sweat the small stuff, make sure you’re hitting targets regularly and soon the bigger prizes will come in to view.
“I’d be very short-termist in all that sort of stuff,” the former Ireland captain told The42 at a time when his only goal was to get clearance to take the supportive brace off his hamstring.
“I don’t get too far ahead. The bigger picture is sometimes very distracting and it seems very intimidating. But if you can look at what’s right in front of you and try to do that as well as you can, then move on to the next thing and try to do that as well as you can, it’s an easier way of approaching things.”
O’Connell reaches and sets goals daily. Be it by powering through a Tuesday training session, making sure he gets a good night’s sleep and quality fuel or by performing well on matchday.
Winning things, there are so many other things that are out of your control that have to go in to that. So for me, any goal-setting I’d be doing would be around trying to get my body right, trying to train well, trying to improve things that I can control.”
That approach, says the double Heineken Cup-winner, two-time Lions tourist and 108-cap Ireland lock, has not always been in place. He has learned over the years to step back when a squad was perhaps getting excited after a good pre-season.
“I think very often we would have sat down as a team and talk about winning this and that.
“Really, you just have to look at what goes in,what’s required to do that rather than the bigger picture. There’s a whole load of little things that are a lot easier to see, to grasp, a lot easier to achieve; the little things that go in to doing that rather than looking at the bigger picture of trying to finish the season with a trophy.”
So if you already have a clear idea of where you want to go in 2016. Don’t blur the lines by giving yourself the same targets as you did this time last year.
Give yourself goals for Monday 4 January, give yourself goals for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday…
Keep hitting targets, stay on the positive side of them and, you never know, everything else just might fall into place before you know it.
I was in Croker on Sunday screaming my throat raw for the Rebels, but hats off to the Dubs, they have a quality team. Some fantastic play and lovely scores out of them. Actually thought they had the winning of it till the sending off. Even then, they were dangerous till the end.
Look forward to seeing more of them next year.
my friend’s mother makes $83/hour on the computer. She has been without a job for 5 months but last month her check was $21383 just working on the computer for a few hours. Read more on this web site… www.Can99.com
Jokes on her, I make $84 an hour
Michele
If your friends mother makes that much money why you wasting your Time on the journal , wasting our time ..do us all a favour and get a real job,. Ps the journal should have sent you and your scam on your way .. Tool .. You add nothing to society..
So pleased Cork won. All this hype about Dublin teams gives me a pain in the colon::-)
John. With respect…you haven’t a clue about hurling…to make a comment like that…this year will be remembered ..in the same regard as the mid nineties.. ..a great year for gaa..
Did u read any of the papers that week,on the front page of the star there was an article about Dublin hurling and on the back page,it’s bias journalism towards Dublin gaa,always has and always will,when Kerry last won the all Ireland there was a two page article about Dublin football in the Sunday world,tell me any losing team in a final that gets more coverage than a winning team
Most of the media coverage this week has all been about Dublin hurling,people would swear that they beat Cork,teams that beat Dublin in hurling and football never get the proper recognition,
Im sure the rebels will get plenty of recognition if they bring back liam to cork town !
john so true! and same after the Kilkenny game but it doesn’t really matter when Liam comes home in Srptember!!!!
Really hope Clare win Liam now
This fella griffiths has ideas about himself. Lots of ideas
I thought it was more of a semi-colon, myself.