Push yourself, don’t stress yourself
I’m not a New Years’ resolution person, but I absolutely use the start of a year to look back at all I accomplished in the outgoing year and set new goals for the year ahead. I’m proud of many of my successes this past year but I’m most proud of recognizing the mental challenges I was experiencing, training to develop mental toughness and using that grit to battle through my 6th IRONMAN. If interested, you can see my race summary at IRONMAN World Championship Race Report | Shannon Crone and the blog where I documented the steps I took to get mentally hard at The Road to Kona | Shannon Crone.
As 2024 approached, I struggled with identifying bigger and better goals than those I accomplished in 2023. My internal dialogue went something like, “How can you possibly set bigger race goals? You completed the Abbott World Major Marathons. And you qualified for and crossed the finish line at the IRONMAN World Championship. Both are goals you’ve been chasing for YEARS. So, what’s next? You’ve already gone big…how do you go bigger?!” This conversation led me to draft several options that created more anxiety than I needed or wanted. After checking in and getting real with myself, I deposited those drafts in the proverbial recycle bin.
After several weeks of asking myself what I really wanted to accomplish, while still focusing on my health (mental and physical), I realized my goals don’t have to be a competition where each year’s goals are bigger and better than the last…there is no reason to keep raising the bar to levels that are seemingly impossible to accomplish, especially when those goals conflict with my schedule, life and God-given talents. Instead, I decided to focus on and develop goals related to my passions.
That being said, my goals are simple:
First and most importantly, I want to be a better human. I don’t mean that I’m a bad human today; this world really needs us all to be better humans. Better to the people around us, better to the Earth and environment, better to animals and better to ourselves. So, I am going to be thoughtful about how I can be better. Perhaps it will also help others to do the same.
Secondly, I want to enjoy life more. It’s been several years since I lost my husband and grief has really impacted everything in my life. I’m not suggesting this one will be easy…grief has a mind of its own, but I want to be conscious about everything I do and find gratitude each and every day.
Lastly, and probably not surprisingly if you know me well, I want to get my run back. Running is my happy place and for too long, my run has been a struggle. It’s where I’ve been most negative about my performance. It’s time to find the joy in running again.
Whether you establish resolutions or goals or not, I hope you join me along this journey! What are your goals this year?