Stress / Time Management

What stresses you?

A perfect meal, a perfect relationship, a perfect swim cap or perfectly shaved legs, successful triathletes take in the lessons of their sport, learn how to streamline their lives and eliminate things that slow them down. Yet I have not made the decision fast enough. I need to get rid of the things in my life that slow me down; this may sound harsh, but if my habits hold me back, I must break them. Elite amateur athletes have had to eliminate most of the unnecessary limiting factors and layers of their lives.

Some of my work and school friends become a negative source of stress because when I hang out with them, I choose to partake in actions, (sedentary lifestyle, drink alcohol, stay up late), which do not lead me to achieve my goals. I end up deviating from my training plans because my actions are inconsistent with my goals. I do not share my goals with my friends from work or school because they do not value the importance of them. I am forced to make a decision about two incompatible opportunities, one will happen if I do nothing, the other will require me to “live a life less ordinary to achieve something extraordinary.”

I perpetuate personal pressure on myself when training with others to always seem stronger, faster and more focussed. I pressure myself to speed up, intensify and shift my behaviour to meet a higher standard of performance even during warm-ups when it is not to my advantage. I cut myself short of breaks during speed swim sets in order to try to keep pace with some of my training partners with years more experience and perfect hydrodynamics. My teammates are sometimes sources of eustress by challenging me to set a new personal best, I feed off of their encouragement when they see me only metres behind them. However, sometimes in order to keep pace I am not allowing my body to recover long enough from anaerobic sets thus creating distress and by the end of the workout my energy levels have dropped and my set times have increased.

The support I receive from my coaches and teammates helps me motivate myself in every aspect of my life even though sometimes I view their support as pressure on myself to speed up. When swimming I need to swim my own race and not be distracted by other faster swimmers and chase; by changing my views of the situation I can short-circuit the stressor. I gain social support from my teammates that I train with and by having a pre-determined commitment to exercise; it helps motivate me to finish my homework or chores, which perpetuates consistent goals and behaviour.