Now and again, I write blogs for people when they don't know, and I haven't asked for their permission so I'm sorry, Tom, I never asked you about this, but you've given me the idea over the last few days.
At times like this, when my oil tanker seems to be heading in the wrong direction at full speed, it seems like it will take the most extraordinary effort to turn it back around to the direction that I wanted to be going.
Historically, I have good December's or bad December's, and this one isn't a great December because every time I pass any sort of Christmas chocolate or biscuit in the practice, I'm ramming it into my face as fast as I can.
It's like I'm in a competition to gain as much weight as possible before the start of January.
There have been other December's when I have been a lot better than this.
And so, Tom and I were chatting in the practice the other day about the fact that we keep cancelling our training and eating more, which of course, is totally in the wrong direction, and I think that it's going to take me some enormous effort to pull things back round to the right direction.
But then I remember that that's not true.
In Stephen Covey's historically unbelievably famous book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, he tells a story about a trim tabber, which I have talked about in this blog several times before.
This is the very small rudder, which attaches to the very big rudder which attaches to the back of the oil tanker.
In order to move the oil tanker, you have to move the big rudder but in order to move the big rudder all you have to do is move the trim tabber.
And so, the trim tabber is the tiny little thing, which changes the direction of the bigger thing, which changes the direction of the whole thing.
And so, this morning I rode my bike in the shed in the freezing cold for 40 minutes, just spinning my legs for a pulse of about 110 bpm, so almost no effort at all.
I've not been able to ride my bike much at all in the last two weeks, in fact, I think it's only my second session in the last fortnight because I've not been feeling great with this terrible cold that everybody’s got which also seems to upset the thyroid thing, which makes me seem to be exhausted, which makes me want to eat, which makes me not want to train ever again.
And so, I reached this point on the 16th or 17th of December and I feel like I am a huge, big whale with no fitness of any kind heading into Christmas, only to get fatter before it gets to January and I will have to purge myself something terrible in order to be part of the person I'd like to be.
But the answer here for all of us, is just to do a little thing, because over time the little thing becomes a bigger thing, and then the big thing becomes big.
And for me, I know the answer to this is true, and I know that I can do it because I've done it almost every year before.
But right now, just about now, it feels like it's not possible.
And so, I thought I'd write to Tom and say, I know that we've been talking about this and I'm absolutely sure that you can do it.
So pretty sure that I can do it too.
Thanks for the inspiration, H.T, Tom.
Blog Post Number - 3298
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