So what's common between running a
marathon and completing a
celta course?
No, this is not the first line of a joke. Or maybe I just don't know that joke. :-)
I wrote about how the first one happened on different running sites, a bit more than 15 years ago, so I'm not going to write about that now. And I really wanted to write about the celta last month, but I was lacking two essential factors: time and words to describe the experience. I spent a month with 13 people who inspired me in various ways, for which I cannot be grateful enough. I have plenty of time now but I'm still looking for the right words so I'm not going to write about that either.
However, there is something important that I can write about, and that is the trick how I coped with the challenges of these very different projects to turn them into two of the most rewarding "journeys" of my life so far. So, the trick and the answer to the question above is the following: both of them were the result of conscious experiments with mindsets.
I was in the second year of my university studies when somebody told me that people don't change significantly after they grow up. And in a few weeks, I heard it again and again from different sources and I thought "this is bulls**t, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to change if you want to". I also thought that life would be very boring if I stay like that for the rest of it. So that was when I decided to try to refute that statement. First, I had to find an area in my life where a change could be noticeable, and it had to be a significant change too, as small ones were still possible according to my sources. And that was how I started to focus on sports. The most hated and rejected types of activity in my first 20 years. It's enough to say that I had some serious arguments with my PE teacher in primary school and although high school PE started a bit better, in two years' time my teacher suggested getting an exemption from the lessons instead of just being there and demotivating others in the class. To turn this attitude into running marathons, well, that might count as a significant change. And this is exactly what happened in less than two years. Refutation done. Don't you ever dare to tell me that you can't change.
The experiment with the celta was the result of a question that I had heard only a month before, but I wish I had known about it much, much earlier. This is possibly one of the top 5 questions to ask in life:
"What would you do if you were just 5 % more committed?"
The idea behind this is that if you are 100 % committed to your aim, you will reach it (if it is theoretically possible for a human being). However, being completely committed might seem too hard, especially when circumstances are more difficult, and that's when this question is very useful. 5 % is not a big deal, is it? You can do that any time and no matter what your aims are, you can always find a small step to take. So I asked this question from myself before the course and one of the answers was "I could read some grammar stuff if I was 5 % more committed", so I did it. And I asked this quite often at nights when I was fed up with writing lesson plans and the answer was "if I was a bit more committed, I would do it properly", so I did it and it was so much fun in the end. (The good thing about this technique is that sometimes you can decide not to be more committed - I did this on the evening before my last teaching practice. I knew I could spend more time filling in one more part of the lesson plan, but keeping my eyes open for 15 more minutes was just too big a price to pay that night.)
Anyway, the experiment was successful, I passed the course with a good grade, nice feedbacks from team-mates, too and lots of heart-warming moments during the four weeks. The question seems to be working.
The "bad" news is that after these experiments I can't blame anyone if I do not reach my goals in the future...
And my next dream is to be a confident public speaker - I will get there somehow. :)
