As a Business Coach and Mentor, you’ll often hear me talking about striking a balance in life that keeps you operating at high-performance levels consistently. A part of this means setting personal goals and challenges that push me right outside of my comfort zone.

I’ll be honest and say my latest challenge last weekend was a little more than I expected!

I and a group of 7 took part in the longest obstacle course run on the planet:

The Rat Race - Dirty Weekender

So Let's Put This Into Perspective

Take 20 miles of fields, tracks, forest paths and mud. Then add 200 obstacles with everything from lunging over timber stacks, carrying sandbags, cargo nets, tunnels, monkey bars, 10m high jumps into lakes, river crossings and water slides you could only dream of as kids.

Finally, add 7,000 runners. Yes, 7,000!

The result?

The MOST physically demanding 7 hours of my life! ….. well, 6 hours and 58 minutes to be exact! (dragged over the line by amazing partner might I add)

All to push myself, my limits and raise money for Children With Cancer UK!

I finished over the line just before 7 PM from a 1.45PM start unable to walk with a locked hip, one knackered knee and an old break in my right foot causing no end of problems but the best bit was I completed my AIM.

An incredible feeling of achievement overall.

Yet at times throughout the journey, very very painful.

So What Does This Have To Do With Business Growth?

You see, all business owners strive to get to a particular aim or destination along their business journey. The issue is most have no roadmap guiding the way.

This means as soon as they face an obstacle that is likely harder, more challenging or possible painful than they have experienced before they typically look to change course to avoid the risk, ending up completely off track without even realizing it.

This is because we are pre-programmed in our brains to create shortcuts and the easiest possible route to our destination.

The problem is we end up constantly changing the route as a result, which inevitably leads to other obstacles and challenges which we will yet again try and avoid. The cycle repeats.

Do this a hand full of times and your final aim or destination will become lost, leading to confusion and frustration and suffering (pain) anyway.

Ever felt like you're going round in circles, right?

There was a time when this was practically my entire business journey. Day in, Day out.

So coming back to the brutal 20 miles last weekend and what I’m actually doing during any of these races. It boils down to two things:

AIMS & GOALS

The AIM is to complete the 20 miles. To achieve this I have a pre-determined map of 200 GOALS (obstacles in this case) to get me to that aim. Every single goal contributes towards the aim and nothing else.

Any other goals (wait, look, a pot of gold over there) will only distract and reduce the amount of energy I will have to complete the overall aim.

What’s worth observing while I am running is all my focus and attention is only on one thing; The next obstacle (goal), not the aim. This is important!

See by breaking your AIM down into focused goals and micro-goals you can remove the doubt of failure on your main aim (the sh*t, how am I going to do this feeling) and focus entirely on ensuring every goal is completed with absolute focus and attention. Meaning the goal itself it done to the best of your abilities.

This changes our perspective, reduces pressure and increase your performance. Giving you a roadmap at a steady pace that will get you to exactly where you want to be. Whether that's in 1 year or 20 years.

Think of it this way, if we are constantly focusing on the end aim we will most definitely pay less attention to the goals that lead up to the successful aim, inevitably looking for shortcuts or half completing a goal simply to get to the aim (destination) quicker. Sounds counter-productive, right?

Pay attention to this when planning and working with your business.

Will Smith has a great quote worth stating that fits well here;

"You don't set out to build a wall. You don't say 'I'm going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that's ever been built.' You don't start there. You say, 'I'm going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall."
-- Will Smith

So while I’m sat here a week later with aches and pains, take a moment to step back and put all your focus, attention and effort to the next goal at hand, and be sure that goal contributes to whatever aim you want to achieve.