Failure

How’s it going with your goal setting?

Goal setting is a tried and tested technique used to help people to change their behaviour, but I’m beginning to wonder whether it really works? The process appears simple, set a goal, implement the behaviour, achieve the goal!

For some it’s a good way of implementing new habits, it supports reflective motivation and self-regulation, however, there is an argument that suggests we should know and, more importantly, be warned about the potential adverse “side effects” if you don’t achieve your goal, similarly to the long list of harmful side effects in your medication packs.

For example, if you have a long and complicated history of perceived failures jumping straight into setting goals can do more harm than good, failing to meet the high standards you’ve set yourself can lead to a vulnerability where future challenges maybe avoided.

We must be realistic everyone experiences inevitable setbacks when we challenge ourselves out of our comfort zone, change our habits or try something new; we’re human and we live in the real world and have messy, complicated, unpredictable everyday lives.

I hold my hands up, I am guilty of asking you what your goals are, producing neat, linear training plans with your expectations and good intentions firmly set in future horizons. I align perfect columns dictating run 1, 2 and 3, aware that I’ve omitted a very important, specific column where you should input the daily mess of life that can steamroller and destroy your plan. A column to add in that the dog’s vomiting under the bed woke you in the middle of night or how about the sickness bug that has plagued your house like the literal bubonic plague or my favourite bludgeoning of a plan is where your teenagers, whilst you encouraged them to be assertive, free thinking young adults that shouldn’t sit quietly on the back of the bus, but you didn’t quite envisage them taking over the driving of the bus with a bottle of vodka and a packet of fags on the morning of your 20 mile run!

*This is my analogy of how my life and running felt with 2 teenage daughters.

We are hardwired not to fail, research suggests there is an area of the brain called the lateral habenula, it acts as a switchboard for selecting certain behaviour strategies to cope with fear and anxiety.  Studies on Zebrafish, who have a similar lateral habenula to humans, found when the fish tried to fight each other the one that loses will not go back and fight the other zebrafish, this suggests a perceived failure will prevent them from entering any situation where they may fail again.

Maybe we should try and rephrase the framework, reword the narrative, and start designing our goals for failure instead of a binary plan of either success or failure. When we start something new or make changes in our training there are endless opportunities to fail because we’re stepping out of our comfort zone, we will inevitably come across barriers.  I like the analogy of the barriers being seen as closed gates, we can either stay behind the closed gate or we can open it and see what’s on the other side.

I liken my training to designing recipes, knowing that I won’t get it right the first time, not knowing where it will go wrong but knowing that it will is part of the enjoyment for me.

It’s not easy, especially when expectations are high and back in 2018, I started training for Paris marathon with a time bound expectation.  I added an interval session into my usual busy training programme, throw some new trainers into the mix, a few tablespoons of home stressors (remember the teenagers!). The recipe wasn’t working, but I just kept adding and adding until eventually on my final 20-mile training run I broke.  We set off as a group of runners, all training for the marathon but within a mile of the run, I just knew in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t continue to run; I turned to Nicola, and said I can’t do it, I’ve got to stop, and she watched her coach burst into tears. As we headed for the local greasy spoon café, crying into our coffee, reminiscent of the losing team in the Apprentice, I admitted defeat.

Was I a failure for not achieving my rigid goal? I really felt it at the time but on hindsight the goal was too binary, it was either run a fast marathon or don’t run.  I could have run the marathon without the time goal, I might even have enjoyed it, but for some reason that didn’t appear to be an option. I did get back on track, life settled down and I added what I needed into my new recipe, learning to be more flexible; I won’t lie, it was hard at the time but I’m a better runner for having experienced the setback.