Are you passionate about what you do?

There are many ways that you can be the best you can be, but first you need to be doing something that you are completely passionate about. There is absolutely no point partaking in activities that you don’t like, or that you feel are just okay, because you simply won’t put your all into it.

This goes hand-in-hand with being focused and setting yourself specific goals. These can be anything from drinking more water or going for a walk every day, to buying yourself a boat or rowing across the Atlantic. If you set yourself specitic goals, preferably with a time frame, then you can focus 100%, challenging yourself to get closer to achieving them as each day passes. 

Focus on your circle of influence 

Something that I came across, and which has stuck with me, is a concept from Stephen Covey’s ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. In his book Covey talks about things that can affect you becoming the best that you can be.  He says that far too many people focus on their ‘circle of concern’ – the things in their life that they cannot do anything about. Instead of ignoring these and just getting on with life, they dwell on them which starts to bring them down.

Every successful person you speak to will be 100% focused on their ‘circle of influence’ – the things in their life that they can have an impact on. After all what’s the point in concentrating on something that you can’t influence? If you were to worry less about the weather, your height or the traffic and focus more on what you eat, how you exercise or what you learn, you might just find yourself being more productive than you ever thought possible.  

Everyone at Willow Chiropractor is extremely passionate about what they do, the chiropractors, the chiropractic assistants and the people behind the scenes. We all set ourselves goals and don’t stop until we’ve achieved them. We do not focus on the things that we cannot control, we simply focus as much energy as we can on our ‘circle of influence’ – the things that we can affect – in order to make ourselves better both personally and professionally.

In the spirit of RIO 2016

A fantastic example of this is Ellie Simmonds, the GB Paralympian. Ellie started swimming at 5 years of age. She moved from Birmingham to Swansea when she was just 11 to have access to the world class swimming facilities because she knew what she wanted to do, and she chased her dream. Training for London 2012, Ellie had gruelling 5.15am starts; she trained at 6am and then went straight from training to study for her history A level, before heading back to the pool for more training.

Ellie did this day-in, day-out. She could have let her disability get in the way, instead she focussed on her ‘circle of influence’. She went on to become the youngest Paralympian medal winner at the age of 13 years and 9 months, and the youngest recipient of an MBE at 14. She won 4 medals at the London 2012 Paralympics, 2 of these were gold. She has now also bagged herself another gold at the Rio 2016 Paralympics, setting a new World and Paralympic Record in the process.

Ellie’s motto is “Coming second is not an option”.  So what’s your excuse?