How Important Are Past Achievements?

If you measure the worth of a person, do you measure him for what he has done, or what he is about to do?

Resumes are set ablaze with any iota of achievements and accomplishments. Many interviewees learn to play up their strengths and nullify their weaknesses. Certainly, the extreme version is when embellishments and selective deletion either makes for a fascinating candidate or a dubious and suspiciously ‘too good to be true’. You may be familiar with the saying: If it is too good to be true, then it’s too good to be true.

Yet, having observed these through anecdotal evidence and first-hand accounts, enhancing your resume is vastly different from padding your LinkedIn ‘work history’ or updating your Facebook profile page. As you design personal and professional challenges and achieve your goals/outcomes, these add on to your value of your credibility. Credibility involves experience and expertise. How much are you doing to develop both dimensions of your persona and stature?

In recent days of the London Olympics 2012, we have noticed how in the choppy, equal-lane, world of swimming two main messages. Firstly, how quickly it is for audiences and fans to dismiss a champion’s past performance because of failure to meet expectations. Secondly, consider how an emerging champion is questioned for their youthful potential. Either we have become cynical about human performance, or we are losing touch about the hard work and dedication each candidate has invested to build their status and reputation. Michael Phelps earned both kudos and kicks for his disappointing showing (for not bagging gold in his pet events), while the Chinese teenage-torpedo Ye Shi Wen is being suspected of using illegal sports-enhancing drugs. How does it feel to bear the weight of an entire nation that pins its hopes on you to do well, or bag a medal, or a gold medal? The shadow of other people's doubts (and even mistakes) can follow you around like Lance Armstrong, years after retiring from a marquee race. Accusations, however unjust and unfair, blemish one's reputation just because of doubt.

There is just no way to work around the doubters and the haters. Haters will always hate.

Strengthening Your Weak Points

‘Training for strength and flexibility is a must. You must use it to support your techniques. Techniques alone are no good if you don’t support them with strength and flexibility.’ ~ BRUCE LEE

In Bruce Lee’s book ‘The Art of Expressing The Human Body’, the late-great martial artist was lauded by his wife, Linda Caldwell-Lee: ‘The greatest talent Bruce Lee brought to realizing his dreams were intelligence and curiosity, dedication and perseverance, and focus.

This book shares Bruce Lee's complete strength and conditioning workouts, including how he developed his muscularity, speed and agility.

Weaknesses, by definition, can be a potential source of distress when these cripple you. Athletes learn from painful experience, that weaknesses need to be addressed early during rehabilitation or training, or they manifest themselves as major disappointments. A weakness limits us, and prevents from reaching our full potential. It can impede, restrict and affect range of your movements. Thus, our flexibility is curtailed and we care sidelined by injury, resistance and immobility. The same goes for the responsiveness of others to our behavioral weaknesses and inflexibility.

Photo-credit: Runevent Shots (Catching up from behind my pack: Weeks of strength-sessions on the saddle seemed to give me a salient edge)

I have shared with you how I have focused on my two major weaknesses in recent years: my swimming and my riding. Focused attention on correcting my swim techniques and specific strengthening drills/workouts seems to be addressing my concerns when I am in the water. With specific strength training, I have begun to enjoy a higher average speed, as well as fresher legs on the run. Strength gains come fast or slow, depending on your current level of conditioning. Some make incremental gains while others experience exponential gains.

Photo-credit: Runevent Shots (Here, I am seen leading my pack in Sunday's TRI-Factor Cycling race)

How you strengthen your weakness also reflects on the strength of your values: purpose, resolve, commitment and determination. As you consciously exercise your body to become stronger, you are in effect strengthening your mind and spirit to strengthen these values, and your character.

Positive Psychology: Learn To Be Optimistic

We are who we spend time with, including our own self. Martin Seligman, PhD., wrote about ‘Learned Optimism’. Despite its usefulness about being positive, pessimists are better than optimists at evaluating conditions during a crisis. Napolean Hill wrote: ‘What your mind can conceive and believe, it will achieve.’ You can, if you want to.

The trouble is: if there’s a will, there’s a will not! If you need a kick-start in your pants to get going, here is a good piece by Inc. magazine. Work with Type A colleagues, and you may be agitated into action. You may even learn to procrastinate away your procrastination.

You have heard about the seven habits of highly effective people. So, what are the seven approaches of productive people – those who get more done in their working hours, or even get it done much earlier. Endurance athletes can accomplish a lot even if they hold full-time jobs.

I love swimming, but it is the workout I hate! Have you ever considered mixing your swim drills up? What about fun activities between? How about dry-land workouts? Changing variables help in injecting excitement and fun to an otherwise staid and static training program. Even my students in class enjoy the occasional physical activity or puzzle.

This morning, I rode for 100 minutes. It was a strategically-placed workout for an ‘easy’ week. Coach assigned this week for me as ‘easy’ for recovery. I did a 20-minute warm-up, followed by 20 sets of 1-minute low-cadence pedaling on the highest-gear I could manage; rest period was one minute between sets. I completed the menu with descending sets of 3 minutes, 2 minutes, one-minute, and 90 seconds with 2 minutes recovery between sets.

Last night I ran in the swimming pool for 30 minutes and followed up with swim drills for 40 minutes. It has been a challenging fortnight of conditioning. Come January, I will have to step up my training intensities and mileage. It will be serious business. 226K are not something to fool around with. It can be impossibly hard work at times, and obscene at other times. I would need an inordinate amount of optimism and motivation to complete each session; all lessons unto them selves.

The point to all this? To coax the body into handling more physical stress in incremental amounts. However, at times it needs to be surprised with a harder session. Triathletes adore routine; so does the body. Once the body gets bored, it stops adapting and becomes resistant. Do shock your body with variety so that it does not get too intelligent, and refuses to progress. It's all in your mind and body. Stay tough. Be bold.

Staying Afloat

This evening’s gentle swim session with two motivated members of my Ironman team yielded some reflections for me. As I swam, after a lengthy hiatus after my last foray into the 226km format and an ultra-marathon to boot, I was focused on staying afloat. I reminded myself to stay ‘long’, glide more, and stay near the surface of the water. I reflected on how unique a situation I was in: a body denser than water, staying buoyant and mobile.

During tough economic times, how do you stay employable? How do you sustain your business? How do you stay current in your business?

Our density will determine whether we sink or swim during difficult times. If you are burdened by over-spending and ambitious budgets, you may sink in the depths of despair. If you are a dense person and refuse to consider suggestions and recommendations, you may fall under the weight of your ignorance and arrogance.

Swimming is an analogy we can adopt in our professional and personal lives. How do we swim with the sharks without being eaten alive, wrote Harvey Mackay about two decades ago. Swim or sink, so goes the cliché. Have you found yourself in the deep end of the pool? Have you plumbed the depths of your potential? Even the stock market talks about flotation. These are things worth considering.

As leaders, how do we navigate through rough waters? How do we stay steady and sane when the currents of change wash over us? How do you deal with the undercurrents of consequence, impact and cause/effect? How do you stay current in your general knowledge, skill sets, mindset and expertise in these turbulent times?


My coach, Fox is surfing in Sumatra over the past two weeks. He chose the location because of the challenge of the waves. I trust he is keeping well and look forward to chatting with him about his escapes with the wake and waves. He knows a few things about taking the hits from large waves!


Here is a very good resource by Kevin Koskella on swimming techniques and coaching. This a website for First-Time Triathletes with Kevin's swimming tips.