The one thing that keeps changing daily is the length of time it seems we will all be dealing with the current COVID-19 situation. I’m at Shelter In Place Day 15 and struggling a bit with one aspect of this.
And that is the unknown about how long we will be managing this. It’s at the forefront of our attention. In many ways it’s so much easier to trudge through a difficult circumstance when we know when it will be over. We can allocate our energies accordingly. We can get psyched up to be mentally tough when we know where in the future we will be able to just let down and relax once again.
Clearly this is not how it’s unfolding for any of us in our worldwide pandemic.
It would be nice to know if Shelter In Place Day 15 was only a week or two away from the finish line. But it’s not, and wanting it to be only forces the issue even more into a cloud of worry that doesn’t serve anything. It becomes like a mental virus! So with all that in mind, today became another chance to practice my own hopefully wise words that I mentioned a few days ago.
This is the mantra I came up with then: Focus On What I Can Do. “What can I do?”
Of course I could focus on the uncertainty and the unknowns of this journey. But that does zero to move me in a positive direction. So I’ve gone back to the basics. I talk about them in the video below and share how this strategy also works in racing. Yes, racing will be back on everyone’s radar at some point! We will eventually be back into a world where we can go to work and be near others without worry. But in the mean time, focusing on what I can do brings me those simple daily successes. They are doses of fulfillment that keep the mental and physical compass pointed in a positive direction!
I am the Founder and CEO at Mark Allen Coaching. I am proud to have been voted in an ESPN global poll "The Greatest Endurance Athlete Of All Time." During my multi-sport career I won the Ironman Triathlon World Championship six time, the inaugural Triathlon World Championship at the Olympic Distance in Avignon, France, and at one point in my career I won 21 straight races across every derivation and distance. It was a great career, but that's all it would ever be unless I was able to share all of the experience and methodology we invented long before smart watches, power meters, and flashy uniforms. That's why I started Mark Allen Coaching, as a way to return to others at least the part of the gifts I received.
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