Friday 27th March isn’t New Year’s Eve, but when Susan Hayes-Culleton stood up in Letterkenny last week and urged Donegal businesses to think of it in that way, she totally made sense.
Her comments came at the closing event of a super Donegal Local Enterprise Office, Enterprise Week, entitled ‘Eyes on the Prize.’ She insisted that business people really need to keep their eyes on the prize.
Perhaps her comments resonated a bit more with me than with others in the room, since I had actually come up with the title ‘Eyes on the Prize,’ as part of my overall PR brief for the week.
“It’s Friday afternoon now at the end of a brilliant week and it can feel kind of celebratory, but I’d urge people to think of tomorrow as their New Year’s Day and then to think what is it that by this time next year they would like to have achieved?” she told me in an interview after her presentation.
Her suggestion to help do that was pretty simple. Write down three things – the simplest things you could do – and then do them. When those are done do three more, and so on…
When Emmet Rushe of Rushe Fitness followed her on Friday’s speaker’s list, the relevance of the timing was not lost on me either.
Emmet’s presentation simply reminded people in business that if they don’t look after their health and welfare it will eventually affect their bottom line.
I have written in this blog before about how useful I had found going to the gym as part of one of Emmet’s classes, but as I sat and listened on Friday I was just thankful that Emmet wasn’t one of those, drag you to the front of the room as an example types.
When he spoke of the problems resulting from not getting enough sleep, of dashboard dining and the highs and lows of sugar and coffee crashes, of the benefits of exercise and the flip-side of not getting enough – he could easily have pointed to the back of the room and just said – ‘ask Liam if you don’t believe me.’
I could easily have – and I will gladly continue to – given Emmet a glowing reference for the excellent benefits of his training programmes, but as I sat in the back of the room on Friday I knew that I had fallen victim to the biggest stumbling block of all – the excuse.
When the question and answer session started, I wasn’t surprised to hear the question asked – when we are all so busy, how can we get the time to exercise?
I recalled how I’d only managed two visits to the gym since Christmas. How I had dropped out of running a half-marathon with three brilliant determined ladies who – I was delighted to see went ahead and ran it last weekend – because I was too busy to commit to the training schedule.
At the time I didn’t see them as excuses. I was 100% genuine because I was busy.
But then again, we can always find ways to be busy.
When Emmet answered Friday’s question simply by saying – mark time for exercise in your diary as a meeting you cannot miss – it made every bit as much sense as Susan’s earlier comment about New Year’s Eve.
I was thinking on that tonight when I was back in the gym as I struggled (really struggled!) through my third set of mountain climbers. Thought on the other places I could have been, the other people who wanted my time, and who before Friday I probably would have given it to.
Thought on how, because I like to help people and because I don’t like saying no, I might have spent tonight running from one place to another to try to make everyone else happy.
And then I remembered that there is nobody else employed in Liam Porter Media. If I get sick, if I can’t function then I simply can’t earn.
I thought back to Susan’s idea of a list of three things and thought to myself.
“That’s one down, just two more to go now.”
Eyes on the prize…
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