Saving Successes

“To promote self-confidence, open a savings account of successes. It’s easy. Every night when you go to bed, after you’ve turned out the lights, you experience the only time in the day when there are no external interruptions. Take advantage of this to run a quick check of how training went that day. Review your workouts. Find one thing you did well. It may not seem like a big deal. Maybe you climbed one hill well or had one good interval. Or you finished a hard workout. Maybe you had one of the best workouts of the season. Relive that day’s successful moment repeatedly until you fall asleep. You just made a deposit into your success savings account.

Some of the deposits will be big; some will be small. But your account needs to grow every day. You can make a withdrawal whenever the negative angry voice speaks to you. The week of a race is especially good time to make withdrawals, as you begin to question your readiness. When you feel a bit of anxiety about the upcoming race, go back and pull up one of those memories of success from your savings account. Relive it vividly. When the authoritarian voice in your head says, “you can’t,” make another withdrawal immediately. Drown out the voice with a success. When someone casually expresses doubt about your chances of success, make a withdrawal. When you step to the starting line, make a withdrawal. At these critical times, pull up the biggest success in your account. Say to yourself, “remember that time when I…”

Never deposit the bad experiences or unwelcome moments in training. Never. Let them go. They’re rubbish. Don’t relive them. Stay focused only on the positive experiences. Deposit only those experiences in your account. Withdraw only those. It works.”

~Joe Friel, The Cyclist’s Training Bible, pg. 7.

While this quote is from a book on training for competitive cyclists, it is incredibly relevant to our nutrition regimen and other behaviors. You will face hard times. You will doubt yourself. Others will doubt you. You will fuck up. That’s life. It’s what you do to rebound that matters. Bank the positives you create and experience throughout the day, week, month, and draw from them when you need to. Additionally learn from your mistakes but don’t hold onto those negative feelings and experiences. Trash them. Today is a new day. Live it as such.

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