Have you still got it?

I was taking a guy called Stu through a running session on the treadmill a few weeks ago. Stu is a guy in his early fifties who knows all about hard work, in his time he has been a high level army solider and then went on to be a hard-working business person who was very familiar with long hours and high pressure jobs. When Stu exercises he shows how his personality thrives on a challenge, this man destroys himself! There are moments where you see every part of his physical self is exerting 100%, I love watching this. 

In this particular treadmill session Stu was going to this place, as a fitness trainer you are trying to manage the person you are working with through to a crescendo point in their session where you set the hardest challenge for the perfect amount of time, in this session that point meant that Stu had to go at his fastest speed for one more minute. His legs turned over like Road Runner’s, his posture lifted and his arms pumped vigorously as the clock seemed to slow down due to the intensity he was experiencing. With 15 seconds to go he gave his final burst and powered through to the finish of the workout, Stu looking like he was dying, he was huffing and puffing in a way that the big bad wolf would be proud and then Stu looked up and said ‘I’ve still got it’. 

Stu’s statement ‘I’ve still got it’ got me thinking. A lot of us have markers or tests in our life that remind us of a standard we like to maintain, for Stu in that workout I don’t think that his ‘I’ve still got it’ had anything to do with the speed he was running, for him it represented that he’s still got the mental toughness and the character to push through in tough times. Stu had passed a test that let him know he was still at a level that is important to him.  

While Stu’s test was based around a physical challenge, different people will have other tests that give them a gage on how they are doing in their life. Tests can be daily, weekly, monthly or even longer and can be found in many different areas of our lives. These test are important as we use them as a guideline for how our behaviours are going, if we end up with results that we aren’t happy with it makes us reflect in ways that can redirect our behaviours towards ones that take us back to where we like to be within ourselves. 

The question I have for you is; what are your tests? What are those activities that you do that remind you that you’ve ‘still got it’? A more challenging question is; what where the tests you had used in the past that you have let slip away? Has losing these tests lead to you ‘letting go’ in those area? If you were to add these test back into your life do you think it would have an influence on your behaviours and where you sit in these areas? 

Maybe you could think about the different areas of your life that are important to you and create a test that you would use to identify if you are where you want to be. You could have a test for your fitness, nutrition, stress levels, mental growth and even your creativity. You can determine the frequency of testing yourself but you want to do them often enough so you can use them to identify if you need to sharpen up in these areas. 

The ‘I’ve still got it’ moment can be a real boost and we all enjoy those moments, the tests we use to create these can be an important tool that keep us on the best track - maybe it’s time for you test yourself.   

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