We hope you are having a great Thanksgiving Day Weekend and enjoying the relatively slower pace that the nation resorts to during this holiday in particular.
By far, Thanksgiving’s a favorite holiday indeed, probably because it creates a five-day weekend essentially without all the pressure of buying presents, ceremonies and the like.
It’s a holiday of harvesting, cooking, eating, and sharing with gratitude and resting. It’s also a transformative festival that sets us up for the final stretch of the year, which is not known to be as tranquil.
It’s all how you play it.
In Performance Lifestyle’s training, also known as PL365, an approach to life that uses the metaphor of athletics to guide one’s way of life as an essential characteristic; knowing where you are in the year, anticipating what’s ahead and being proactive, so you’re ready and prepared is important.
Performance Lifestyle is rooted in the premise that we are always preparing for events in our life, similar to how athletes approach the “peaking” for the events they play in throughout the year.
Well, it turns out Thanksgiving is a perfectly postured 3-5 day weekend to rest and recover, reflect on the year past and contemplate the year ahead.
One thing we want is to use this opportune moment wisely. What you don’t want to do, is let this simply be a holiday weekend where you’re stuffing your face, eating leftovers and engaging in merely shopping and watching football games.
All fun things to do no doubt, to some degree; but is your purpose in life bigger than your need for mere entertainment?
What are you up to, and what needs to be accomplished so that you end this year, resolved and evolved, ready to achieve your goals in 2017, even if what you need to accomplish is just getting more rest.
That is what separates the pro from the amateur year-end. Yes, healthy high-achieving people enjoy the holidays, but we find the balance between getting immersed in the festivities and taking care of ourselves, our bodies and our lives while preparing for the year ahead.
That cannot wait until January 1st. If you do wait to close out the year properly, those who are ready will be off to a much stronger and faster start in the New Year, than you. You’ll not only feel that, but you’ll still be recovering from the Holidays and I’m confident that you’ll be feeling that too.
So, to start the year fast, you’ve got to finish the current year strong, to borrow a term from a mentor, Gary Ryan Blair who runs the 100 Day Challenge, which I highly suggest you participate in for at least the first quarter of 2017.
We use this during all four quarters of the year. We’ll mention this again end of December.
To finish the year strong:
1. Make sure you get lots of rest during the final month of this year. That means to take advantage of the holidays as a preparatory period for the New Year. Don’t just exhaust yourself and then have to recover in January.
2. Reflect on the year past, contemplate what happened in the year past, where you need to improve and how that will occur in 2017.
3. Clarify that one resolution you’ll make, that one key accomplishment or achievement in 2017, which once completed, will help resolve many others issues in your life so that you have greater focus, not diluted focus.
4. Finish the year’s activities, ideally with 1-2 weeks to spare and shift into a different mode, don’t worry, the New Year will be plenty busy. This break will make you more intentional during the rest of November and the first half of December.
5. Be grateful for everything. In the spirit of this Thanksgiving Weekend, have gratitude for everything that’s happened in the past year, and before it, and what will happen from this moment forward so you have your best year ever.
As my friend and optimal living mentor Brian Johnson communicated when reviewing an insightful book, ” It’s all good mental training.”
