It is safe to say that 2015 has been a big year personally. It started with the 2nd half of a rollercoaster season with Titans including injuries, droppings and then a last chance selection for the play offs and some unforgettable memories in those games before retiring from full time sport. Since then I’ve transitioned into a corporate job and have travelled the country seeing 100’s of people in both 1-1 and group settings. As ever I have had tried to reflect as I go and take the lessons from all of these experiences to help refine and hone my craft(s) going forward. I make notes on these over time (including writing the 38 blog posts I’ve published this year) and recently, with 2016 looming, I have tried to pull of all these together to look at what lessons I can take, and pass on to you, from my 2015.

This is an idea that I have essentially stolen from the Blog of John Welbourn (ex NFL player and founder of crossfit football) who shared his own list a couple of years ago. I encourage you to check that out too as there are some wise words that we could all do with taking on board. I also encourage you to try the same exercise. Pour yourself either a coffee or a glass of red, find a fire to sit by and grab a notepad and work through your year.

From me to you, written bluntly and in no particular order here are my Lessons from 2015:

• Fail, fail big, fail often: Failing is when you learn, ditch the ego and start pushing yourself. It will accelerate your successes like nothing else
   
  
• Understand things: If someone tells you something ask why. Understand either the theory or their thought process. Don’t blindly accept dogma, try to figure it out for yourself.
   
• Focus on the basics: your gym program should be squat, bench, dead & chins. When I’m travelling often this is all I have time to do. It still works. Apply the principle to other disciplines too.
   
• No zero days: If you want to be really good at something then do it every day.
   
• Manage your inputs: You are what you surround yourself with. Cut out the office gossip and reality TV or your mind will suffer.
   
• Great minds discuss ideas, poor minds discuss people
   
• Build a board: Understand the kind of people you need in your life and build a board for your own personal development.
   
• Don’t be afraid to keep your circle small
   
• Get out from behind the keyboard: Work with people, there are too many fake experts hiding behind their Instagram filters selling shitty products or plans. The best people actually work with people. If someone is posting multiple times a day it’s a red flag.
   
• Regret nothing: If something has happened then you can’t change it. Regret is pointless, Move on and make the best of the situation you are currently in.
   
• Early to bed, early to rise: Sleep makes you unstoppable, don’t balls it up by watching repeats of the big bang theory until 11pm.
   
• Don’t eat carbs in the morning: The one nutrition rule to rule them all.
   
• Be adaptable: Have a plan but understand the likelihood is that it will have to change. Don’t spit your dummy out, revise and make a new plan. In our current world adaptability is the no.1 transferable skill you can have.
   
• Wear many hats: We are living in the age of the generalist, having 1 narrow career is a risk, diversify. It will make you resilient.
   
• Back is the new chest, hamstrings are the new arms: If you’re spending your gym time doing cable crossovers or 21s then you’re an idiot. Build muscles that will make you a better human, no one cares about your Ibiza profile picture, no amount of chest muscle will make that Aztec print deep cut vest look good.
   
• Stand up: I have committed to never sitting down on public transport, yes people think it’s weird but it has resolved my back issues and makes me feel great. If you’re sitting down, ask yourself ‘could I do this standing up’. Join the revolution.
   
• Live simply: Google and understand the ‘hedonic treadmill’, now vow to only spend money on bills and food for the next few months. You will be surprised at what you now find important in life.
   
• Move in silence: I realise the irony of including this in a list that will be published on a blog and via social media, hopefully you get the distinction. Not everything has to go on social media. By regularly posting you are externalising your happiness and living your life by likes. This is ridiculous, live your life for you not your ‘followers’.
   
• Write: We all have many great thoughts and troubling thoughts, both of which can be improved by writing them down. Start journaling.
   
• Be disciplined with the small things: If something can be done now then do it. Make your bed, wash up after your meal, put rubbish in the bin. It may seem incidental but you are saving yourself time as well as developing a resolve that will serve you well elsewhere.
   
• Be a man: If you are male and you aren’t cooking something, creating something and lifting something heavy at least once a week then hand your testicles back, you don’t need them.
   
• Listen to podcasts: Fill dead time with educational podcasts to help broaden your knowledge, develop your interests and get others perspective on things. The Little Mix album on repeat will do none of those things.
   
• Relax: Meditate, use breathing exercises, whatever. Just do something that calms your physiology.
   
• Network: Life is all about who you know. Be better at meeting important people and becoming friends with them. I’ve had some crazy opportunities just by following up on links and being nice to people. Even if someone won’t be directly helpful to you connecting them with others helps build your web.
   
• Build rapport: Learn how to make people feel at ease with you and warmth towards you. It’s quite important.
   
• Make decisions quickly: Don’t stew on things, make a call and see it through.
   
• Drink less, but higher quality, coffee and wine.
   
• Spend more time with animals: There are few problems in the world that can’t be solved by spending time with an animal. Their combination of cute and stupid creates instant mindfulness.
   
• Stop drinking as much: If you feel you’ve wasted a weekend by not going out then you have an issue. If you can’t socialise without alcohol then you have an issue. See below.
   
• Deal with your demons: Everyone has issues, deal with them. There are enough resources or professionals around now to help. Don’t go through life as a martyr to your issues.
   
• You are your body language: Get your head up and your shoulders back. It will make you a better person.
   
• If you don’t feel like exercising then that is likely a time you need to exercise.
   
• Have a passion: there are few things as torturous as conversing with someone who is without a passion in their life. Passion is energising, interesting and keeps you sane. Find one and develop it.
   
• Have intent: Don’t live your life by accident. Decide what you want and go and get it.
   

I Hope you’ve found the above useful and thought provoking. Obviously this is a very personal list to me but I would love to hear some of your lessons from the year so do share below or drop me an email.
Finally I would like to wish all the readers a Happy New Year. I truly appreciate anyone that has taken the time to read any of my posts and if you have found anything, even slightly, useful then I am happy. Many Thanks.

The festive period is often the time of year when goals fall by the way side and people dig themselves a deep hole to try and climb out of come January and the ‘new year, new me’ hype. This needn’t be the way. In fact Christmas presents many opportunities which you can use to your advantage. In this post I hope to give you some tips and tricks which can be used as a survival guide of sorts, to help you come into the New Year feeling great and ready to kick on with new challenges from a place of strength, not a place of hungover blubber.

Don’t abandon your goals.

How many times do you hear people say ‘I can’t stick to that over Christmas’ or something along those lines? This, in psychology parlance, is a limiting belief. It is far from true but by telling yourself it you are disabling yourself and effectively making a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sure Christmas and New Year may involve a little more drinking and a bit more food than normal but when you take a step back and look at it there isn’t anything particularly scary, some goals may be a bit more of a challenge but that just means you have to be a bit more creative to stick to them. Embrace the challenges and stay on track, you’ll thank yourself come January 1st.

Use carb-backloading as your dietary strategy

Seasonal excesses are the most common issue for people over Christmas so you need to strike a balance between enjoying all the festive food and not completely de-railing your body composition goals. The easiest way to do this is via carb back-loading. This is something I’ve discussed at length in the past here so hopefully you are aware of this approach or even using some form of it. Essentially you eat lightly and carb-free through the day and then eat your carbs in the evening. This fits nicely into the party season as you can stick to optimal foods through the day with natural fats and protein and then indulge a little more in the evening when the canapés and mince pies are on offer. You can enhance all this even further by sneaking a quick gym session in the late afternoon, that way you are ensuring you are getting the carbs to exactly where you want them.

Use your time off

Christmas is typically associated with a little more holiday, especially the dead time between Christmas and New Year. Rather than viewing this time as an opportunity to slob out try to make the most of it. Crisp winter days present the perfect opportunity to get outside and explore and long dark evenings are a great chance to curl up in front of a fire and do some reading or planning. Don’t troop back into work full of regret for the things you wish you’d done in your time off. Yes you need to relax but that doesn’t have to include a chocolate coma and crappy TV.

Try gluten free & low carb recipes

Traditional festive food needn’t involve a heavy carb and gluten hit. By being creative you can very easily either find or create low carb and gluten free versions of your favourite foods and enjoy them with a little less worry for your waistline. It’s easy to use eggs and ground almonds or coconut flour to create a simple pastry for mince pies, there are a huge range of gluten free Christmas puddings now available and you could even take the plunge and aim for a gluten free Christmas meal, you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel after it. What’s more if you involve yourself in the cooking process it will make your food infinitely more satisfying than just buying from a shop.

Look after your stomach

If your digestive system is going to take a bit of a pounding over Christmas then make sure you are looking after it. Before any big meals try to introduce some natural probiotics such as kefir or sauerkraut to aid digestion and if you are feeling delicate following the office party then assemble some veg and meat leftovers and create a simple broth using stock made from proper bones. That will settle your stomach very quickly.

Have a hangover cure

With so much going on over Christmas you don’t want to be missing out on activities because of a hangover. I’ve researched and experimented with a few ‘cures’ and found a foolproof one which has worked for me many times. I take N-acetyl-cystine and some vitamin c before drinking and then after drinking have some water with dioralyte and then an activated charcoal tablet. It sounds like a witches’ potion and involves spending a tenner in Holland & Barrett but it works.

Relax and enjoy it!

Finally, and most importantly, you have to take some time out to relax and enjoy. You don’t have to abandon all your goals, following the tips here will see those ticking over in the background, leaving you to focus on the festive period with family and friends.
 
I hope the above has given you some simple strategies to navigate your way through the Christmas period keeping your goals intact. Don’t fall into the ‘all or nothing’ mindset which so many people operate with. It is perfectly easy to have a fun Christmas, filled with excess without putting on a stone.  If you have any more tips or tricks then I’d love to hear them so do comment below.

I’ve talked at length on the blog before about getting out of a state of ‘reactivity’, that is where there is no thought about your actions, an input comes in and you naturally react. These reactions are typically unhelpful as they come from the older, drive and threat systems of our brain. What we instead need to work towards is more responding, where you are considering your action, rather than an immediate reaction. Whilst we’ve looked at this before I’ve been thinking about this at length recently as the vast majority of people I encounter are still locked in a little world of reactivity and are yet to realise the benefits of removing themselves from this. I’ve therefore been considering a simple tactic for helping people out of this state.
The solution I’ve come up with involves asking yourself 3 questions. This technique works brilliantly as it forces you to pause and think and often that is all that’s needed to prevent that fast, negative reaction. Space for thinking is the cure for reactivity. The questions then help you work out what’s important with the situation you are in, what you can do about it and what the potential positives are for you. Working through them in order allow you to take the heat out of yourself and consider the best course of action for you.

Can I change this?

If you can’t change something then it is utterly futile and self-destructive to work yourself up about it. If something is beyond your control then don’t sweat it, work out what is in your control and action that. As Victor Frankl brilliantly describes the one constant that is always in your control is your attitude. If you are angry, frustrated or upset then that is a decision you have taken and a very poor one at that. If you can’t change a situation then change your attitude towards it.

Is my reaction useful for me?

We all have a natural reaction to situations we encounter, these reactions may seem out of our control but if we pause and gain some perspective by taking a step back we can consider whether the reaction is optimal for us. If not we can change it. So if you get angry at a situation ask yourself whether that is useful for you. The answer will generally be no so you are then challenged to change your reaction to a more measured, and useful, response.

What is the opportunity?

This is perhaps my favourite question to ask myself when confronted by difficult situations. It forces me to think creatively and, over time, helps develop a radar for the positive opportunities in life no matter what mess is put in front of me. This is also typically the area where things fall apart for people, presented with a difficult situation the natural reaction is to throw hands in the air, say this is useless, life isn’t fair and give up. It’s important to make clear at this point that every situation in life, no matter how desperate or futile it seems, present s an opportunity for us to better ourselves. SO when the shit hits the fan take a step back and ask yourself where the positive is in all of this. Even if it is just a case of being able to practice a virtue, such as patience or humility, or the fact that you’ll learn from a mistake, there is always something positive to find. Even if you are suffering desperately there is opportunity, as Frankl puts it you can be ‘worthy of your suffering’.
I hope you can start to use the above in your daily lives to pull you out of reactivity and into a more positive, opportunity focused mindset. This isn’t to say that you’ll never want to react to a situation again, far from it, instead you now have some tools to apply in those situations. Stick to them and I promise they will have a positive impact for you.