mastery2017

Beyond the Mat Lesson #3: Keeping Your Goals In Sight

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This week’s lesson was all about maintaining your focus despite inevitable setbacks. The irony is that this week’s lesson was actually the lesson for several weeks ago, and because of aforementioned setbacks, I’m sitting in a corner of the mat between classes typing my first draft of this entry on my cell phone trying to catch up. (Note: I didn’t revise this for yet another week — and so my journal entry to-dos continue to pile up, haha.) I’ve generally been able to recommit to my goals every week by putting together my bullet journal spread for the week on…
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Zoiks! She’s a Master of Disguise

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Sometimes I feel like a Scooby Doo villain. At some critical point during this black belt test, my talented fellow testers will unmask this personae of “CGN Elaine” to reveal the sinister, lazy, asthmatic two-timer trying to pass herself off as a black belt and martial artist. What is imposter syndrome? How do you cope with self loathing? And who has been terrorizing the town dressed as a space ghost all this time?

Progress is easier to see in retrospect

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Welcome, dear reader, it’s time to travel back in time and review some progress as I’ve missed a few weekly journal entries. Since my last update, we had our annual Bikram yoga experience; a nice, long Memorial Day weekend; and yesterday completed our first Mackay Stadium workout at UNR, including the iconic running of the bleachers! Read on for a recap of the last three weeks of my Mastery training.

Goal Setting, Goal Tracking

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This week’s Beyond the Mat lesson, “Designing Achievable Goals,” was one of the most helpful lessons from my first degree test in 2015. My fellow advanced candidates and I are experiencing surprisingly less stress over the huge amount of checklisting and the daunting fitness baselines this time around, and I think it’s partly because we learned to look at the tasks ahead of us, break them down into chunks, and tackle them one at a time. I know that, as long as I follow the plan, I’ll be in good shape for each of our deadlines. Let’s get into the practical application…
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Week #1 in Review

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As indicated by the tardiness of this post, you can correctly assume that my first week of testing has been interesting to say the least. I started off pretty strong. Over the course of the week I was able to pass 33 checks, attend 11 classes, run 3 miles, and survive the MRI workout at Camie Cragg Fitness. However, an important annual work deadline hit, and the only thing I could sacrifice was sleep. Things went downhill from there.

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