Setting Goalz2Get what you want. Cute doggy pic.

This is an oddly "motivational speaker-esque" post.  Hope you like it.   If you're not in the mood, that's cool too, I just better not catch you reading Stephen Covey later today....
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I've been lucky enough in my job to hire someone to assist me in the stuff I have to do.  And filling this position was primarily my responsibility.  Not unexpectedly, I reviewed a ton of resumes.  Some were ok, some really good, and a couple were so painful to read I had to email the people back and say 'omg in the future please change this, you are making yourself sound insane".


The thing that struck me, is that no one seemed to know what they wanted!  Granted, I was interviewing a bunch of 22 year olds, so that makes sense, but on my end, I had no idea if these "kids" would actually like the job enough to excel in it.  Everyone seemed more in the process of wanting to "find themselves" rather than getting the job we were offering.

We ended up hiring someone who has been interning in my department for months.  (And if he is reading my blog, I hope he'll forgive me for sharing this story).  

Why'd we hire this guy?

Sure, he's a hard worker, a friendly guy, someone we feel like we can trust, but primarily, he wanted it more.
He put in the time of countless months of thankless intern work, and he was always on top of his stuff.   He came to company social events and made friends.  And when the time came to interview, he looked us straight in the eye and told us how much he wanted it and that he wouldn't let us down.

And it felt SO great to tell him that we wanted him to come on board full-time.

What Can I Say, The Dude Knew What He Wanted. 

There's some famous psychology experiment  (I'm taking some liberty with it in my description) where people were given different options of shampoo in a supermarket.  They had the choices of say Pert Plus, Pantene, and Head and Shoulders, and picking what they wanted was an easy choice.
When they were offered 100 choices, the customers got overwhelmed and didn't want to choose.

This, for me, is one of the reasons that running is awesome.  It's easy to define our goals.  


The process to achieve goals is still pretty freaking simple too.  Train hard, and you'll probably run well.  


I know...there are a bunch of different training plans out there, different types of shoes, and there are even running skirts and weird five fingered shoes.  But even among different training plans, the concept of getting into shape, a peak, and a taper are the same.  

So how do we apply this simplicity in running to our everyday lives? 

Shiiiiizzzz girl, I don't know.  All I know if that I learned something from my (former) intern this week.  "Decide what your goal is first, and then work hard to make it happen.".

And the result is sort of like a distance race.  You don't always PR, but if you run a smart, focused race, you've got a much better chance of getting it.  And if you don't reach your goal, well...there are probably good snacks waiting for you at the end because at least you gave it all you had.

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Ok...thus ends the motivational speech.  Here's your reward!  

hehehe.