Monday, January 7, 2013

I Ho Chuan 21012/13


I have to admit that this year was not what I expected for it to be.....

This challenge of many challenges was difficult, more mental than physical. My roller coaster life did not lend well to this year’s “team challenge”. To be a part of a team, I needed to be with the team. I had a great team that tried to assure me on many occasions that I was around in spirit, which was great to hear, but still I found it hard within to feel like I was part of the team or that I had a part within the team.

While working in Brooks for the summer I joined another challenge to help keep myself engaged within another team atmosphere. The challenge was called the GCC (Global Corporate Challenge); it was a swim, run, walk, jog challenge with a set daily distance of 10km/ day for about 3 months. The great thing about this challenge is that my GCC team was within the office that I worked out of; what this did was not only keep me engaged on this challenge but made me even more aware of what I was missing while away from the kwoon. It made things flow in a forward direction but didn’t really assist with what I was missing with my I Ho Chuan team. Being away from the team was not easy!

Another challenge that I committed to early in the year was the “Canadian Death Race”; the GCC and the Death Race worked well together for me, because they complimented one another and definitely kept me up on my cardio and kilometers. Rest had been lacking most days with the long hours at work plus the evenings of running; if I hadn’t been a self motivated individual these two challenges would have been a complete wipe out. But they weren’t, I completed the GCC with a daily average which was well above the expected and the Death Race was a blast, which our team completed and had the most awesome time.

About a third of the way through the I Ho Chuan challenge, I began to wonder where this challenge was going to take me. Mentally I was beginning to deteriorate...I felt the pressure from every direction to be who and what I’ve always been at the kwoon;  I felt the pressure of not being a team player, let’s face it this was a long distance affair that I really had no control over. I had committed myself to a team event and had not thought the whole process through....it just couldn’t all work the way I wanted it to.

I must say the year was not a total failure, I accomplished a lot. I worked 65% of my year out of town (4-5.5 hours from home and my team). I completed a large number of my goals but not all, even though on paper this year was a failure, I did not quit and my team remained true to me. I had a lot of support, which to be quite honest played a huge part in the success that I had this year.

This annual test has really been no different than the last 10 plus years that I have been with SRKF. I have always been faced with extreme challenges through my career and personal prioritization, but what made this year different was the fact that it not only involved a team outcome; a team outcome which depended on the participation of the majority of the team.... but a grading year which involved a lot more than I could humanly make happen.  There were definitely times of discouragement through this test, but also moments of glory. In those moments of glory, I look back, and see how my sweat and dedication paid off.

I consider my personal journey to be one of abnormality and extraordinary direction. Knowing what I put myself through this year, with the challenges and my earned accomplishments, I feel pretty good. The ball had been dropped, but I picked the darn thing up many times and didn’t quit. This was year number three for me and I won’t lie, my results each year were relatively the same. I gave those years all that I had left to spare. My life will carry on with the same determination and goal setting that I have put in place through these tests.

All the best to the snake team!  If there is anything that I can assist with I would be glad to.

 

Darcy Regier

No comments:

Post a Comment