First they ask WHY, then they ask HOW?

Sometimes we set off on a journey that we don't have an intended destination, we just know we have to get moving.

That's where I was not too long ago, graduated from university with a degree in an almost impossible field to break into at the current time due to a huge range of reasons. I was expecting to do the usual thing that I grew up watching happen, go to school, study hard, to uni, study harder, graduate and join the workforce in a graduate program for some big industry giant. But then things don't happen like that. You wonder if it was something you missed, did you do something wrong, you essentially feel like a failure and blame yourself. At least that's where I found myself just under 12 months ago. I was working a dead-end job in hospitality that I hated, only my co-workers kept me sane and I'm sure anyone who has worked in front-line service for minimum wage can understand.

It was just before the end of the year, when a lot of my friends where planning Christmas/New Year holidays and the like, when I was stuck at work doing night shifts and having horrible sleeping patterns causing immense amounts of stress, that I decided to pull the pin and quit my job. I gave my 4 weeks notice (at that time of year I was being generous and gave my boss enough time to find a replacement, never burn your bridges no matter how much you might want to, you never know when you might need to cross them again someday), and began to plan my life in earnest.I knew very little of where I was going to end up, just that I enjoyed triathlons and challenging myself to reach my limits. I'm also passionate about helping people and motivating them to reach their goals. I sat down and thought, for a very long time, about how I could take this and make a living from it. Professional athlete seemed like such a long distant dream that at first I discounted as any sort of realistic goal. I settled on becoming a model/brand ambassador. But first I had to make myself good enough. Good enough to be wanted as  ambassador, good enough to be talked about and good enough to live with myself. To do this I had to bury myself in one thing, IronMan Melbourne. Everything comes down to how I go in this one event, if I win, happy days, if go top 3, awesome and top 10 is workable.

Now I had a goal, something to reach for, I needed to workout how to get there. I needed to develop a training schedule, a diet plan, find a support team and a budget to ensure I can afford to do this full time with my limited savings. I'll discuss this in more detail in my next blog.