Who's goals are you working towards?

What are you working towards: Personally and Professionally?

In life, you should always set yourself goals. It doesn’t matter how simple or farfetched they are either. For me, you should ALWAYS be striving to improve or working towards something, otherwise, well…we’re just existing really aren’t we?

The beauty of setting yourself personal targets and goals is that they are just that. Personal. They aren’t for anybody else but you. Therefore, they can be anything you want them to be!

In a previous blog regarding getting out of your comfort zone: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/2-get-out-your-comfort-zone-danny-rowe/ I said the following:

“Following the birth of my baby girl and feeling inspired, I also made the decision to challenge myself even further and pursue my childhood dream of training to become a Professional Wrestler. Yes…you read that correctly. That story is for another time…”

And it appears that it’s about that time!

Backstory: Around 1997/98, round a friends house after school having exhausted playing Goldeneye on the N64, my friend suggests we play another game. That game was WWF Warzone:

This is where my interest in professional wrestling began. As I grew older there were periods where it was deemed acceptable and then very quickly unacceptable to be a fan of professional wrestling, but regardless of what anybody else thought of it, I was hooked. I’m a “lifer”. Try as I might (and believe me, there were times I really tried) to wean myself off of it, like the Mafia, just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in.

Did I ever actually envision that I’d be doing it for myself 1 day though??? Absolutely not! See, growing up, life (aka, partying, socialising, generally being unfit and overweight) always got in the way of me even considering giving it a go. I’d convinced myself that it would hurt too much, or that I wasn’t tough enough mentally or physically and generally accepted that was the case.

That all changed last year.

Finding out you are going to be a parent for the first time changes the way you think and view things. I can remember the exact moment I decided to bite the bullet and set myself the target of training to become a Wrestler. Speculating, as you do, about what our little girl would be interested in as she grew older both my partner and I decided that regardless of what it was, she would be supported 100% and would be brought up in an environment where, if she was passionate about something, she would be encouraged to give it a go at the very least.

And then I realised that I would be a massive hypocrite to preach that to my daughter, but not practice it myself…

2 weeks after the birth of my beautiful baby girl on 16th September 2016, during my 2 weeks paternity leave, I attended my first ever training session at Dropkixx Academy in Purfleet, Essex.

Fast forward to May 2017 and I make my in ring debut for EAW at the Yaxley Festival in Cambridge in front of hundreds of people in my first ever match. You think you know fear? try having to walk out in front of over 100 strangers who have been drinking cider all day in nothing but a pair of tights to "uptown funk"(not my choice of music for the record)!

July 2017: I get my first ever PAID booking.

September 201: Almost exactly 1 year to the day I began my journey and I’m booked to win my first singles match infront of my parents, girlfriend and little girl (who didn’t have a clue what was happening…but still).

November 2017…

I win my first ever title as a professional wrestler!

Is Wrestling fake? ..Define fake? It hurts…like, a lot! I can tell you that for free. Gravity isn't fake. If you jump off of the top rope and land on the mat, it’s not a bouncy castle you land on let me assure you. There's a reason they say "don't try this at home". It IS pre-determined though. No denying that. Before every match, we know exactly who’s winning and in what fashion the match is to end (bad guy wins via cheating/ good guy wins cleanly etc). So, did I actually have to beat up my opponent to win that title? No. It’s wrestling, not UFC. However, in order to be given the privilege of holding a title is the promotions way of saying “you’re good, and we trust you to represent us as a champion”. In any bodies book, I’m sure that constitutes an achievement.

So here’s the thing. Throughout that period I set myself a series of goals and created somewhat of a bucket list of things I wanted to achieve as a wrestler. This list included:

• Make debut
• Winning a match
• Winning a title
• Wrestle (and win) in front of friends and family- especially my daughter and girlfriend.
• Getting paid to work a show
• Work a show outside of Essex
•  Having a match voted “Match of the night” by peers and fans
• Wrestling abroad

All bar the last one has now been achieved. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep adding to that list and making the achievements more difficult along the way. This is the only way I’ll ensure that I’m constantly improving, challenging myself and more importantly working towards something!

So, has this blog simply been a bit of shameless self-promotion? Well, kinda. However, the reason I mention all of this is that I feel like setting targets and working towards something is equally as important to do personally and it is professional. Sometimes the two can even go hand in hand.

In recruitment, we’re always working towards targets. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly…there’s no avoiding it. Some targets (KPI’s) are in place to help you achieve larger targets (placements) and some targets are in place to help you on your way to developing your career.

Maybe your target is the earn a certain amount of money a year in commission? Personally, your goal might be to put down a deposit on a property and earning more money each month will help you achieve that goal quicker. Maybe its to progress your career and get promoted to a more senior level or to become a manager. The fact is, you need to be working and aiming for something in recruitment as well as having personal targets to aim for.

So, what targets have you set yourself personally recently? Lose weight? Run a half marathon? Complete an obstacle course? Buy a property? Buy a new car?- What’s stopping you from achieving it??

What about professionally? Are you simply going through the motions or do you have a tangible target in mind? What’s stopping you from achieving it?

I can’t help you with your personal targets. That’s down to you. Professionally? That’s a different story….