Intense not Tense

Its important to make the distinction between being intense and being tense.

Intense: Possessing or displaying a distinctive feature to an extreme degree.
Tense: In a state of mental or nervous tension.

I am focused intently on completing an Ironman in November. My sleeping and waking dreams put me on the course, in the swim, on the bike, in the run.

Sometimes, okay a lot of times, I get tense about it. Like the swim, my true limiter. One way I am tense is I have been doing a lot of pool swims the last few months. I know that when I go back to the lake, I will be using my wetsuit which gives me much buoyancy. However, I get tense thinking about swiming in the lake without the suit.

I am focused intensely to overcome this so when the time comes I don't lose it mentally. See I believe that by being intense, either in the triathlon sense or the business sense, it brings focus to overcome 'issues', instead of having a pie in the sky approach to 'issues' and then having to get tense about it when it blows up in your face.

For example, I am intense with my employees because I want them to succeed. They know my instensity is all about them executing the systems perfectly because it is what's in their best interest to make money at their job. If I wasn't intense and allowed them to do poorly, then I would start to get tense because I would have pressure on me to correct behavior that I allowed to occur under my supervision.

In your training dreams and business careers, make sure to up the intensity to decrease the feelings of dread you get from being tense.