Sir Mo Farah has shared the simple secret to his remarkable success: aiming for small goals puts you on track to achieve giant ones.
The double-double Olympic gold medallist explains that while in his racing days he always kept his eye on the ultimate prize of Olympic and World Championship titles, he focused first on the smaller goals that would eventually build up to his top-level achievements.
Farah, who won the 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic gold medals in both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics, says: “I’ve motivated myself by being aware of what I want to achieve, setting myself a goal, and once I’ve achieved that goal, then the next goal, and keep on moving, but doing it as little and as often as I can.
“I’ve had little goals – for example, when I was younger it was being able to run for my club, then my county, and then you go can I run for England? And then Great Britain – that was always a target.”
But was it tough to stay motivated after his remarkable success at London 2012?
“Even after 2012 and everything else, I had to then set myself another new challenge – it wasn’t about going ‘Yeah, I did something incredible’, it was more like ‘Can I retain my title?’
“It’s important for all of us to have goals, because if we don’t have something to aim for, it’s hard.”
Farah retired from track racing in 2017 (racing briefly again in 2021) to concentrate on marathon running – he won the Great North Run a record sixth consecutive times between 2014 and 2019 – before retiring from competitive running in 2023.
But although now, at the age of 42, he’s not running so much – instead of the 120 miles a week he was running at the peak of his athletic career, he trains two or three times a week, combining running with the gym, or playing padel and football – he insists: “For me, it’s important to look after my body, so I try and eat well and I stay active.”
And he still has goals, although they now centre on his beloved family.
He and his wife Tania Nell have twin daughters Aisha and Amani, aged 12, and a son, Hussein, aged nine, and Farah is stepfather to Nell’s daughter Rhianna, nearly 20.
“My kids and my family are everything to me,” he declares. “I try every day to run with my kids, train with them, spend time with them, pick them up, take them to school. The biggest part for me is just making sure my kids are healthy and live a good life, as well as trying to teach them to enjoy things.”
Farah is asked a lot whether any of his kids look likely to follow in his racing footsteps, and although he says one of them is enjoying running more than the others, he stresses: “Honestly, I don’t want to push my kids – I want them to have a good, healthy lifestyle, and be fit and strong, so I just try and support them, whatever they want to do.
“One of them really is enjoying running more than the others, but I just try and support and be the parent, rather than the parent who won four Olympic medals and is pushing his kids to extremes. It’s not about that. It’s about them being kids and enjoying it, but also showing them what’s possible.”
As well as showing his children what’s possible, Farah is on a mission to show the nation too, through the new Weetabix all-stars campaign, in which he’s teamed up with Olympic gold medal-winning heptathlete Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, England women’s football captain Leah Williamson, and television presenter and Olympic wheelchair basketball medallist Ade Adepitan, to motivate people to achieve their goals.
“It’s just showing people that by being able to change just a little bit, how much impact that can have throughout a whole day,” explains Farah.
“If you look after your body, if you eat right – a big part of it is being able to fuel well – then you can achieve all these things, like myself. I didn’t achieve the career I’ve had overnight, it took me years as a young boy, before then becoming a World champion and an Olympic champion. You have to set yourself a goal and a target.
“If we look after ourselves, we can achieve more. The next goal for me is I would love to be able to give back to the nation, to the kids, and show what’s possible through hard work, dedication, looking after your body and looking after yourself.”
Of course there’s no better example of what hard work and dedication can achieve than Farah himself – and his story became even more remarkable in 2022 when he revealed in a BBC documentary that he was brought to the UK illegally at the age of nine, forced to work as a domestic servant, and given the name Mohamed Farah instead of his real name Hussein Abdi Kahin.
He says: “Obviously, it wasn’t easy for me to come forward and talk about my story, because you’re known as a runner and this guy who’s won four Olympic medals. But we all have stories, and that was my story, and I’m so grateful for the support I got, and that people can often talk about it now – I think this issue is something that was happening, but there was nowhere to talk about it.
“This is about who I am. What motivated me to talk about it was seeing my kids and just being honest to them – looking them in the eye and saying when I was their age I went through this, and I’ve become this guy and I’ve done so much for my country and I was so proud to achieve all these great things, but that was my story.
“Really, the goal is to show people we can overcome so many things.”
Given that he’s been through so much and had such a phenomenal athletic career, does this softly-spoken, humble man see himself as strong?
“I’d probably say I am strong,” he concludes, “but not in all areas. It’s just learning about myself. Honestly, for me, running was a way of being free, a way of being out of it, and it’s something that I could control. And that’s probably why I accomplished so much in my career, because that was my happy place, that’s the place I enjoyed most.
“We all just need a place to be ourself and find something that we’re passionate about.”
Sir Mo Farah has joined the Weetabix all-stars to inspire the nation to achieve their goals, bix-by-bix.
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