Rebuild Your Mind; Rebuild Your Body

No one would expect to be able to build impressive muscles without spending time working hard in the gym. The same then is true of the mental attitude which is necessary in order to be able to work out that hard.

Mental strength does not come to us any more easily or naturally than physical strength. Both need to be carefully trained and developed. No matter what your genetics might dictate on either of these things, you can improve and be better than someone who has not bothered.

The one trait above all others which will see you to success is in maintaining a positive mental attitude. A positive mental attitude is the steroids of the mental strength game.

Where do you get them?

As with any strength training, it has to be done consistently otherwise you will lose any benefits that you’ve gained.

In the Western culture we’ve become accustomed to being negative about things. Our days are filled with complaining about things, being irritated or angry about other people. Road rage is a symptom of a much larger problem.

You need to learn to stop that practice, because what you do to others is reflected in your own self. Anger and frustration can be powerful motivations in a workout to really push yourself, but that assumes that you’ve made it into the gym in the first place.

Remove all negativity from your mind. While you may see negative things in others, don’t mention them, don’t even think about them. Instead find something positive to say. This is very hard to do in my experience, but it also applies to you, yourself. It’s easy to talk yourself into giving up by focusing on the negatives. Focus on the positives. If a workout didn’t go as well as you’d hoped then be determined to do better next time, but focus on the fact that you came and did it.

Normally there is a reason for a workout not going well, so search within yourself to determine why – where you ill, tired, hungry? This is the second secret, which is to learn from every experience, good or bad. Take pleasure in those experiences, because each have something to teach you and if you can learn the lesson you will do better the next time.

Establish a morning ritual where you find those nuggets of benefit in the happenings of the previous day. Start the day with a laugh, even if forced because the biofeedback will make you positive. Start the day in control of your own mind by choosing to only be positive that day.

Only you can develop the strength to stand firm in your own mind. Only you can choose to be unaffected by the moods of others, to instead focus on achieving your aims. This is how you change the rest of your life – what are you going to do about it?

I believe that for many people, the main obstacle that prevents them from reaching the body that they desire is nothing to do with exercise or even nutrition. The thing which decides if they are going to succeed or fail happens without them even realising it.

After giving a talk to some people about their personal growth, I was reading an article by Geral Blanchard, a respected psychologist, and one part sprung out at me because it fitted so well with the main theme of my talk:

I was particularly challenged one winter night in the North Country by an elder of the tribe. He asked a series of probing questions about my profession and, with storytelling, hinted at other ways to assist healing. He queried, “What is that bible you psychologists use, the one where you call people names?”

Of course he was referring to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), which only has words for diseases, disorders, and dysfunction, but no diagnoses that suggest a person is resilient and can change. He asked quietly, “Doesn’t that freeze people?” referring to being known thereafter only by the assigned label. He concluded, “We don’t let our children call each other names; we must set an example for them.”

I love the wisdom of that last line and if I could pay homage to the man for that directly then I would do so here and now.

What we can or cannot achieve is in large part decreed by our abilities, the gifts that are unique to us. The problem is that few of us are able to use but a small part of those gifts in any meaningful way because we have limited ourselves. When you look at the history of some of the greatest men and women, surprisingly often they have come from humble beginnings and there has been one thing which catapults them onto the path to greatness.

That trigger could be Lincoln accidentally buying law books whilst working as a penniless grocery clerk, or it could be any one of a large number of similar moment, but always it result in the person discarding a limiting belief. Lincoln could have remained a clerk, but instead he became one of the most powerful and influential men on earth.

When we apply labels to ourselves, those labels can be empowering or disempowering. Call yourself a hardgainer and you sign up to a hundred limiting beliefs and excuses to justify your lack of gains.

What label are you going to create for yourself today?

I’ve spoken before about the stories we tell ourselves, you know the ones where we’ve done something before, so we know how it will pan out. We can’t gain muscle because we’ve tried ten different plans or we can’t lose that bit of flab which covers up our six pack even though we’ve starved ourselves forever.

Stories lie

Well, you know, the trouble with stories is that we know the ending and often that is enough to either stop us starting or at least to sabotage us if we do make the effort. First little hurdle we hit, bang, there is the story playing out in front of our eyes like a dvd player which won’t turn off.

To succeed you need to be a visionary, a seer if you like who has unflappable faith in your ability to succeed. What the seer knows is that life is there to teach us lessons. Every time you stub the toe of your ego on some obstacle, that obstacle is there because your ego has an issue that you need to resolve. And life is going to keep on stubbing your toe until you either give up and walk away or you actually take a look, see what the problem is and do something about it.

Failure is fantastic

Society today is all about success. Unless you are a success then you are a nobody and a failure. The problem with this is that failures are necessary for us, they are a stepping stone on the path which will lead to success. Sometimes it’s necessary to take a different route if the obstacle in your path is so big you just can’t get round it, but most of the time all it needs is a little mental readjustment. The reason I say that is because the obstacles are nearly always because what you think of as reality isn’t quite the same as what reality really is.

If that sounds obscure, think of it this way; what you think of as the door to moving onwards is in fact a door into a storage closet and the real door is the one next to it. The problem is that your pride won’t allow you to see that you are opening the wrong door, and so you keep on walking into the storage closet and wondering why you are finding yourself blocked in.

That is the power of the vision. To be able to see reality as it really is and not how we think it is, or how we’d like it to be.

Next time you hit an obstacle, take a moment to step back and have a better look at what is really happening.

…for business or did it shut down from lack of demand?

A harsh question perhaps, but it is all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you know the answers. We all do it, myself included, but a closed mind cannot learn, cannot get itself out of the ruts and like a train is forever cursed to follow but a small choice of all the possible routes. Do you want to ride the train or is it time you jumped off and got in the 4×4 and found your own path?

Teachability

This is an important quality to develop. It means being able to learn as well as to listen. Learning means making mistakes and growing because of them. It means changing your mind, seeing something in a new light or taking advice from those you’d rather not listen to.

Making Progress

Pride is the biggest obstacle to having an open mind. None of us have all the answers and we need to admit to this and as a result be willing to learn.

Can you admit to mistakes? This is a process which makes you feel vulnerable, but in the long run it is the foundation for strength.

There is a large segment of the personal development community who think that you get what you believe. Some take it to the extremes of suggesting that you can get anything so long as you believe it enough. But even if you don’t accept that it is hard to avoid the realisation that how you look at the world fundamentally changes what you get out of it and the results that you gain.

If you have doubts about what you are doing it will reduce the degree of effort you put into it. Just this morning I had put the weight on the bar ready to do some squats and I felt weak. For a moment I doubted that I’d be able to complete the set. Failure loomed large in my mind until I realised what I was doing. I took a moment and refocused. When I lifted the bar off the rack it seemed really heavy and again the doubts crept in, but I kept to my resolve and my belief that I could do it and I did. Once I’d completed the set and put the bar back in the rack, I realised that I’d put too much weight on the bar! I’d glanced at my training log but accidentally run along the line above which was the shrug weight and nine kilos more than my planned weight for the squat set. So instead of failure I set a new personal record.

You get what you expect

Too many people focus on their problems, on the failures and they allow those thoughts to dishearten them. The one and only defining trait of a successful person is a strong belief in themselves. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be realistic but no one who consistently expects to fail will ever succeed in the long run. There are some strategies you can use where you can expect failure in order to reduce the stress or worry of failure, but on the whole even then, deep down you need to have the resolve to keep trying. Failure is certain. Giving up will ensure that failure is the final result. Successful people use the failures as a learning experience and analyse them so that they avoid that mistake when they try again, and again, and again. But those new attempts are calculated; not just smashing your head against the wall of failure – instead climb it, find a way under it or around it.

Your mind can be what you want it to be. It is the only thing that is really under your control. You may by nature be a pessimist, but you can use that pessimism to minimise the risks. Optimists can fail because they fail to think about the risks. Pessimists fail because they assume the risks are too great and so never try. Learn from both of these, use the middle ground and leverage it for success.

To reach your goals, be they to add muscle, lose fat or improve performance, you must create a great capacity in yourself for belief. The starting point is to believe in yourself. To know that you were born with the ability to succeed and that only your own doubts and lack of focus have ever sabotaged that success.

Create the mind set for success

Know what you want and how you intend to get it.
Repeat every day, several times a day your appreciation of getting it. This helps to retrain the mind into believing that success is assured and so reduces the doubts.
Keep an open mind and take action. If you don’t take action you will not succeed.
Remember that defeat when it happens, and it will, is merely the world letting you know that something is wrong in your approach and that you need to correct it. Defeat is a challenge not a reason to stop trying.
Keep a strong and burning desire to succeed. Remember that you will reap what you sow and if you have doubts then failure is the inevitable reward.

Trying too hard can cause failure as much as not trying enough. Too hard can cause injuries, too soft will have no result. Train hard, but train smart and believe in yourself.