Tips for training your brain to encourage better outcome
The mind is something that most people don’t try to change. They see it as something that has been preprogrammed for their journey in life. Often people pass off their thought processes or patterns as a part of their personality, “it’s just the way I am.”
However, if you truly want to make positive change in your fitness, well-being and health status, you need to think about training your brain. Training the brain does not involve Jedi mind tricks, it simply requires a desire to change and a plan of action.
First, decide what’s holding you back? Decide what needs to change. What about your subconscious is holding you back? The idea of success? Self-worth or a lack of belief that you deserve to be successful? Lack of skills? Determine exactly what needs to be changed, WRITE IT DOWN, and set a new course of action.
Next, make note of the negatives discussions you have with yourself and reframe your thinking and self-talk. The messages we send ourselves have a far greater impact on our performance than any amount of training. For example, if you tell yourself “I can’t run, I’m not fast enough, it hurts too much,” this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, the opposite is true as well. Once you recognize these negative statements, train your brain to replace those negative thoughts with positive ones like “I can do this, I am an athlete, and I am strong.” These too become self-fulfilling prophecies but with a much more productive outcome. Make a conscious effort to renew your new thoughts daily. Write them down and post them somewhere you’ll see them each day. Then rewrite them and say them out load. It takes time and effort to re-pattern our thought processes. Making your goal more than just a one-time declaration will help keep you accountable and force your brain to take on this new thought. You will constantly be thinking about it and repeating it.
The more you engage the brain in this new patterned thinking, the more you go over these new positive messages, the more your subconscious will believe them to be true and therefore your plan of action will be different. The steps you take towards your goal will be driven by the fact that you have begun to see and know you will continue to see success.
Finally, don’t be afraid to embrace failure. You had a set back and missed your mark or posted a slower time, big deal. What’s going to bring you success is getting back up, reevaluating what happened, learning from the experience and resetting a new thought process designed to achieve your goals.
It is never shortcomings or failures that keep people from realizing their dreams; it’s what they decide to do after they have fallen. Make a conscious decision and get back up!