What is stopping you?
What is holding you back from success?
What stops you becoming the best you can be?
Do you set and reach your goals? In life, work, health etc?
If I said that you normally only work at 40% of your capacity ..max! What would you say?
“I do a lot on 40%, I’m happy with that” or do you ask “what could I do with that other 60%?”
It has been recognised for a while now that motivation, goal setting and a persons capacity to achieve are limited by 1 major factor….themselves!
Its not their physical ability to achieve something but their mental capacity to motivate themselves beyond the 40%.
You have to tap into that extra 60% of your capacity.
If you were on a long open water training swim and working hard, pushing out the cranks of your arms and bursting your lungs, you would probably think that your were working at capacity…but what if suddenly out of the corner of your eye you see that distinctive wedge shape of a sharks fin coming towards you??…..I recon you would start to tap into that 60% that your holding in reserve!
I’m not suggesting that the next time you have a serious deal coming up at work or a heavy legs session in the gym, that you borrow your mates pit bull to stand behind you till you complete it.
I am suggesting that if we know that we have this extra reserve can we find ways to tap into it, to use it to help us achieve those goals.
Your mind is the limiting force here, we have evolved to keep this 60% in reserve and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should be using all of it… we will burn out pretty rapidly. But if we could operate with another 5-10% then we could certainly push the boundaries that our mind has told us we have.
So how can we do this?
For me when working with Fitness clients aiming to succeed in their first Spartan race, or mountaineering clients pushing to climb into altitude for the first time and claim that first big peak, I try to work on 4 areas-
Motivation- Why are they doing this? what is the big plan? what got them to sign up in the first place? whats their mission? whats their goal? Its about having a why!
Self talk – We are constantly talking to ourselves, giving ourselves second by second Bio feedback on our thoughts, actions and behaviors. So is this always positive? When things are hard what is our brain saying to us? We need to make this self talk positive.- Using words like, “I Can…”, “I will…” ,”What if I try it this way….”, “Your doing well….”, “Keep Pushing….”.
Visualize- What does the end result look like? Be really clear about finishing the race and celebrating, or being at the summit of that mountain. Link this visual picture to the Motivation, and feel it, connect the brain and body to the goal.
Mental preparation- elite athletes, military units and high performing individuals run walk through’s of situations, they use the motivation, the goal and their visualisation to either mentally walk through situations, or in many cases they actually run a physical walk through. Special Forces units have specific sites where they build replicas of environments they may operate in so that they can physically walk through their plans and operations. In mountaineering terms progressive training and preparation builds clients towards the pressures they may experience, and Obstacle racers can easily prepare by walking through their race, studying obstacles, trying different obstacles in training, preparing their race plan, to build mental and physical muscle memory that they can use when it comes to race time.
Tapping into these 4 areas helps me, and people I work with to try and push the amount of capacity we have, to face complicated or stressful situations, tapping into the 60% of extra capacity we might have can ensure that goals are met and difficulties surmounted.
Try it and let me know how you get on…. start by looking at your goals… what do you want to do/ achieve/ find/ develop??
Venture Beyond 