Why thinking more is important… (to help us think less)
I have been working in the fitness industry for (almost) all of my adult life.
It is where my passions are bedded in.
It is a fascinating and unique industry where I get to help people every day work on thier goals and help facilitate massive change in their lives.
I see this as being a huge privalage.
I put my heart and soul into my clients to help them achive their visions of who they want to become.
I am invested in them.
This is why I used to get very frustrated when they are not giving 100% to what they are doing. Whether it’s changes in eating habits, increasing activities of daily living, doing their home workouts, or following through with thier batch cooking.
It took me a few years to realise that they (a lot of the time) were just as frustrated as me.
I had an ‘AH-HA’ moment.
I realised that it’s not that they didn't WANT to achieve, but it was that they were being LIMITED by their mind.
It was their limiting belief systems, their unhelpful thinking and speaking styles and their ‘self-sabotaging’ habits that led to resistance, which lead to them not following through with a lot of what they needed to do (or doing the opposite).
For example, I had a client that always left a session absolutely ‘buzzing’ about getting home and cooking an amazing ‘batch’ recipe we found, so he then had lunches for the rest of the week that would hugely support his goals.
I would later find out that he ended up going to the pub instead and had a large amount of beer and a take away, therefore not cooking a batch meal up for the week, so ended up eating supermarket sandwiches and pasta salads again for another week.
This would carry on every week.
I thought “how can he keep doing this?” even though he had crystal clear specific goals and vision, a realistic action plan to keep to and the right WHO? & WHY? motives.
I used to see this as him just being lazy and ‘mentally weak’ (and I would even question myself and wonder what I was doing wrong!)
And then I started to learn about the mind and realised the trap he was in and how it is actually VERY hard to get out of these traps sometimes.
When I sat down with the client in question (and after some very probing and uncomfortable questioning which needed to happen) we learnt that he is ‘weak’ when confronted with a social situation because he thought that if he didn't ‘go out’, drink the beer and then have the takeaway (joining in with his peers) he wouldn’t be liked.
We got DEEP.
I learned (and so did he infact) that this all stems from when he was bullied by so called ‘friends’ when he was younger which had created false beliefs about his current social circle.
He literally believed that if he didn't go out, drink, eat crap and ‘mimic’ what they were doing then he wouldn't be liked and he would be ‘dumped’ from the group.
His brain had created this false belief system based on previous experiences that has NO place in the present.
His brain was thinking TOO much, and creating this destructive belief which was limiting his potential.
But, he NOW had to think and figure out what to do to change the way he was programmed to see the ‘situation’.
There are reasons and triggers behind all of our limiting belief systems, that, with a bit of extra thought can be turned around and completely changed when you ask yourself the right questions.
One of his ways to figure this out was to confront his friends and discuss what he wanted to acheive (his training and body composition goals) and whether they WOULD actually ‘abandon’ him if he didn’t come out so often and focused on his goals.
Of course, the answers they gave were SO FAR from what he was thinking in his mind!
They were very impressed with his desire for change. They saluted him. Some of them were even inspired to begin making changes too.
So the conclusion of this story is; just because you are thinking something, it doesn't mean that it is the reality.
We program ourselves to think in certain ways based on our past experiences, but we CAN program ourselves to think differently and begin to see something in a different way so we can reach our potential in different areas of our life.
So, with a little bit of thought, we can begin to think less…
I encourage you to identify and learn about your limiting beliefs… They are holding you back and you probably don’t even know it.
Buy some books and study them, get a mindset coach.
Then take action.
Have a great day.
Matt
