What is the biggest part of success? Your mindset.
According to top peak performance experts and elite athletes, winning is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics.
Whether you are a fitness professional or a weekend workout warrior, the goal is the same. We all want to learn how to achieve our goals faster and easier.
In 2002 I created the intenSati method because I realized that winning at the game of loving my body was not a matter of calories in and calories out. What was really driving my behavior was how I was feeling any given day. I needed a way to practice training my mind and not just my muscles. I was buying into the idea that if the number on the scale was low, I was good. If the number on the scale was high, I was bad. I wanted to break free from that good/bad thinking and I knew that a new diet or exercise regime was not the answer. I needed to change my thinking.
Are you ready to join me in mastering your mindset and give up on using guilt and shame to whip you into shape? You don’t need whipping, and shaming only leads to feeling worse. If they worked, we would all have achieved our goals by now. Today I want to share with you the tips I use in my classes to help my students win in their mind, so they can win in their life.
Progress not Perfection.
If you are a slave to all-or-nothing thinking, I want to tell you about the progress principle. Harvard Business Professor Teresa Amabile, author of The Progress Principle, surveyed hundreds of employees and collected 12,000 daily diary entries. Her research proved that what led to higher levels of productivity and positive emotions was when people made progress in things that were meaningful in their day-to-day life. When decide that you want to achieve a goal, you create a gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply by doing one small action towards your goal each day, you will change your state and your fate. Remember the goal is progress not perfection.
Do What You Can Do.
In class, I will often I will call out “PUSHUPS!” And I see some of the students visibly slump at just the thought of it. They look defeated before they even begin. On the road to any goal, you are going to reach a point that is uncomfortable, and you will have to dig deep to find your willingness to leave your comfort zone. Here is what I say to my students: “Do what you can do. What you can do is enough. It is all you can do. And it is enough. Just be curious about what you can do. 1, 2, 3, go!”
Think FROM Not ABOUT the Goal.
At the beginning of every intenSati class, I ask the students to take a few deep breaths and have their goal firmly in their mind. Then I ask them to imagine that they are already there. I remind them to workout as if that goal is already a reality. Instead of thinking your aboutyour goal as “way out there”and hard to reach, think from your goal, from your future self. Thinking about the goal leaves you with a feeling of lack, thinking from the goal leaves you feeling as if it is done. Of course, it can feel like a stretch when your conscious mind shouts “But I am not in shape and I don’t have the goal yet!” But if you can train yourself to feel it as if it is done, you are 80% there. When you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or down, take a moment to pause and think from your goal.
These are just a few of the many tools I teach leaders to use with their students, their clients or their kids to help them achieve their goals and dreams.
