Your Mind is Holding You Back – Take Control

The mind controls everything but do you control your mind?

We are all very similar. We have evolved to only do the things that are necessary. Many years ago this would have been essential to survival. Unfortunately this behavior now kills us. Living in the wild was a constant workout just to survive. Gathering food, building shelter and fighting off enemies – we didn’t need to schedule our ‘workout’.

Taking control of your mind requires training. You have to be intentional about managing your thoughts and acting only upon what you choose rather than being guided by those negative voices.

This past weekend I competed in a local triathlon. I enjoy the races themselves but training for triathlons can often be tedious and very repetitive. I took about 5 weeks to prepare and hadn’t done any distance running since my last race in July last year. I dreaded every running workout. 

It was a mental battle every time I went for a run. I had to trick myself and play games to get the most out of the session. These tricks I’ve learnt work for me over many years of practice. The funny thing is, I ran a great run in the triathlon – holding a pace quicker than anything I ran in training.

All I could think about during the run portion of the triathlon was how I’d held myself back in the training runs. I was running faster than I had in a while – felt great and had already done 90mins of swimming and riding prior. It proves to me that I still haven’t even tapped into half of my potential.

Going into those training runs already feeling negative about them affected my performance. I was able to combat that by tricking myself and pushing through, but that energy could have been spent on actually running. The tricks I use on runs go a little bit like this:

  • “Ok finish this interval and we can call it a day”
  • “Let’s just do one more”
  • “Catch that guy in front”
  • “Count every ten breaths”

There’s no magic in them. Just things I say to myself to try to trick my mind into thinking it will get a break. It won’t – I will NEVER not finish the workout I started. The only exception to this would be if I sustained a serious injury. 

To me, the beauty of training is in what I learn about myself. Yes, I like to perform, it’s nice to look good/feel good, but between those ears is where it all happens. If you don’t control that – your success will always be behind your potential. 

How to Take Control

It’s difficult, it’s different for everyone and it takes time. The most important thing is that you’re intentional about it. You have to take the hard path at every step. Making things a little more uncomfortable needs to become the norm for you. I’m going to share some ideas below of what I do to help control my mind, not always but a lot of the time:

You may read some of those and think I’m crazy. You may not be wrong but the point is to prove I don’t need that piece of comfort that my mind desires. I try to look forward to the discomfort when I do a workout, I know it is making me stronger physically and mentally.

You cannot fully thrive if your mind has control of you. We seek pleasure, we seek comfort and we are lazy by nature. This does not do us any favours in the long run. We have to take control and become mentally resilient. Some of these things are small but they will help you when something big happens in your life. 

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