Success. Everyone wants it in one way or an other. But for some reason some people are better at being successful than others. Why is that? It’s simple: the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is their mind. It has nothing to do with how smart someone is but whether or not there are mental blockages that are holding them back. Imagine that with every step forward you take, there is something inside of you that resists. It is going to be hard to reach anywhere in life if you don’t free yourself of those limiting beliefs. It’s difficult to say where those mental blockages come from or why some people have more than others, but that’s something each person has to ask themselves.
Pre-existing mental blocks end up being self-limiting. These blockages were build up by us as a defence mechanism but most of the time they do us more harm than good. Often, we fail to notice that these blockages guide our behaviours. When we let ourselves consciously or unconsciously be influenced negatively by those selflimiting ideas and feelings, we selfsabotage. Self limiting beliefs like “I’m not good enough” can affect your whole life. They might decide for you what schools or jobs you apply to or what relationships you enter into. But self limiting beliefs can even affect much simpler day to day stuff like for example what you eat or how you work out.
Here is an example for you: You were motivated enough to sign up for a HIIT (high intensity interval training) class but are not quite up to the task when actually doing the class. You take extra water breaks or stop doing the movement correctly because something in your mind resists. There are a number of reasons that can limit the effectiveness of your work out and I will talk about that more specifically in a future blog post. Right now let’s focus on what might happen when your mental blockages take over the work out: They might tell you that the workout is too hard, or remind you how terrible you look after a cardio session- the list can go on. It’s one thing if you have physical limitations such as injuries or getting dizzy, or have other similar warning symptoms like that- I’m not saying that you should stop listening to your body and push towards injury. But listening to your body or your mind shortening the work out for you because of a a mental block are two different things.
Some people are naturally able to push through, but I think most of us struggle and that’s fine, because you can work on that. The first step is awareness. If you don’t realize or don’t want to admit that something is holding you back it will prevent you from exercising your body to it’s full potential and will decrease your potential gains at the gym. That applies not only inside the gym but also outside a gym setting. If you let your mental blocks and fear take control of your actions and interactions you also don’t live to your fullest potential.
For myself, I still experience blockages when it comes to cardio or heavy weight lifting, in so far as I have this strong protection mechanism in me that tells me “you’re not ready yet”. And by the way, that mind block is not only determinating my workout routine but also how I approach life and its challanges. This makes me lean on the safer side rather than overload myself. My responsibility for reaching my goals in the gym as well as outside the gym is therefore to figure out whether or not I’m being overprotective. This process needs good and honest reflection at all times. The same applies to other mental blockages that I noticed whitin myself. Keeping a journal to write down my observations, intentions and progress is a big help. You need to try out what works best for you. It can also help to practice mindfulness to be more aware in general of what’s going on arround you and inside of you. Stay away from distractions as much as possible- if you’re constantly distracted, its hard to build up any self awareness.
See because first you need to be aware of your mental blockages, then you can start thinking how they may affect your life. If you know that you tend to avoid something because it’s hard, start asking yourself why you have such difficulties and start putting yourself more into a situation where you can confront that. But just throwing yourself into an uncomfortable situation is just one step. You need to stay mindful throughout so that not the same fight and flight response gets activated. Understanding where those beliefs and emotions come from is also part of the bigger healing process. It’s great if you learn how to overpower those beliefs and mind blockages but getting rid of them would be much less energy that you need to spend on each day to be successful let alone get by. Working through them can be really hard and might take some time. Some people might require help in form of therapy in order to work through them. But it’s worth it because once you understand where they come and originate from and what triggers them. Once you know exactly what holds you back, you will understand how it is affecting your success and goal achievement in life and you can consciously, and with more ease, work towards your goal achievement and success.
