Workout for Mental Health

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Summary

One of the largest, most determining factors in what our lives look like we have total control over.  We have control from start to finish and that is the goal that we set for ourselves on the way to life that we want to live.  That may be as short term as what we want today to look like or this week, but it is also the bigger picture of this year, 5 years, the rest of our life.  What do you want to contribute to this world?  What do you want your best self to look like, not necessarily physically but in terms of lifestyle, career, family if you were at your very best?  What do you want people to say about you?  In other words what do you want to reflect or influence in the world?  These are the areas that the highest achievers think about constantly, and they test themselves to make sure they are living up to the standards that they are striving for.

Setting the goal is the easy part, understanding process vs outcome is easy now that you understand the difference. But now we have to make sure that you can complete the goal and not give up early on, or even get right to the edge of the end zone but not be able to get the ball over.  There is more to this than just writing down a list of goals on a planner…remember a goal without a plan is just a wish. 

Full Transcript

I am psyched for today’s episode because this is like a bonus.  Usually, I get to do 4 sessions a month on whatever topic we are focusing on…but this month I get to do 5 because that’s how the calendar worked out.  We have been working on goals this month and it is such an important, huge part of being able to live a bigger life that I am so glad I get one more week.  Let’s face it there are a lot of things in our world that we don’t have control over, and we get to decide how we will react to those things and how they will affect us.  Hopefully, you have learned or are working on learning what those items and situations are, and they don’t knock you off your rocker.  We truly have to make change and move forward with the things that we can control, influence and design everyday around that.

One of the largest, most determining factors in what our lives look like we have total control over.  We have control from start to finish and that is the goals that we set for ourselves on the way to the life that we want to live.  That may be as short term as what we want today to look like or this week, but it is also the bigger picture of this year, 5 years, the rest of our life.  What do you want to contribute to this world?  What do you want your best self to look like, not necessarily physically but in terms of lifestyle, career, family if you were at your very best?  What do you want people to say about you?  In other words, what do you want to reflect or influence in the world?  These are the areas that the highest achievers think about constantly, and they test themselves to make sure they are living up to the standards that they are striving for.

These great people are not always presidents, or CEO’s of huge companies.  Some of the highest potential performers are all around you.  Maybe it's even you.  But to get to these lofty ideals we have to start with all those goals we have been talking about this whole month.   

Setting the goal is the easy part, understanding process vs outcome is easy now that you understand the difference. But now we have to make sure that you can complete the goal and not give up early on, or even get right to the edge of the end zone but not be able to get the ball over.  There is more to this than just writing down a list of goals on a planner…remember a goal without a plan is just a wish.   Ok, so you have the plan, but you have had the plan before and still failed.  What was missing?

Let’s step back and look at this another way.  Let’s say for example that your goal is to run a marathon and you have never done much in the way of working out.  Would the plan start out by having you run 5 miles and then 10 and then 15 and so on?  Not likely, if you were hoping for success vs frustration. You would need to develop the physical strength to even begin running any sort of distance in order to have the endurance.  The same is true for any type of physical goal that you may set for yourself, and we usually understand this…not to say that we like it, but it does make sense.

So why would trying to accomplish things that take great mental fortitude be any different?  We need amazing amounts of mental strength to accomplish great things.  Just like physical conditioning there are things that we can do to increase our mental fitness.  I am going to go through 5 things that you can do to become mentally stronger and make those amazing goals more attainable.

Number 1 – Rethink your thoughts….what do I mean by that.  Retrain your brain to think differently when you catch yourself thinking negatively.   All of us can fall into the trap of having negative thoughts when things get tough.  Here is one that many people use….”that won’t work”.  They have already “decided'' that they are going to fail.  How about changing that thought path to something more likely to at least have a good chance of success, such as “I am not sure how to make that work, but I am going to figure it out”.  Half the battle of any new challenge is figuring it out.   I truly believe that one of the reasons I don’t find myself giving up on things is because I truly do believe that I can figure out anything.  So the next time you find yourself thinking a thought that will stop you from moving forward, reframe it into something that will push you. 

Number 2 – Change it up    By changing your environment to set yourself up for success it removes the things that were in your way to victory.  So for example if you want to lose that 10 pounds, a great first step might be to clean out the pantry.  Remove all those items that are going to tease you and make it tougher on you.  Obviously, the easier and more natural our actions are the higher the rate of success. What things can you change up?

Number 3 – Challenge yourself everyday.  In my journal everyday there is the question “what one thing could I do today that is outside of my comfort zone”?  We can easily get in the habit of going through our days and have them look relatively similar everyday.  By adding in something a little scary or uncomfortable we stretch ourselves.  Another way to look at it is what could you do that if you did it you would be proud of yourself?   It might be that tough conversation you have been avoiding with a loved one.  Maybe it is trying a new physical feat or eating escargot for the first time.  The list is endless and the journey is yours.

Number 4 – Balance is the key.   Emotions and logic are the 2 things that push us to make decisions one way or the other.  Depending on your makeup, likely you tend to swing one direction more than the other.  I, for example, tend to use more logic than emotion.  If I let this be the only way I weigh my options when making decisions, life would be very dry and boring.  I have to let myself be a bit emotional sometimes so that life is fun and interesting.  You may be exactly the opposite and are strictly emotional and if that is true you have probably found yourself making decisions that maybe should have had a bit more thought and logic put into them…just saying.  We can probably all look back to when we were in high school and most of us made emotional decisions (our parents called them stupid. When we got older we called them learning opportunities)  Usually we paid the price in some form or fashion.  Learning to balance the 2 gives us a great life and a great level of high achieving success as we are setting our goals and following the process pieces to get us there. 

Number 5 – Take responsibility and learn – It is so easy to come up with an excuse for every reason that we fail or we fall short of a goal.  The highest performers look for every opportunity to discover why they didn’t meet the goal.  What did they do that caused the failure?  Was it the process, the system, the effort, the wrong people in the wrong places?  Whatever it was, this is your chance to evaluate it and discover what you can do differently next time that will have better results.

Alright super achievers you have your go to plan…make those goals, take the steps to success and don’t accept failure.  I hope you have found this helpful and it takes you to the next level.

Please share this with 3 people that are as amazing and like-minded as you are and want to take their lives to the next level.

If you are serious about leveling up, succeeding at a high level and being that influencer you have envisioned then click here to sign up for your FREE 1:1 strategy session and start down the path on the way to the journey that you have envisioned.