It Starts In the Mind
“Physical Strength may get you to the starting line but Mental Strength will be the reason you Finish.”
Mental Strength.
It’s something I did not understand until I failed in achieving several goals over and over again. I’d start with the classic pep talk, you know the one where you’re all hyped up after being inspired by something you saw someone else achieve. I’d say things like:
“You’re going to go finish your degree”
“You’re going to get in shape”
“You’re going to resolve that addictive behavior”
“You’re going to build some healthy habits”
I would spend hours laying out a methodical plan, buying new items, telling friends about this new positive turn my life was going to take.
Failure.
Failure wasn’t never some immediate thing that could be blamed on something that made sense like a traumatic incident or physical issue. Those are good reasons for failure and are nothing to be ashamed of.
I’d mope and have a pity party then have several really harsh (unhealthy) self talk sessions, drown myself in some “why me” cheeseburgers and Jack Daniels, and get back on the saddle a month or so later further behind than when I hyped myself up the first time. This cycle continued for years, and it only put me in a deeper sinkhole. My problem, like many people, is that I was using someone else's “why” as fuel to get something done for myself. Your why is important. It is the foundation that every other mental building block is based on. When your “why” isn’t something you’ve bought into the other mental pieces required to get to your goal will crumble. The other mental pieces such as discipline, exceeding your mental limit, and working outside the comfort zone will collapse the way a house will eventually cave in when the foundation it is built on starts to dissolve. I’ll get into ways to build the pieces of the mental house in separate entries at a later time. Just know that if you don’t have a reason that is strong enough for setting and achieve a goal it has almost no chance of happening.
This is what happens mentally when you haven’t bought into the reason you have a goal in the first place.
The reason I say “almost” instead of a zero percent chance of happening is because some people have already built a strong mental house. They have discipline, they know how to push past a perceived limit mentally, they are used to being uncomfortable. Those people don’t need a strong why for “average” goals because in the process to build those strong pieces of the mental house they’ve already achieved enough to compensate for not having a strong “why”. They don’t need one because their “why” is typically a standard they have for themselves that most people don’t have. This entry isn’t for that person that has proven in action and with their life’s achievements that they have a strong mind. This entry is for your average person, the 85%-90% of people who gain back the weight they lost through diet and exercise. The 40% or so people who start a college degree and don’t finish. That guy we all know who is big on talk and short on action, who says “Next summer I'm going to do X” and never does. If we were to analyze most of those people. I’m willing to bet they had a weak “why” the same way I did.
These are the building blocks of a strong “mental” house. When all four of these pieces are strong you can build anything in this house, but if your “why” isn’t strong the other pieces will crumble.
So how do you build a strong why for doing something?
The best “why” in my opinion, is almost always internal. There are exceptions. Having a motivation that surrounds your children or a family member can also be very strong. The reason the best “whys” are typically personal is because you can’t run away from yourself. Most of the journey toward your goal, where the real work is being done, is being done alone. Having cheerleaders and accountability partners is fine but being able to tap into your “why” when it gets tough and knowing it’s something that you truly desire can keep you going. For me, the cheat code to having really strong “whys” for goals is that they flow out of a desire I have as an umbrella over my entire life that is in place at all times. I want to be great. Not great in the Lebron James, Jeff Bezos, Usain Bolt, Nikolai Tesla, Elon Musk sort of way. I want to be great in the sense that I will be able to look in the mirror knowing that I pushed my own personal limits, that I showed up at the starting line and when the gun sounded I gave it my all. Whether that is the metaphorical world record or its last place, it’s irrelevant because my race is against myself. My path is my own and to compare it to anyone else is disrespectful to both my walk through life and everyone else’s. My whys are based on my life standard, the code I live by: my desire to be great. From there my whys are all internal. My desire to be in peak physical condition isn’t to get looks from women on the beach (even though that’s an ancillary benefit), it’s to ensure that my physical chassis is in the best condition available so when I need it it will be there working reliably. When your goals are based on external validation it is a matter of time before you fail. Because other people are never going to motivate you the way you can motivate yourself and they certainly won’t be there consistently. They can’t get you out of bed and they can’t do the work for you.
In analyzing my own failures I saw three common themes:
A reliance on external Motivation
Failure to Plan knowledgeably and stick to said plan
An unwillingness to being uncomfortable
External motivation is like taking an energy drink when you’re sleep-deprived. It works at the moment to address the issue you see, which is being tired) but it doesn’t do anything to fix the root cause, which is that you need sleep. That’s not to say external motivation is bad, the reliance on it is where you will get into trouble. Look at it as a pre-workout before hitting the gym. If you feel you NEED pre-workout before hitting the gym, you’re not serious about your gym goals. Plus the funny thing about it is you don’t physically need the pre-workout to lift the weight, you already have what is required, the belief you need the pre-workout is strictly psychological. At the same time having that pre-workout will probably result in a better gym sesh.
So earlier I was talking about how I would plan and get hyped by planning….yeah. Most of the time that plan was based on something I didn’t have the capability to do that wasn’t based on anyone’s experience. Example: I set a goal one time to get my 5k jog time under 25 minutes in a month. I hadn’t jogged a mile since the presidential fitness test in the 6th grade. My cardio was clearly shxt, and I had no clue how long it would take to get better. Another time I told myself I was going to lose about 50 lbs over the course of 3 months. At the time I was eating fast food 4 times a week, drinking 5 times a week, and the only vegetables I was eating consistently were the ones that come on cheeseburgers. My plan was to work out 5 days a week (even though I didn’t work out at all) and eat “clean” 6 days a week. The plan was shxt because I hadn’t proven that I could work out on any consistent level and didn’t show any desire to stop eating like crap. My point is that if you don’t know your own weaknesses your plan won’t address them. If you don’t research then your plan may be as effective as a child trying to fight Tyson Fury. So know yourself and do your research.
The last thing was an unwillingness to be uncomfortable. Fun fact: Positive Growth is not comfortable, and it isn’t supposed to be. Growing in any admirable way is going to take hard work and hard work is going to suck most of the time. It’s not something you want to be doing but it’s unavoidable. The suck comes in different ways for different people but it comes for everyone. For me, it wasn’t doing the work most of the time that was so bad, it was being consistent. Working out 4 days a week turned into 3 days a week, turned into one day a week, turned into “whatever”. Taking a class online every couple of months turned into once a year, turned into years without taking any classes. You need to know that it's going to get uncomfortable. If it was something you could just slide into easily you’d already be doing it.
Quitting is something that happens way before the actual action takes place. Most of the time it is not your body that rebels against the mind and makes something physically impossible to do. It is the mind that is letting doubt creep in. In the process of attempting a goal you quit on, you probably said one (or in my case multiple) of the following to yourself:
Do I want to be here?
Why am I here?
This isn’t fun/This is dumb
I don’t like this
I’ll just do it later
This doesn’t really matter to me
None of these thoughts are necessarily bad except for the last two. It’s the follow-up thought that will start or save you from the quitting process. When your why is strong you can acknowledge that you don’t want to be here, but it’s the only way to your goal. When your why is strong it will power you through the task that sparked the question “why am I here”. Acknowledging in your head that something is dumb, unpleasant, or that you aren’t enthusiastic about it is healthy and honest. Reminding yourself that those feeling don’t have anything to do with the goal you want to achieve will make those thoughts less relevant. The last two will get you in trouble (in my own experience) because procrastination is one of the easiest ways to kill a task and by extension kill a goal, and when something truly doesn’t matter to you then it’s always easier to quit on.
Goals and Dreams start and die in the mind. The mind is the body’s ultimate governor. What you think and how you think are the biggest differentiators between the version of you that achieves the goal and the version of you that is hoping and wishing for the rest of his life. We all have greatness inside of ourselves, your thought process is the ultimate decider in whether that greatness is something you ever experience.
- Rob Immortal