When there’s a will there’s a way, but what happens when you lose the will? Half the battle of exercising is overcoming mental barriers that stop you from doing so. It’s easy to make excuses, especially in the middle of winter but excuses won’t get you desired results. Health, fitness and mindset expert, Scott Evennett shares advice on how to overcome excuses to exercise and live a high performance life.
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Exercise is physically and mentally challenging, no question about it. Today’s high-achieving, restless and impatient culture, can be full of negativity, compulsiveness, high-stress, and anxiety. This regularly does not enable us to set reasonable goals and develop strategies to reach those goals. Our feelings and emotions drive our behaviour in one of two directions: Positive towards making progress and building a better, healthier, more energetic way of life, or negative toward keeping up unhealthy habits, being overweight, lacking vitality. How we tackle these mental barriers of exercise and a healthy lifestyle will determine our success.
It’s time to take Ownership and quit the bulls*#t excuses. You must first look at yourself in the mirror, acknowledge mistakes, admit failures, take ownership and develop a plan to move forward. As individuals, we frequently attribute the accomplishment of others to luck or circumstances and make excuses for our own particular disappointments. We accuse our own poor execution and performance for bad luck, conditions outside our ability to control, or ineffectively performing mentors/coaches/gyms anybody but ourselves. Total responsibility for failure is difficult to swallow but taking ownership when things go off course is the core concept to staying on track. Quit blaming others when you fall off the wagon it’s not your coaches fault you gained 5kg on holidays, cancelled training three times this week, or ate that whole block of chocolate. It’s YOU vs. YOU. Take responsibility and quit the bulsh*#t excuses you keep telling yourself; You are responsible for your own happiness.”
You must overcome your fears and take action; fears are the mental roadblocks you must overcome to achieve your goal. Do you have a list of personal obstacles that could be preventing you from moving forward in your life and your training? Are you scared of failure, do you fear change, do you procrastinate on tasks? This is where you must take control of your thought patterns and begin making better and far more effective decisions. In distressing circumstances when our life is at risk, we have a very powerful mechanism of protection. It is an automated system inside our brain that acts even before we can take action. Special Forces Soldiers are regularly faced with such life-threatening circumstances and to succeed they need to successfully overcome their fears. We are trained to build our mental toughness with a definitive reason for controlling our fears and having the capacity to appropriately respond in panicking situations and make the right moves required. If we let fear control us we would get men killed. Don’t let fear control you and stop you from reaching your goals, take action and face your fears head on.
When you are hit by adversity or have your life disrupted, how do you respond? Your attitude towards life is under your control, and it can be changed. Is your training the first thing that suffers? Why do some people thrive no matter what happens, while others merely try to survive? It’s all about their attitude towards life’s situations. Begin any task with a bad attitude, and your mental barriers will grow into mountains. Building resiliency and mental toughness are vital amongst Special Forces Soldiers; we need to be able to rise and lead no matter the circumstances that surround us, have a positive attitude to any situation and just to get the job done. You must change your attitude and thrive on life’s adversities.
Special Forces Soldiers know their goals and where to apply focus they must be good at everything, so it’s important to have a solid mission plan. Which applies to you and your training; you need to dedicate certain blocks of training to working on particular skills this will ensure you see a progression and stay focused on your target keep setting the bar higher and higher.
What you believe will always determine what you achieve. If you don’t believe your goals are possible chances you won’t reach them. During Commando Selection what sets those who pass ahead of those who fail is the power of their mind to control and influence their body, it’s their belief system. Your body is capable of 20 times more than your mind will let it, you just have to believe.
