What have you recently said “I can’t to?” What thoughts led you to believe you couldn’t do whatever you said “I can’t” to?
Think about that further, or something else if you so choose. What actions have you willingly not taken to keep you at a place of “I can’t?”.
I too have said those two limiting words, “I can’t”. In fact, I have believed it to the point that I did nothing to change that belief, but continue reading. Below is a story about how I came very close to letting my mind get in the way of my progress. It is also the story of how this blog became a reality.
Personal Goal
I was taking a morning run one Saturday morning. The goal was to run four miles. The sky was clear, the temperature was comfortable, for a late summer day, and others were out walking, running, or biking in the park and surrounding neighborhood.
Limiting Self-Talk
For me, it was my first run in way too many months. Just inside of three miles, my mind started to wander and talk to me. “Girl, why did you have to go and start with four miles? It’s been months. Because three is not enough to burn the 400 calories I want to burn”, I responded back to myself. “Seriously, you can’t be happy with with this three? I do not think I can do anymore”. There it was, the limiting self-talk.
Choices
I felt my legs start to slow down as they started to listen to what was going on inside my head. As this happened, I decided that I had two choices (1) listen to my mind and say “Yeah, three miles is too much for the first run in a while”, stop running and walk the remaining three quarters of a mile, or (2) change my thoughts and keep running until I reached the goal of four miles. What did I choose?
Getting to DONE
The latter. I changed my thoughts. I said to myself, “I can do this. I will keep running in order to reach my goal”. I repeated that over and over until I reached my goal. Panting, I said with a smile, “Ahh…I did it! I’m DONE!”
Reflection
Over the next few weeks I considered my life. There were other countless moments where my thoughts were, or at some point, had stopped me from perusing something or from finishing something. In some instances it was fear that stopped me. In other instances it was self-doubt. Then, there were other instances where it was me wanting to be so good – perfect – as if that’s possible, that I wanted to do so much I was actually doing nothing. Lastly, I recognized the moments when I rationalized or came up with an excuse as to why I could wait until another time – later today, tomorrow, maybe never.
Ahh Ha…
All those thoughts lead to the realization that my mind limits me if I let it. Too many times I have let it and I wanted it to stop. Once I realized that, being the altruistic person that I am, I wanted to help others stop it too because I know there are others out there like me who are limiting themselves and who are sabotaging their potential. Are you shaking your head in agreement right now? Keep reading.
Doing Something about Limiting Mind-Chatter
Now I am paying a lot more attention to my thoughts. It is here that I will share my stories and experiences, past and present, with you. I will tell you what I am doing, or what I have done, to change my mindset. How I am going about changing my mindset will come from things that I am applying from something that I learned through reading, a class, a lunch and learn or a seminar and sometimes it will come from me making it up as I go along, working through ideas until I find one that works for me, that you can try to see if they work for you too.
Getting to DONE Together
What methods work for you to help you get to DONE? Make sure you share, in the comments, how you are overcoming your limiting mindsets too. That way, together we can have that moment of saying “I can, I will,…ahh..I’m DONE!”.