When is the last time you had your arm directly overhead? It’s probably been awhile. You may go an entire week never raising your arm any higher than the kitchen cabinet.
Have you ever heard that “we only use 3% or 10% or some other miniscule percentage of our brain power” line?
The same goes for our body. We only explore a small percentage of its capacity. That’s a shame. Something amazing happens to your mind when you do something with your body that your mind didn’t think it was capable of—your mind is blown.
Blowing My Mind
I can remember some amazing training outside my house in Milwaukee. I was pushing myself to the brink and it felt like the entire earth was shaking. It was 90 degrees and the humidity was right up there, too. I tricked my mind through repeated affirmation that I could complete the task at hand.
When I finished, my body shaking, the earth quaking beneath my feet, my entire nervous system had to realign itself to take into account that I had just totally blown my perception of what I was physically and mentally capable of. In truth, the energy I felt was almost a little scary. It brought me back to being a kid where your mind imagines endless possibilities without the negative adult “oh you’ll never actually do that” filter.
Getting Off Track
The past three years my training has wavered. Sometimes intense, but the last year was the most relaxed I’ve been about training. It was minimal, but I proved something to myself: if I put forth an image of myself, and I’m honest about that image and hold it in my mind, I naturally do the things that create that image.
I wish I was as good with that in other aspects of life as I am with my training. If I want to lose weight, I put forth the image of a smaller, svelter self and I eat less, train minimally and voila, I’m small and svelte. I put forth the image of my body as a machine, train my butt off, and voila, I pick up 435 pounds like it’s nothing.
Changing Your Mind
John Kehoe’s Mind Power into the 21st Century
It’s easy to mentally reduce the magnitude of the mold you’re creating. We’ve all had experiences that instead of proving our vast power, prove our vast limitations. It doesn’t take long before you’re forming beliefs based not on experiences that prove your vast power, but based on experiences that prove the opposite. Each passing year we carve a larger rut for ourselves and box ourselves in using the power of our mind. Bruce Lee wrote in the Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Because one does not want to be disturbed, to be made uncertain, he establishes a pattern of conduct, of thought, a pattern of relationships to man. He then becomes a slave to the pattern and takes the pattern to be the real thing.
It’s possible that each year you become more attached to the rut you’ve carved. The rut isn’t who you are, but it’s what you’ve become. It’s painful to look back on the years that the rut dominates.
Getting Out of the Rut
We’re organic. You can trash your body for years, and then decide in a day to change it. It won’t change instantaneously, but a few modifications can produce drastically different long term results.
It’s a shame we don’t see the long term with clear eyes. After journaling for 15 years, I can look back and see how seemingly small decisions changed my life drastically over the course of time.
All it takes is one little change.
Remembering Your Lessons
Mark Reifkind, a fellow kettlebeller wrote in his blog, “the only thing harder than figuring it out is remembering to do it.” The thought has been echoed throughout the ages, I’m sure. Sometimes, it’s not even just remembering to do it, it’s conjuring up the motivation and willpower to do it.
Shifting Your Gaze to the Long-term
As immersed as we are in information, we’re myopically focused on the short term. It makes it hard to make a decision that doesn’t have an immediate effect. Twenty push ups today won’t do anything for your body. But, twenty push ups, three times a day, five times a week, for five years, will. And who knows what that difference might ultimately be. That’s the beauty of it.
Who knows what will happen to you in five years if you start practicing a new language every day. In five years you may be living in a country that speaks that language. In twenty years you may be in a situation where the knowledge of that language saves your life. Who knows.
One thing’s for sure. If you don’t ever raise your hand above your head, you’ll never find out.
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