Change your mind - Change your world
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Change your Mind – Change your World
The average person has anywhere from 12’000-60’000 thoughts per day. 95% of these are repetitive – which means that they are the same thoughts that we thought yesterday. About 80% of these thoughts are negative.
Of course, we are all aware that having a positive mindset can help our mood and attitude, but these stats reveal just how much the quality of our existence is determined by the quality of our internal communication.
Mindsets are psychological orientations that shape how we view the world around us, i.e. seeing a glass of water as either half-empty or half-full. A mindset is why two people look at the same facts and draw opposite conclusions. Mindsets describe a collection of thoughts or beliefs that guide all behaviour. Mindsets involve tendencies toward behaviors and attitudes that drive how we react to daily events, conditions, circumstances, people and situations.
The way we, as individuals, view the world, ourselves and specific areas in life, is neither right nor wrong. As different people, we simply have different mindsets. However, being aware of certain negative mindsets surrounding your view of yourself, your fitness goals, your progress, the work it takes to get to where you want to be and your ability to make a change can have a huge impact on the likelihood of you reaching your goals.
So, what are your thoughts on the above-mentioned topics surrounding your quest to make a change in your life
For example. I once trained a female overweight client for over a year who would train hard for a month, then not come in for training for a month. Then come back again for a few weeks, only to cancel again… This was a repetitive cycle for her.
Finally, after we thoroughly discussed her mindset around training and progress, she came to realize she’d fall off-track with her diet and training for a day or two, which would cause her terrible feelings of guilt, triggering a downward spiral of emotional eating and non-training to punish herself… Then she would pick herself up again, but not come in to train with me until she felt that she’d lost the weight she’d put on during her binge, as she was so embarrassed and humiliated to see me.
Her mindset was that “Alex will think I’m a fat failure. I can’t go to gym as people will think I’m fat and look funny at me. I look ugly. No one will ever love me because of how I look. I can’t lose weight because deep down I also know that I am a failure”.
By confronting each of these negative guiding thoughts, this client was able to see how unfactual they were! She could then replace them with more accurate and logical thoughts. She’s now well on her way to achieving a healthier weight, trains three times a week and is currently engaged!
It all began by recognizing, rejecting and replacing her negative mindset with the help of a simple question: ‘Is what you are believing true?’
Please read through the below so called cognitive distortions and ask yourself if any of them apply to your mindsets around training, goals and progress, as they truly affect our ability to stick with exercise and nutrition programs:
- All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in absolute, black-and-white categories
“If I can’t do all of the reps in the set, I’m not cut out to exercise”
- Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat
“Since I couldn’t get the lunges right today, I’ll never be good at them”
- Mental filtering: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives
“I may have been able to hold a plank for 30 seconds, but so what? I can’t do a single-leg glute bridge at all!”
- Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities don’t count.
“I’m nobody”
- Jumping to conclusions: Mind-Reading or Fortune-Telling
(a) Mind-reading: you assume people are reacting negatively to you when there’s no evidence of that
(b) Fortune-telling: you predict that things will turn out badly without valid reason. “I know I’ll hurt myself in these squats you want me to do”
- Magnification or minimization: You blow things way out of proportion, or you shrink their importance inappropriately
I lost my balance during my dynamic lunges so today’s session was a total failure’
- Emotional reasoning: You reason based on how you feel
“I feel like an idiot doing these squat jumps, so I must really be an idiot.” Or, “I don’t feel like exercising today, so I’ll put it off”
- “Should” statements: You criticize yourself with “shoulds” or “shouldn’ts.” “Musts,” “oughts” and “have-tos” are comparable offenders
“I should be able to do a squat to the floor without falling backwards”
- Labeling: You identify with your shortcomings. Instead of saying, “I made a mistake,” you tell yourself, “I’m an idiot” or “a fool” or “a loser”
“I dropped the barbell when I was doing a bent-over barbell row. Ugh! I’m such a loser!”
- Personalization and blame: You blame yourself for something you weren’t entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behaviour might have contributed to a problem.