Power of Positive Thinking

Positive thinking 

Definitions

noun

1. an optimistic attitude ⇒ “the benefits of positive thinking”

2. a technique for changing your attitude and fostering optimism 

This is one of the key things in my opinion that determines how we all go with our mindset and in our weight loss journey.  I have had instances where I have been super positive and surprised myself and then other times where I have had doubts about what I am able to achieve and this has hindered me in my efforts to reach goals.  Right now I am in a great place and shooting for the stars.

One of my favourite quotes

Amazingly enough this post is not entirely about me, but a change in mindset that I have witnessed of late, which was highlight more so today.  One of our Western Warriors training partners, Bridie Krull, has been learning to run, as she calls it, for the last round or so and coming along nicely.  She has joined us on a couple of our early Saturday morning runs, but told us to go ahead as she wouldn’t be able to keep up and would do her own thing.  We don’t make anybody do anything they are not comfortable with in our training sessions so the runs are the same.  One day we went for a 3.5km run prior to our normal garage session and as we turned around I noticed that she wasn’t that far behind us.  When we finally got back to our house I had a brief chat to her.

Turns out, in my opinion she just lacked confidence in her own ability. I told her that from what I had witnessed she needed to have more faith in her own ability and just be prepared to back herself and push herself a little bit more.  I thought she might be surprised with what she could achieve.  I also thought that she didn’t really believe me, why should she.  My belief here comes from a personal experience where I managed to shut out the inner demons and push myself in round 1 through some barriers to run my PB of 6.1kms after not having run for 20 odd years.  I remember something Michelle said in one of her mindset videos that the body can do amazing things, you just need to shut out the mind.  If only we could always do that.

This morning we headed off for a short run, which was to be 3km.  My running partner Karen and I headed off with Bridie and another training buddy Nicole coming along behind at their own pace.  At the turnaround they weren’t far behind. We got to the end of our run and turned back to catch up with them but they were nowhere to be seen.  As we were setting up for our session, 35-40 minutes later Bridie stumbled in looking like she was about to fall down.  We asked where she had been and she turned to us and said “We just did the lake.”  Now this run is 7.2kms from my house for the full round trip.  This was Nicole’s week 4 milestone run and something that was a goal for Bridie.  We were all ecstatic for both of them to achieve this.  Obviously both of them were over the moon as well.  I had only done this 3 weeks earlier, so I knew how good it felt to set this distance as a new PB.  After training I was fortunate enough to receive a notification on Facebook, which Bridie had posted to let everyone know she had achieved her goal (as she should) but thanking me for helping her realize she could actually run.  It is quite touching, but all I did was tell her to her have more confidence in herself.  It was her own positive thinking and will to succeed that got her through this not me.  I didn’t move her legs.

I suppose this just goes to show that the little bit of mush between our ears plays games with everything we do and we need to master this in so many ways to succeed on this journey.

All I need now is to maintain this frame of mind and achieve some of these goals for myself.