Motivate your mind

Motivate the mind and the body will follow.   I have struggled with running, a particularly grueling boot camp workout or even sitting down here at my computer to write.  I can find a hundred reasons to quit but I know if I just keep going that I will find the results that I really want in my life. 

Last Saturday my boot camp crew and I participated in the boot camp challenge at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.  It is a 3 mile obstacle course that the Drill Instructors put the new recruits through for 13 weeks.  Now I will say this – my boot camp is tough.  There is no doubt about it.  But what these recruits go through for 13 weeks is grueling.  We only had to run it one time and I will say that was enough.  Last year I finished it in 41 minutes and this year I finished it in 36 minutes. I am extremely proud that I improved by 5 minutes.  It makes me realize that everything that I have been doing this last year has been leading up to this challenge.  I could have not run as hard, not jumped over those logs with everything I had, not crawled through the sand as quick as I did but I knew that at the end I wanted to improve my time so I kept going.  My mind was screaming at me to stop, slow down, you are exhausted, you need water, you need to walk, you need to quit.  I never did.  I kept running and when I got to the last mile I knew that I could make it because I had come this far and I knew that there were no more obstacles in my way.  (Literally and figuratively). 

How many times in our lives have we not pushed as hard as we could? How many times have we listened to the little voice that says stop, don’t go on? More times than we care to admit I bet.  I am interested in working with companies to motivate and coach their teams to success and here I am thinking how hard it might be.  I am talking myself out of what makes me passionate because of fear.  I need to learn that my mind, while a powerful force, is not always the controlling factor in my life.  I know that many times the mind will warn you that there is danger or that something doesn’t feel right.  I am not saying to ignore that.  You know when something isn’t right so go with your gut.  But, when you know it’s your dream and your passion and your mind is telling you that you might fail – then ask yourself:  Are you scared of failure? Or of being happy?  I believe that many of us believe we are not worthy of happiness which is why we sabotage the things that are going well in our lives.  It’s easy to blame the failure on other forces other than ourselves.  I think if you take a good hard look at your life you will see that many times we are standing in our own way. Now I am not sitting here preaching at you.  I have and sometimes still do these things and it is the acknowledgement that makes it easier to move on.  I know that sometimes it’s easier to just give up and stay in the status quo but ask yourself.  Are you really happy? Or just really comfortable?  Remember:  you cannot spell challenge without change.  You have to be willing to step out on that ledge and take the risk.  Do you think those Marine recruits didn’t think about quitting every time they had to run that course for 13 weeks? Yes, most of them did think about it and some of them did quit; but the ones that made it through know they did it because they didn’t let their mind overpower them.  You are also capable of anything but you have to convince your mind to keep going.