Training And Conditioning

The journey to achieving our goals is more often than not, a long, challenging, arduous, painful, and character defining one, especially when our goal is a life transforming one. We are faced with endless challenges, constant failures, numerous rejections, unrelenting criticism, and soul destroying setbacks. The thing is, with those big life changing goals, we often have to endure several years of these adversities, not just a few weeks or months. Let's not forget all the hard work, the hours, the commitment, and even the money, that we invest into achieving these goals also. The journey to achieving our goals can pretty much be likened to a marathon. Now you may not think that running a marathon is exactly that hard, I mean after all, it's only 42 kilometers, right? Maybe ask a marathon runner that question. A marathon isn't about running, and then taking a break to stop for a drink, or maybe walking for a bit to catch your breath, or jogging leisurely, it's about running non-stop for those 42 kilometers. It's about pushing your body to the absolute limit, working through all the fatigue, all the stress of your feet continually pounding the pavement 40,000 times over, battling through all the soreness in the muscles, whilst facing the increasing threat of hypoglycemia from dehydration, and the potential for impairment with the function of the kidneys. It is brutal on the body, and takes several weeks for the heart to return to normal function, whilst the immune system often is also temporarily weakened as a result of the stress the body has had to endure. Despite all of that though, the feeling of completing the marathon would undoubtedly be one of great satisfaction and accomplishment. I can't say I have ever completed a marathon personally, but I'm sure that's how these marathon runners would feel.

When we compare the journey towards our goals, with that of completing a marathon though, there is just one thing that many of us overlook, and that is the conditioning and training side of things. It is great to have self-belief and confidence in our ability to do things, but without the right conditioning and training first, we are only setting ourselves up for failure. We may think we can just get out there, accept the challenge of running a marathon, and succeed, but undoubtedly, we underestimate just how grueling and challenging that it is. In competition, marathon runners just aren't randomly chosen and hand picked, after all, they are selected off the back of their training, their performance, and their ability to consistently complete marathon distance running within a competitive time. When it comes to striving for our goals, we also underestimate just how grueling and challenging the journey to achieving them can be. Again, we believe it won't be easy, and that we will need to work hard to achieve them, but we completely underestimate the level of difficulty, and the amount of hard work, commitment, and sacrifice, that is required. For the majority of those who do take that step forward, and start pursuing their goals, after a few weeks or months of working towards their goals, where they continually keep encountering failure, challenges, setbacks, rejections, and adversity, plus the fact that success seems to be no closer or apparent, they quickly begin to doubt that success is even possible, so they give up. It's that foolish belief that society loves us to believe, that when we fail at something, it's a clear sign that we should give up on it, even more so when we continually fail. The truth is, when we fail at something, it only means we need to make some adjustments, change actions, and work harder, but it certainly doesn't mean we should give up. If we desire something so desperately, we should always remain determined, perseverant, and driven, to achieve it.

We know that perseverance, determination, and drive, are all characteristics and attitudes, and they aren't the only characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors required in order to achieve our goals. We also need the likes of motivation, patience, resilience, dedication, belief, a positive mindset, and commitment, just to name a few more. It's these characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes, that form the platform to success. Just like a marathon runner needs to continually work on their speed, their endurance, their stamina, even their diet, and be constantly conditioning their body to be able to cope with the stress and pressure of running in a marathon, we too need to be continually training and conditioning our mind to be able to cope with the mental stress and pressure that we will undoubtedly encounter in the pursuit of our goals. You may wonder how exactly we can do that, as with the training and conditioning of a marathon runner, it's all physical training that I mentioned, but how do we train and condition our brain? It's not as if we can shove a set of weights inside our ears and have our brain start lifting them each day. Like many other athletes, marathon runners also don't just train and condition their bodies, they also train and condition their minds too. They also need to work on and maintain those characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors, I mentioned above, so they can compete and achieve their personal goals. When we think about the mind for a minute, we can comprehend exactly its purpose and its influence. It is responsible for the decisions we make, our responses, our reactions, our thoughts, our beliefs, our personality, and our behavior. It would be fair to say that the mind ultimately defines us as a person.

So we revert back to that question, how do we train and condition our mind? The answer in four words; practice, meditate, control, and execute. Like with anything in life, we need to continually practice something in order to get better at it. With our mindset, each time we experience a negative emotion, we need to first increase our awareness of these moments, identify those feelings we are experiencing, and then we need to continually work hard on controlling them. Our aim is to spend as much time as we possibly can, in a positive state of mind, because when we are positive, we are naturally more proactive, energized, inspired, and we generally make better decisions. When we are negative minded, we can often be reactive, which leads us to make poor decisions, execute poor judgement, and we tend to say and do things we later regret. It's extremely difficult to confront situations and circumstances which make our blood boil, and not react to them in frustration or anger, but for our own benefit, we need to learn to refrain. Each time we face these moments, we need to check ourselves, as they are tests. Like anything we will fail time and time again, but the more we practice having the awareness of our emotions when we encounter them, and then controlling them by keeping calm and responding in a mature and orderly fashion, we will slowly get better at it over time. This will help us to better repel the negativity, and stabilize us in that positive frame of mind. We need to keep positive and focused on the goals we want to achieve, as that is the name of the game. So that's the practice and control aspect of things.

Meditation is extremely beneficial in helping us increase our self-awareness, to manage our stress levels, to reduce negative emotions, to enhance our level of patience, to help us gain new perspectives, to help focus on the present, and to help improve our sleep. Just taking 10 minutes out of our day, every day, to just relieve ourselves of everything that's going on in our life and is swirling through our head, and instead just focus on the moment we are in, helps us with all the above aspects I just mentioned. It's a bit of a mind detox basically, and helps provide some relief from all the clutter that life heaves upon us. Finally, there's execution. There are so many personal development and mindset training literature and courses online, that we need to invest time engaging in each day. They provide us with the relevant skills, techniques, recommendations, and habits, that help us personally develop and strengthen our mind. This is the theory side of things, but it is meaningless if there is no execution. We need to take these recommendations, skills, techniques, and habits, and put them into action, otherwise all we are doing is reading basically. We are not enhancing our life, or improving our chances to achieve our goal whatsoever. We are filling our mind with all this great information on how to achieve our goals and enhance our life, but if we are not then taking that theory and putting into practice, we are failing ourselves. It would be like a coach telling a marathon runner to make sure they are constantly hydrating throughout the race, by grabbing water at the allocated water stations, but then the marathon runner ignoring the advice, which leads them to fall on the ground as a result of hypoglycemia. Practice emotional control in each situation that presents, check yourself, and respond calmly, meditate daily to detox your mind, control your mind to be focused on your goals and be thinking positively, and execute the actions from the mindset trainings, along with those that are working towards your goals. Continually condition your mind to believe in yourself, to believe in your abilities, to focus on positivity, to resist reacting, to repel negativity, to remain patient, to remain resilient, to remain driven, and to remain perseverant. Only through regular training and conditioning of the mind can you adopt the required mindset behaviors and skills necessary to turn your goals into reality.

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